According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum ( http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di...) Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details.
To quote that post:
*I've identified about four or five new ones in just the last couple of days. There are 613 active admins on Wikipedia's current list. I'd like to do them all. But it would take a long time. To do a reasonably thorough search can require an hour or so. Maybe what's needed is a description of how to do it -- a flow chart.
For example, besides Google, Yahoo, and MSN, you cannot forget Google Groups. One guy I identified was found using his real name on Usenet back in 1994, but ever since 1995 was only using his screen name.
Many old-timers have left a trail of breadcrumbs on the Internet, and that probably includes about half of the current admins.
Putting together a project like this would be a very strong statement against letting anonymous Wikipedian admins play games with biographies of living persons. It would even make the newbies reluctant to wikifiddle with biographies.*
I think this is starting to go too far now.
~~~~ Violet/Riga
God *dammit*. This kind of stuff is why I have an entirely separate e-mail, etc. for Wikipedia and Wikipedia only. This is truly going too far. Aren't we considered, under U.S. privacy laws at lease, to be private citizens, making this illegal? Not that I've studied the laws, but that's what I seem to recall.
On 12/24/05, Violet/Riga violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum (
http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di...) Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details.
To quote that post:
*I've identified about four or five new ones in just the last couple of days. There are 613 active admins on Wikipedia's current list. I'd like to do them all. But it would take a long time. To do a reasonably thorough search can require an hour or so. Maybe what's needed is a description of how to do it -- a flow chart.
For example, besides Google, Yahoo, and MSN, you cannot forget Google Groups. One guy I identified was found using his real name on Usenet back in 1994, but ever since 1995 was only using his screen name.
Many old-timers have left a trail of breadcrumbs on the Internet, and that probably includes about half of the current admins.
Putting together a project like this would be a very strong statement against letting anonymous Wikipedian admins play games with biographies of living persons. It would even make the newbies reluctant to wikifiddle with biographies.*
I think this is starting to go too far now.
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On 12/24/05, Violet/Riga violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum (
http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di...)
Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details. I think this is starting to go too far now.
I agree with Violet that this has gone too far. One admin (not someone named by Brandt) recently received a personal threat in a phone call from someone he had taken action against on Wikipedia. It shows that being named has the potential to be dangerous.
Brandt also seemed to threaten to publish someone's photograph today http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Daniel_Brandt&diff=prev&a... and has talked about people's employment prospects being affected. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Daniel_Brandt&diff=prev&a...
The other problem is that not all the personal details he's published so far are accurate. Mistaken identity can have an effect on someone's life too, whether it's the admin's or the real-life person they've been wrongly identified as.
It's hard to know what to do about it. I'd like to see a version of the page that is vaguely acceptable to Brandt protected from any editing for a few weeks until the heat has gone out of the situation. As things stand, the article's being edited constantly, leading to lots of discussion on the talk page and on other websites, which in turn leads to more editing. Maybe if people got bored and wandered off, it'd be possible to reach a more considered solution without compromising our policies. However, I know lots of people would see that as giving in to Brandt, and I respect that position too.
Sarah
On 12/25/05, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
It's hard to know what to do about it. I'd like to see a version of the page that is vaguely acceptable to Brandt protected from any editing for a few weeks until the heat has gone out of the situation. As things stand, the article's being edited constantly, leading to lots of discussion on the talk page and on other websites, which in turn leads to more editing. Maybe if people got bored and wandered off, it'd be possible to reach a more considered solution without compromising our policies. However, I know lots of people would see that as giving in to Brandt, and I respect that position too.
Maybe too harsh and simplistic, but why not simply ban him from wikipedia. Especially after reading the edits you just pointed out. Maybe HE will get bored with wikipedia then. :)
Mind you, I don't know the whole story behind it (although I assume it's a long one), but this really seems to be getting out of hand.
Garion
On 12/24/05, Garion1000 garion1000@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe too harsh and simplistic, but why not simply ban him from wikipedia. Especially after reading the edits you just pointed out. Maybe HE will get bored with wikipedia then. :)
He's been blocked already, Garion. He just returns with open proxies.
Sarah
On 12/25/05, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/24/05, Garion1000 garion1000@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe too harsh and simplistic, but why not simply ban him from
wikipedia.
Especially after reading the edits you just pointed out. Maybe HE will
get
bored with wikipedia then. :)
He's been blocked already, Garion. He just returns with open proxies.
Sarah
Ah, did not know that. I just saw the edits you pointed out from the account Daniel Brandt. That account doesn't seem to be blocked. But yes, if he just returns with through open proxy, then bannning is pointless. Unfortunately.
Garion
On 12/24/05, Garion1000 garion1000@gmail.com wrote:
Ah, did not know that. I just saw the edits you pointed out from the account Daniel Brandt. That account doesn't seem to be blocked. But yes, if he just returns with through open proxy, then bannning is pointless. Unfortunately.
Well, not entirely; it helps us identify open proxies. :)
Kelly
Garion1000 wrote:
Ah, did not know that. I just saw the edits you pointed out from the account Daniel Brandt. That account doesn't seem to be blocked. But yes, if he just returns with through open proxy, then bannning is pointless. Unfortunately.
His account was unblocked on December 16, 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/block?page=User:Daniel%20Brandt
On Saturday 24 December 2005 19:26, Violet/Riga wrote:
According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum ( http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di... ay&thread=1134797879&page=1) Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details.
Wow.
WikiTerrorism.
On 12/25/05, Violet/Riga violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
I think this is starting to go too far now.
If you're taking this bozo seriously, it's definitely going too far. Ignore the fucker.
Brandt's "point" seems to be that if Wikipedia can write about him even though he doesn't want us to, we have to accept his being able to write about us in the same fashion.
-Matt
On 12/24/05, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Brandt's "point" seems to be that if Wikipedia can write about him even though he doesn't want us to, we have to accept his being able to write about us in the same fashion.
And it's arguably a fair point. But it's not what he's doing. He's "outing" people who have not identified themselves or been written about by third parties, and he's including material about them without checking that his sources are credible or that he's got the right person. We don't do that.
Sarah
On 12/24/05, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
And it's arguably a fair point. But it's not what he's doing. He's "outing" people who have not identified themselves or been written about by third parties, and he's including material about them without checking that his sources are credible or that he's got the right person. We don't do that.
I think he believes we do. In his mind, we are to blame for everything, including malicious people who place falsehoods here - while we ourselves do NOT consider those people part of the project, but rather misguided if not its enemies.
In other words, he considers just the POSSIBILITY of defamation / inaccuracy enough to condemn Wikipedia.
Witness his frankly insane belief that we should not have an article about anyone, of any level of fame, who does not want one.
-Matt
Being a minor, I think I have a sort of special situation here especially in the US.
If he even thinks about outing me I think I will have to encourage someone else who was outed to pursue legal action [as it is supposedly a sound basis] and I will fully support them.
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
"Tony Sidaway" f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote in message news:605709b90512241955n7b57615di75cc7abfd1aae215@mail.gmail.com... On 12/25/05, Violet/Riga violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
I think this is starting to go too far now.
If you're taking this bozo seriously, it's definitely going too far. Ignore the fucker.
Easy for some to say.
I have an adopted daughter.
It is very easy to find the Usenet posts in which John Grubor and Steven Boursy "labelled" me a "pedophile", actually a badge of honour, even if somewhat dubiously gained (the most minor tweaking you could imagine, but they didn't have a smaller weapon :-)
Can you imagine trying to explain to some robot Social Worker why I am named as a "pedophile" and why they should simply ignore it?
Violet/Riga wrote:
According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum ( http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di...) Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details.
It's *so* tempting to help him out by slipping him some additional information anonymously, such as credit card numbers - *somebody else's* credit card numbers, heh-heh-heh.
Stan the Evil-Overlord-in-Training
Violet/Riga wrote:
According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum ( http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di...) Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details.
BTW, his enemies list looked like a pretty distinguished crowd, so I sent him mail asking to be added to it, along with where I live so he would get more excited.
Stan
It's really quite simple. If he doesn't want to have an article written about him, he shouldn't have put himself in the spotlight. I'd be happy with someone removing unsourced "facts" from his bio, but he is a public figure and he can't force us to delete his bio.
Mgm
Stan Shebs wrote:
Violet/Riga wrote:
According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum ( http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di...) Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details.
BTW, his enemies list looked like a pretty distinguished crowd, so I sent him mail asking to be added to it, along with where I live so he would get more excited.
Oh, that's a thought. You can find my home address easily enough if you can work whois, and I've been considering making my phone number publicly available. What's his email address?
- d.
--- Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Violet/Riga wrote:
According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum (
http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=di...)
Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all such details.
BTW, his enemies list looked like a pretty distinguished crowd, so I sent him mail asking to be added to it, along with where I live so he would get more excited.
Stan
My real name (Daniel Mayer) and where I live (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) is not a secret. If that is all he is listing, then I wouldn't care if I were on that list either. But if he starts to list other things, such as home addresses, phone numbers, workplace, etc, then that is something very different since that can be used to harass people and even put them in danger. How many crank calls directed at you to your boss will your boss tolerate before firing you?
So, IMO, the list as is, is mostly harmless. But then, I may be hardend by the fact that I've received death threats in the past by a now banned Wikipedian.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On 12/25/05, Violet/Riga violetriga@gmail.com wrote:
I think this is starting to go too far now.
Yes.
What to do. Clearly we can't back down. We are already reciving far to many lible threats. If we back down here every obsevive with a grudge will try the same tactic.
There may be legal options but:
A) I doubt we can afford them B) Many of them will have no effect (I doubt he has any UK assets for example) C) They can only kick in once the information is out there
negoate with the guy.
Not posible. As outlined above we can't afford to back down and anyway what he wants can't be offered by anyone below board level.
Increase admin security.
Not much we can do here since most people will have a pre wikipedia trail. We could offer emails on the wikipedia but that does nothing for past stuff.
We should probably be doing more to warn potential admins of the downsides (we lose numbers but less burnout hopeful). Even at a lower level than phoneing (email userpage vandalism) you are going to get some theats.
Adminship may or may not be a big deal on wikipedia. To the outside world it appears to be and with the growth of wikipedia this is a problem. -- geni