Despite the recent interest in secret lists this message from Blissyu2/Zordrac appears to have gone unnoticed. Blissyu2 describes the existence of a secret forum on Wikipedia Review, which he belongs to, that has been used to coordinate attacks on Wikipedia and its editors. On his blog he described an even more secret mailing list. (The entry has since been deleted). While he appears contrite, the actual players in the coordinated attack have not expressed any regret that I'm aware of. Are we more concerned about a list intended to improve Wikipedia than we are about a list and forum used to harm Wikipedia? Certainly good intentions with bad execution can mess up a project, but bad intentions with good execution are much worse. Wikipedia needs and benefits from the criticism of those who want to see it improved. It isn't improved by the plots of those who want to see it destroyed. Will Beback -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [WikiEN-l] Private Musings scam Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:28:32 +0900 From: u/n - adrianm <adrianm(a)octa4.net.au> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Dear good people of Wikipedia, I am writing here as the owner of Wikipedia Review, and also as someone who would like to apologise to you, the Wikipedia community, in addition to the Wikipedia Review community, for some actions that a member of our forum, Kato, performed recently, which relate to various other topics discussed on Wikipedia, surrounding the user name Private Musings, the administrator JzG, and the article and person Robert Black. First and foremost let me say that I do not approve of what Kato did. I was so angry about what he did that I stood up to it, and Somey, who is managing the forum, decided to give me a "mandatory holiday" over it, and right now as we speak we are negotiating as to whether I will just take my forum back and clean up this whole mess, or whether he will do it and I won't have to. Needless to say this entire incident created more problems on Wikipedia Review than it did on Wikipedia. However, I would like to state that this was done by one person and one person alone - Kato - and should not be seen to reflect the opinions and views of people who use Wikipedia Review as a whole. I wrote on my blog about this incident here: http://therealadrian.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5D338A8729E83EAB!892.entry Put simply, Kato was trying to hurt SlimVirgin and Wikipedia as a whole through some well-placed lies. The entire thing was a set up. Kato abused Wikipedia Review's trusted members forum, and his newly appointed position as moderator in doing this. And I believe that it was actually done with an aim for him to try to take over Wikipedia Review. Certainly, his actions prior to doing this were consistent with this aim, when he attacked a number of high profile members in relation to the "child grooming" issue. He has succeeded wonderfully, too, as Wikipedia Review is absolutely shattered thanks to this issue, with nobody really being able to make heads or tails of it, and to this day they still refuse to openly discuss what Kato did (instead they are discussing my complaining about Kato and various conspiracy theories about what my secret agenda was, since they refuse to accept that Kato actually did something wrong here). Quite frankly I am disgusted at this. We at Wikipedia Review have always prided ourselves on being "the good guys", who expose lies and always tell the truth. In this incident, we became "the bad guys", who lied to you (and to ourselves) and who then had to have our lies exposed by you guys over there at Wikipedia. What is the point of having a forum to expose lies if we are the ones making up the lies? And while I haven't been fond of SlimVirgin for a long time, and perhaps we could suggest that a few people who probably deserve to be hurt did get hurt in this, the amount of innocent bystanders who got hurt is far too many, and attacking a group, hurting innocent people along the way to hopefully perhaps hurting someone who in your opinion deserves it is the wrong way to go about things. A number of people on Wikipedia who had nothing to do with any of this were banned, and they are completely innocent of all wrongdoings. I don't know if anyone on Wikipedia can take the time to wade through this to figure out who was innocent and who was not. Because of the sheer level and complexity of Kato's lies, realistically its probably not even possible to do this, and I understand the idea of banning people "just in case". I can offer no reassurances that Wikipedia Review are going to clean everything up, because right now I am standing here as someone who got banned from my own forum, and if I do take it back, then the whole place may well fall apart (that is the threat I have been given to try to suggest to me that I shouldn't go in and take my forum back). Right now most people on there are refusing to accept the truth of the situation, and are instead insisting that this whole thing was my set up. That Kato didn't actually bully anyone, didn't actually set anyone up, and that the whole thing was my fault for making "unfounded accusations" against Kato. I just want to reassure everyone here that that is not what Wikipedia Review is meant to be about. We are meant to be there to make Wikipedia accountable, to discuss the various issues with the site, to make sure that people are aware of the various problems and to educate people. This whole incident goes further against what Wikipedia Review stands for than anything else in its 2 year history. This is not who we are. And if I have anything to do with it, this is not who we will become. I know that a number of admins have offered to let me back on Wikipedia over this, for showing integrity, and have wanted me to betray people over at Wikipedia Review. But I am not going to do that. If my Wikipedia ban is to be reviewed, it should be on its merits. No, of course my ban wasn't fair and no of course it doesn't have any legitimacy. But that doesn't mean that I am going to betray all that I have worked for just to get back in. I have more integrity than that. I would rather be somewhere for the right reasons, and to do things in the right way. Again, I would like to apologise to everyone who got hurt over this, and all of the Kato-inspired drama that this created, in the mailing list, on AN/I, and everywhere else. And for the record, I do think that Private Musings is an abusive account. But they should be exposed legitimately, not in this way. Thank you. Adrian, owner of Wikipedia Review Wikipedia Review username: Blissyu2 Wikipedia username: Zordrac _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Are we more concerned about a list intended to improve Wikipedia than we are about a list and forum used to harm Wikipedia?

Despite the recent interest in secret lists this message from Blissyu2/Zordrac appears to have gone unnoticed. Blissyu2 describes the existence of a secret forum on Wikipedia Review, which he belongs to, that has been used to coordinate attacks on Wikipedia and its editors. On his blog he described an even more secret mailing list. (The entry has since been deleted). While he appears contrite, the actual players in the coordinated attack have not expressed any regret that I'm aware of.