At the very least, "A.B." has indicated to me that a member of the ArbCom has acted in a proxy role, passing (at least some) information between A.B. and "AnonymousWikipedian", which would certainly be more complicit than "reading an email".
I would wager to say that "A.B." is a particularly good target for this sort of thing, since you really need background knowledge of A.B. to work out that they're sensitive to this kind of thing - at least, a decent familiarity with the various dramas. Someone established at en.wiki, though I've no reason to believe they're in a role of any "power".
I'll stress that I've only received information from A.B., and that I can't vouch for the accuracy or reliability of any of it. While my inkling is that maintaining the whole A.B. personality as a persona would be exceedingly difficult and they're likely to be genuine, I can't attest it of my own knowledge.
Cheers WilyD
On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Does anyone actually think that this "AnonymousWikipedian" person represents anyone from en.wiki, let alone the Foundation? Its some teenage piker, probably, who should be either ignored with alacrity or reported to the FBI at the same rate. If you find good evidence of who did this, I don't see a problem with blocking them permanently from the 'pedia. People who make illegal threats of violence to anyone, in even the vaguest association with Wikipedia, ought to be banned. Evidence should probably be good, though - like Alanyst/CHL good. As to your last point, does it matter which (if any) member of ArbCom received any of those e-mails? Receiving an e-mail doesn't make you complicit.
Nathan
On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
Forgive me for resurrecting a topic which has previously been written off by trolling by a 'known troll', and further forgive me for linking to Wikipedia Review.
Armed Blowfish claims to have received a series of threatening emails from an anonymous Wikipedian, in what seems to be a sloppy and worrying vigilante action. The guy who runs Wikipedia Review has supported Armed Blowfish's story (not that I'm sure that says a lot), and posted the whole lot of emails, with certain names redacted, to Wikipedia Review. Take a read for yourself:
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=16053
I tend towards believing Armed Blowfish's account, but even if you don't, it raises some important questions about how we deal with such off-wiki behaviour of Wikipedia users and editors.
Firstly, if we were to find out who this user was, should we allow them to continue as part of the community? How appropriate is it for a user to threaten to cut off the fingers of another person unless they get discredited by the ArbCom? If the evidence is off-wiki and shaky, how does that change things?
Can Wikimedia/Wikipedia take any further steps to emphasise that such vigilante-style idiots are not acting on behalf of the Foundation? Did anything like this happen with the Daniel Brandt situation? Anyone demanding things of him on behalf of the Foundation when they had no right to do so?
Should Wikimedia do more in the way of reducing online crime, by establishing relationships with the online branches of law enforcement agencies?
Finally, if the ArbCom member whose name is redacted in the Wikipedia Review emails really did receive those threatening emails, is he or she prepared to publicly acknowledge that they were indeed sent to him/her?
~Mark Ryan
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