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Directory:Wikipedia ArbCom mailing list leak 2011 (view source)

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== Introductions ==
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Subject: [arbcom-l] Introduction
 
Subject: [arbcom-l] Introduction
 
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-xeno
 
-xeno
 +
 +
_______________________________________________
 +
arbcom-l mailing list
 +
arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 +
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/arbcom-l
 +
 +
== SlimVirgin and Cirt ==
 +
 +
From: Frank Bednarz <frank.bednarz@gmail.com>
 +
Date: Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 16:02
 +
Subject: Re: [arbcom-l] Political activism RfAr (Cirt, Shell,
 +
SlimVirgin correspondence)
 +
To: English Arbitration Committee mailing list <arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
 +
 +
 +
Kirill is not the right person.
 +
 +
Assuming her position is as you characterized it, I probably disagree
 +
with her. I have particular views on COI (namely, it's usually invoked
 +
counter-productively).
 +
 +
I also have pretty good anti-Cirt bona fides (or so Cirt and Durova
 +
imagine). I will try to find some time to figure it out.
 +
 +
Frank
 +
 +
On Jun 16, 2011 5:04 AM, "Iridescent Wikipedia"
 +
<REDACTED> wrote:
 +
> <lo>
 +
>
 +
> I wouldn't call myself a friend of any kind, but we get on reasonably well;
 +
> because we both work in 19th century English history we run into each other
 +
> quite a lot. That said, I'm not sure I'm the best one to deal with this one. My
 +
> interpretation of that exchange is that Slim is trying to leverage the fact that
 +
> Cirt made massively POV edits with an undeclared COI (probably true), into a
 +
> broader principle that nobody can ever make an edit about anything with which
 +
> they have a real world connection. (This would have obvious implications for the
 +
> trench-war her and her close circle have been fighting for years to keep any
 +
> positive mention of Lyndon LaRouche out of Wikipedia.) While I think Cirt has
 +
> acted fairly indefensibly here, I'm very publicly associated with lobbying to
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> explicitly allow editing by employees, PR agencies etc provided it complies with
 +
> Wikipedia rules (the anomaly by which [[User:JustinBieberFan]] can write reams
 +
> of puffery and be welcomed into Wikipedia, but if
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> [[User:JustinBieber'sPressAgency]] makes a minor correction to a typo the
 +
> account will immediately be hardblocked makes no sense to me).
 +
>
 +
>
 +
> The best person to talk her down would probably be someone like Kyrill or Coren,
 +
> who have made recent public anti-Cirt comments so can't be painted by Slim and
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> Jayjg as All Part Of The Conspiracy.
 +
>
 +
>
 +
>
 +
>
 +
>
 +
>
 +
> ________________________________
 +
> From: Michelle Kinney <shell.kinney@gmail.com>
 +
> To: English Arbitration Committee mailing list <arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
 +
> Sent: Thu, 16 June, 2011 1:14:47
 +
> Subject: Re: [arbcom-l] Political activism RfAr (Cirt, Shell, SlimVirgin
 +
> correspondence)
 +
>
 +
> <list only>
 +
>
 +
> Does anyone have a close enough relationship with Sarah that they
 +
> could try coaxing her out of the Spiderman suit?
 +
>
 +
> Shell
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>
 +
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 20:07, Sarah <slimvirgin@gmail.com> wrote:
 +
>> Xeno has posted publicly that he has read the email exchange, and sees
 +
>> no grounds for Shell Kinney's recusal. And since reading it, Roger has
 +
>> also voted to decline the case, which implies that the seriousness of
 +
>> it may not have been understood.
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>>
 +
>> This is therefore a formal request that the Committee require Shell's
 +
>> recusal, and that members who have declined to accept the case
 +
>> reconsider. If this is not granted, I would like to find an appeals
 +
>> mechanism whereby the position of the Committee can be reviewed by
 +
>> uninvolved parties.
 +
>>
 +
>> The reason I request this is that this situation strikes at the heart
 +
>> of what Wikipedia is and will become. Do you want administrators
 +
>> creating PR pieces about commercial interests at the request of people
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>> involved with those interests? And when asked about it, not being
 +
>> forthcoming? If you don't want that, please accept this case.
 +
>>
 +
>> Cirt's editing has for many years triggered concerns that he is
 +
>> editing to the benefit of outside political and commercial interests.
 +
>> The email exchange between Shell, Cirt, and myself provides the first
 +
>> evidence that Cirt created one of the disputed articles -- [[Corbin
 +
>> Fisher]], about a porn company -- at the request of the company's
 +
>> lawyer, and the result was a PR piece by any reasonable standard.
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>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=330035705
 +
>> The exchange also shows him being less than honest about this.
 +
>>
 +
>> The exchange further shows Shell failing to take the issue seriously,
 +
>> and arguing that, even if the arbitration case went ahead, we could
 +
>> not inform the Committee privately about Corbin Fisher without Cirt's
 +
>> permission. That was accompanied by Shell declining the case. It seems
 +
>> clear from this that Shell involved herself; came down on Cirt's side;
 +
>> and recommended possibly keeping the rest of the Committee in the dark
 +
>> about a key issue unless Cirt himself allowed it to be passed on. This
 +
>> surely provides sufficient grounds for recusal.
 +
>>
 +
>> If the Committee does not hear this case, you leave the community with
 +
>> no adequate dispute resolution process to deal with it. The Corbin
 +
>> Fisher evidence cannot be made public. Therefore, editors taking part
 +
>> in a user RfC would not be able to factor it in, would not know that
 +
>> Cirt had (in my view) been less than honest about this on Wikipedia,
 +
>> and would not be able to view Cirt's other statements in that light.
 +
>> Only the Committee is in a position to take this into account.
 +
>>
 +
>> Finally, I would ask that Committee members not continue to discuss
 +
>> this correspondence onwiki. Shell and I discussed it on wiki in
 +
>> outline, each sent it to the Committee privately, and from them on, as
 +
>> I understood it, all discussion of it would be in private.
 +
>>
 +
>> Sarah
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>>
 +
>>
 +
>>>> On 15 June 2011 03:06, Sarah <slimvirgin@gmail.com> wrote:
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> Shell Kinney says she has forwarded this email correspondence between
 +
>>>>> Shell, Cirt, and myself to the Committee. I'm doing the same to make sure
 +
>>>>> all are received in the order they were sent.
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> I do not mind that the existence of this discussion is public, but I would
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>>>>> prefer not to see all the contents become public. I think Cirt's admission
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>>>>> about creating an article at the request of a company lawyer would damage
 +
>>>>> Cirt considerably, particularly on Wikipedia Review, and people would
 +
> assume
 +
>>>>> the very worst about it. On the other hand, it's clearly relevant to this
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>>>>> case. So my request is that, if the case is accepted, the ArbCom regard it
 +
>>>>> as private evidence to be factored in, but not raised publicly.
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> The key points:
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> 1. Cirt acknowledged that in December 2009 he created [[Corbin Fisher]],
 +
>>>>> an article about a gay porn company, at the request of the Corbin Fisher
 +
>>>>> lawyer, Marc Randazza. He says he did this without any personal gain. The
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>>>>> article was clearly promotional in tone. See --
 +
>>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=330446443
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>>>>>
 +
>>>>> He also got it on the main page via DYK. See the readership spike --
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>>>>> http://stats.grok.se/en/200912/Corbin_Fisher
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> [[Corbin Fisher]] is one of several articles and DYKs that have caused
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>>>>> concern about Cirt's editing. When Jayen asked about it in May on
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> Wikipedia,
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>>>>> Cirt replied that he had created it after coming by it "organically" --
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>>>>>
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>>>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ACirt&action=historysubmit&diff=430962892&oldid=430962663
 +
>>>>>3
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>>>>>
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>>>>> It raises the question of whether he has created other articles that would
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>>>>> benefit outside parties, at the request of those parties. This need not be
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>>>>> for Cirt's personal gain. It could simply be that Cirt's enthusiasm for
 +
>>>>> editing Wikipedia has been of benefit to others. The point is not the
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>>>>> motive. The point is that promotion is occurring for whatever reason. This
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>>>>> is of particular concern given that Cirt's involvement in DYK often leads
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> to
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>>>>> main-page exposure for his articles.
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> 2. Shell Kinney responded to this with: "I will point out that Cirt's
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>>>>> experience with a contact suggesting articles is not at all uncommon and
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>>>>> happens frequently through OTRS tickets or even the IRC help channel," and
 +
>>>>> that the article didn't strike her as overly promotional (though it clearly
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>>>>> was).
 +
>>>>>
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>>>>> 3. I asked Cirt if he would forward to Shell and me -- or to any other
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>>>>> uninvolved editors or ArbCom members -- the correspondence he had with
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>>>>> Randazza about this. He first said he was not sure he had it all, then said
 +
>>>>> he had asked Randazza and the latter declined his consent.
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>>>>>
 +
>>>>> 4. Shell responded that she could not see the point of the line of
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>>>>> questioning, or why I was raising a two-year-old issue not flagged by any
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>>>>> other editor. Note: [[Corbin Fisher]] has been flagged by several editors,
 +
>>>>> and raised on wikiEN-l.
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> I am concerned about Shell's attitude, particularly as the correspondence
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>>>>> was accompanied by her declining the case. I therefore feel she should
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>>>>> recuse.
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>>>>>
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>>>>> A note about forwarding gmails. I've used the gmail "forward all" button,
 +
>>>>> which doesn't forward material that was copied and pasted from another
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>>>>> gmail. It means a couple of sentences are missing, but nothing of import.
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> If
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>>>>> you see something apparently cut off in mid-sentence, that's the reason. I
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>>>>> can forward another set of the correspondence simply by hitting "forward"
 +
> if
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>>>>> you want that too, though it will give the correspondence back to front.
 +
>>>>>
 +
>>>>> Sarah
 +
>>
 +
>> _______________________________________________
 +
>> arbcom-l mailing list
 +
>> arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 +
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/arbcom-l
 +
>>
 +
>
 +
> _______________________________________________
 +
> arbcom-l mailing list
 +
> arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 +
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/arbcom-l
 +
 +
_______________________________________________
 +
arbcom-l mailing list
 +
arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 +
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/arbcom-l
 +
 +
== Malleus ==
 +
From: Iridescent Wikipedia <REDACTED>
 +
Date: Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 16:52
 +
Subject: [arbcom-l] Fw: Requesting advice
 +
To: arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 +
 +
 +
<list only>
 +
 +
For info. While I think a clean start in this case would be a good
 +
thing if it worked, I think it has the potential to lead to a really
 +
nasty situation.both when Sandstein & co spot the new account and a
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block-unblock-reblock wheelwar starts, and when Pedro and pals start
 +
accusing us of strangling Malleus and hiding his corpse in the
 +
foundations of Jimbo's luxury mansion because he Got Too Close To The
 +
Truth.and am doing my best to point out the many pitfalls he's headed
 +
for if he goes down this route. (If I flat out tell him not to, he'll
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ignore me; if I persuade him why it won't work, that's another
 +
matter.) His style is so distinctive, I don't see how a clean start
 +
could possibly work; while Frank is right that my sock guesses are
 +
often wildly off, I didn't need a checkuser to be sure of that one the
 +
moment I spotted it.
 +
 +
----- Forwarded Message ----
 +
From: Eric <REDACTED>
 +
To: Iridescent Wikipedia <REDACTED>
 +
Sent: Tue, 7 June, 2011 20:23:26
 +
Subject: Re: Requesting advice
 +
 +
I've got no objections to you forwarding this on to ArbCom, but as you
 +
found the other account so easily I have to assume that others would
 +
as well, so probably not much point. I don't want to waste any more of
 +
your or anyone else's time over this, as I've got absolutely no
 +
motivation to invent a new personality to go with a new account.
 +
 +
On 07/06/11 19:58, Iridescent Wikipedia wrote:
 +
 +
That wording's confusing; what's intended is "...should not return to
 +
old topic areas previously identified as problematic". I don't think
 +
there are any areas in which it would apply to you - it's aimed at
 +
people like the Ireland POV-pushers returning in new identities to
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remove "British Isles" again once their original accounts have been
 +
told to stop. There are a lot of people who disagree with you over
 +
tone, but (AFAIK) no problem topics for you as such.
 +
 +
If you're happy for me to forward this (the Arbcom list doesn't leak,
 +
so you don't need to worry on that score) I can get a quick yea-or-nay
 +
from The Cabal as to whether anyone foresees any problems. While
 +
Arbcom isn't a governing body etc etc etc, if none of the 18 have any
 +
issue it's vanishingly unlikely a complaint from anyone else would be
 +
taken seriously.
 +
 +
________________________________
 +
From: Eric <REDACTED>
 +
To: Iridescent Wikipedia <REDACTED>
 +
Sent: Tue, 7 June, 2011 19:27:10
 +
Subject: Re: Requesting advice
 +
 +
"Clean-start accounts should not return to old topic areas ..." is an
 +
unrealistically broad-brush exclusion as far as I'm concerned, so
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that's not an option. So it looks like it's goodbye to William, and if
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I want to edit wikipedia I'm going to have to stick with my
 +
basket-case account.
 +
 +
Thanks anyway
 +
 +
On 07/06/11 16:43, Iridescent Wikipedia wrote:
 +
 +
If you mean "William Leadford", that's fairly easy to detect (I
 +
spotted it without using any advanced permissions of any kind), so
 +
don't expect it to stay secret for long if/when the sudden
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disappearance of "Malleus" prompts all three of the WR crowd, Giano
 +
and Bishonen's clique, and the Defenders Of The Wiki to start
 +
sleuthing. As Geogre, Mattisse and RH&E have kindly demonstrated, it's
 +
far harder than you'd think to operate a "clean" account without being
 +
identified; since the person behind the account has the same writing
 +
style and the same interests, to evade detection you're having
 +
effectively to create a new personality, not just a new name. If
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you're going to pretend that hard to be someone you're not, it's
 +
unlikely to be worth the effort.
 +
 +
If you're going to go ahead and kill the Malleus account to make a
 +
fresh start, I'd strongly recommend identifying the new account to
 +
Arbcom. Plenty of people would love to catch you "evading scrutiny",
 +
and if you've identified the new account to Arbcom then it greatly
 +
reduces the chance of any unpleasantness down the line. To fall under
 +
the "clean start" protection, you need not only to abandon the old
 +
account altogether, but not return to any old fights. This is harder
 +
to do than it sounds, and is why Mattisse's repeated clean starts
 +
invariably eventually wound up blocked.
 +
 +
I imagine you're already aware of it, but before you do anything
 +
drastic have a read of the official policy on the matter, and decide
 +
whether you can actually work within those restrictions:
 +
 +
If you decide to make a fresh start, you can discontinue the old
 +
account(s) and create a new one that becomes the only account you use.
 +
Clean-start accounts should not return to old topic areas, editing
 +
patterns, or behavior previously identified as problematic, and should
 +
be careful not to do anything that looks like an attempt to evade
 +
scrutiny. A clean start is permitted only if there are no active bans,
 +
blocks, or sanctions in place against the old account. Discontinuing
 +
the old account means it will not be used again; it should note on its
 +
user page that it is inactive.for example, with the {{retired}} tag.to
 +
prevent the switch being seen as an attempt to sock puppet. It is
 +
strongly recommended that you inform the Arbitration Committee (in
 +
strictest confidence if you wish) of the existence of previous
 +
accounts before standing for adminship or functionary positions.
 +
Failure to do so is likely to be considered deceptive.
 +
 +
________________________________
 +
From: Eric <REDACTED>
 +
To: Iridescent Wikipedia <REDACTED>
 +
Sent: Mon, 6 June, 2011 23:25:33
 +
Subject: Requesting advice
 +
 +
I apologise for adding once again to your email burden, but I'm
 +
looking for a little bit of guidance.
 +
 +
I've long thought that the Malleus account is a hopeless basket case,
 +
and it sometimes gets overwhelmed with copyedit requests, most of
 +
which to be honest are on topics that I really couldn't give a
 +
monkey's about. So to give me some quiet time, and a potential exit
 +
strategy, I set up an alternate account well over a year ago now. The
 +
two accounts never edit the same pages, and the alternate account
 +
never edits on anything other than article pages or article talk
 +
pages. You may remember my Nunez99 account that focused on Welsh towns
 +
and villages? This one is rather similar, although not geography
 +
related.
 +
 +
I won't compromise you by telling you what the account name is, but my
 +
question is this; should I reveal this account to ArbCom or should I
 +
keep shtum?
 +
 +
Eric
 +
 +
    
_______________________________________________
 
_______________________________________________
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