On 7/22/08, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 4:38 PM, SlimVirgin
<slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
Gery, very few of my edits have been oversighted,
so I'm sure you can
still find the post in question, if it ever existed.
I'm not sure that I'd call the number of your edits which have been
oversighted 'few' but even if the edits in question are not
oversighted, the I checked most of your talk page history had been at
least deleted... it's not at all as easy digging through deleted
contribs.
If it was an edit made by me, it's almost certainly not on my talk
page. I mostly answer people's queries on their own talk pages.
But I can assure you that there is no "out of character" edit. I post
with the same "voice," same writing style, and same views, all the
time, to the very best of my knowledge. That I'd posted something out
of character and therefore needed to be checkusered was an ex post
facto excuse.
When you asked she might have told you that she didn't remember (...)
but the very day you begin making public complaints about it she was
saying that she believed it was the cause. There is an IRC discussion
between her, jwales, and others posted on WR (I'll avoid linking to it
here).
I read it. It cast no light on what the post might have been.
[snip]
The important point is that, had the check been
legitimate, someone
else would have done it instead. We need to emphasize to checkusers
that they must not check people they could be seen to be in direct
conflict with, or people they've previously expressed strong negative
feelings about. Kelly was in the habit of attacking me viciously on
IRC, so it doesn't take much common sense to realize that using the
tool against me would look bad.
I can't find any evidence to support that there was some major
conflict between you and her at *the time the check was made*.
As I said, she and her friends had a habit of attacking me and many
others on IRC. That included you, as I recall.
[snip]
A check being valid is not an easy black and white thing. A lot of
bad behaviour has been found as a result of unilateral checks driven
by the checker seeing something which failed the 'smell test'.
Kelly's explanation looked reasonable enough at the time.
She was never able to produce the mysterious "out of character" post,
so I don't know how you could have found the explanation reasonable.
Anyway, the point is, if the reason had been valid, someone else would
have done the check for her.
Wikipedia Review has made the claim that they
have a checkuser in
their pocket, a claim that was confirmed by one of the few posters
there that I tend to trust. Therefore, in their own interests,
checkusers who post there regularly should make it a point of
principle never to use the tool against editors who are attacked
there, or in whom Wikipedia Review expresses too much of an interest.
Furthermore, I just searched Wikipedia review and their public efforts
to uncover your identity did not appear to begin until long after that
check was performed.
You're not searching very carefully in that case. They were right in
the middle of a frenzy of trying to find out who I was when Kelly
performed the check. You may have to go into
archive.org to find it. I
remember thinking at the time, "I bet Kelly Martin checkusers me," but
I didn't ask until months later, because part of me didn't want to
know. (Because then what? Make a complaint -- have it smoothed over by
Jimbo, referred to an Ombudsman who ignores it, more attacks on me on
IRC by Kelly Martin and her friends? -- which was precisely what
happened.)
Similarly, when I read Wikipedia Review claiming to have a checkuser
in their pocket, my first thought was, "That person will out himself
by checkusering me." (It was like finding out which employee has
raided the company accounts by waiting to see which of them suddenly
buys a new car and a second home in the country.)
[snip]
For example, WR user could use access logs from websites they control
to make educated guesses about what ranges a target might be using,
(i.e. list of all IPs that searched WR for 'username'. An evil WR CU
could then find vandalism from those ranges or some other excuse (an
address in the ranges being listed in some open proxy list) and
perform CUs of those ranges. If they guessed a rangecorrectly they'd
see your exact IP in the results, but there would be *nothing* in the
CU log to indicate that they'd been looking for you as the results are
not logged (and shouldn't be, for retention and other reasons). And
if someone else ran the same check and saw the target user there the
checking CU would have a very plausible explanation for the checking.
Yes, true, but that is an unlikely scenario, and if they guess wrong
about the IP range, or if the target doesn't visit any sites they
control, it wouldn't help them.