On 7/22/08, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 4:38 PM, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@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.