Regarding Will be Back's comment on Dec 9, 2007 and the subsequent thread, which was initially in reply to my comment dated Nov 14, 2007 (http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2007-December/087116.html) I notice a number of misconceptions and some confusion about the whole issue of a secret forum, so I thought that I would clarify a few things. As it seems that my account on WR (both as owner and even as member) has been hacked by Somey, and hence I will be forced to start a new WR, I cannot say for certain whether this is still the case, however I can tell you what the situation was for the first 2 years that WR existed. This is something that was never a secret - I had always been open about this. Somey however has in recent times tried to hide this.
Wikipedia Review found the need to have a special sub-forum for "trusted users". This was Blu Aardvark's idea (and perhaps a bit of my idea) and was started as soon as we had WR.com running, 16 February 2006. The initial members of this group was myself, Selina, Blu Aardvark and Lir, otherwise known as the founding members of Wikipedia Review. Later we added more people, always at the request of existing members. Over time this group included Guy, Hushthis, Sgrayban, Herschellekrustofsky, Poetlister, and a number of others.
The initial plan for this group was "everyone who we knew was not an administrator of Wikipedia" and it was intended to be for all established users. However, over time the group became increasingly exclusive, and it became a group that was "all administrators of WR plus 1 or 2 others who will probably become administrators later on anyway".
The point of this group was not to coordinate attacks on Wikipedia, indeed it had never been used for this purpose. The point of it was to talk about things privately without fear that we would have our names smeared about it. For example we might complain about other members of WR, or we might complain privately about how so-and-so on Wikipedia was a jerk, etc.
When Kato was made a moderator of WR, he immediately used the sub-forum to try to coordinate attacks against Wikipedia, something that I objected very strongly towards. He lied about it, set people up, and then forced all of us to lie. The end result of that is that a lot of innocent people were banned from Wikipedia, and a lot of people got really confused about the whole thing. This is why I was so angry at Kato, and told them to get rid of him completely, because he was making WR the bad guys. The kinds of attacks he was doing were completely unethical, they were the kinds of things that Wikipedia has for years accused us of doing, but we had never done. Now suddenly we were, thanks to Kato. And this is why Somey saw the need to hack my account, entirely over this issue.
Now, this sub-forum was initially called "Wikipedia Review cabal" but it was later changed to be known as "Wikipedia Review anti-cabal" because someone (I can't remember who) said that cabals are evil, and we wanted to be known as the good guys (as opposed to Wikipedia, who we regarded as the bad guys).
Now, you should note that the hypocrisy is almost entirely done by the people who tried to usurp the initial founding members - Selina and then more recently Somey. The people who started WR, people like Igor and Lir and Blu Aardvark and the like, never wavered from the initial intentions. But all of these people have now been banned. Hence why we are going to start a new, ethical WR.
Now I will explain all of the different levels on Wikipedia Review:
Guests (without an account) - you can view all of the public forums Members (once you sign up) - can also view the Tar Pit and Feather Barrel and that's about it Anti-Cabal (sometimes known as the trusted users forum) - can also view one extra forum, the Anti-Cabal sub forum, used so abusively by Kato, and I believe is now used to coordinate attacks against Wikipedia, but for the 2 years prior to this it never was Moderators (once you're a moderator) - Primarily used to decide whether to ban someone from WR, also talking about new rules, people who are applying, etc
That's it for the secret forums. There are 3. 1 for you when you register (not a particularly exciting one), 1 for when you are liked enough, and one as a moderator. Also note that Moderators can see all deleted messages.
As part of the deal that I got because I owned the site but didn't want to be an administrator, they let me view all of these sub forums, and I could comment on administrative decisions, yet I couldn't actually do anything.
When I said that I thought that Kato should be banned from WR for coordinating attacks on Wikipedia, Somey decided to hack my account and change my passwords. And now our hosts, GoDaddy (for the domain) and Lunarpages (for the software) believe that Somey is me, and I am some imposter. I can forward on their e-mails about it. Its all a very ugly situation now, all thanks to Kato.
I don't know anything about all this drama aside from what you wrote here, but I have to say it looks like you were pretty stupid about the whole thing - if what you wrote is true. And now you want to start over doing the exact same thing all over again? Just give up and do something more useful with your life, really.
On Feb 1, 2008 12:10 PM, u/n - adrianm adrianm@octa4.net.au wrote:
Regarding Will be Back's comment on Dec 9, 2007 and the subsequent thread, which was initially in reply to my comment dated Nov 14, 2007 (http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2007-December/087116.html) I notice a number of misconceptions and some confusion about the whole issue of a secret forum, so I thought that I would clarify a few things. As it seems that my account on WR (both as owner and even as member) has been hacked by Somey, and hence I will be forced to start a new WR, I cannot say for certain whether this is still the case, however I can tell you what the situation was for the first 2 years that WR existed. This is something that was never a secret - I had always been open about this. Somey however has in recent times tried to hide this.
Wikipedia Review found the need to have a special sub-forum for "trusted users". This was Blu Aardvark's idea (and perhaps a bit of my idea) and was started as soon as we had WR.com running, 16 February 2006. The initial members of this group was myself, Selina, Blu Aardvark and Lir, otherwise known as the founding members of Wikipedia Review. Later we added more people, always at the request of existing members. Over time this group included Guy, Hushthis, Sgrayban, Herschellekrustofsky, Poetlister, and a number of others.
The initial plan for this group was "everyone who we knew was not an administrator of Wikipedia" and it was intended to be for all established users. However, over time the group became increasingly exclusive, and it became a group that was "all administrators of WR plus 1 or 2 others who will probably become administrators later on anyway".
The point of this group was not to coordinate attacks on Wikipedia, indeed it had never been used for this purpose. The point of it was to talk about things privately without fear that we would have our names smeared about it. For example we might complain about other members of WR, or we might complain privately about how so-and-so on Wikipedia was a jerk, etc.
When Kato was made a moderator of WR, he immediately used the sub-forum to try to coordinate attacks against Wikipedia, something that I objected very strongly towards. He lied about it, set people up, and then forced all of us to lie. The end result of that is that a lot of innocent people were banned from Wikipedia, and a lot of people got really confused about the whole thing. This is why I was so angry at Kato, and told them to get rid of him completely, because he was making WR the bad guys. The kinds of attacks he was doing were completely unethical, they were the kinds of things that Wikipedia has for years accused us of doing, but we had never done. Now suddenly we were, thanks to Kato. And this is why Somey saw the need to hack my account, entirely over this issue.
Now, this sub-forum was initially called "Wikipedia Review cabal" but it was later changed to be known as "Wikipedia Review anti-cabal" because someone (I can't remember who) said that cabals are evil, and we wanted to be known as the good guys (as opposed to Wikipedia, who we regarded as the bad guys).
Now, you should note that the hypocrisy is almost entirely done by the people who tried to usurp the initial founding members - Selina and then more recently Somey. The people who started WR, people like Igor and Lir and Blu Aardvark and the like, never wavered from the initial intentions. But all of these people have now been banned. Hence why we are going to start a new, ethical WR.
Now I will explain all of the different levels on Wikipedia Review:
Guests (without an account) - you can view all of the public forums Members (once you sign up) - can also view the Tar Pit and Feather Barrel and that's about it Anti-Cabal (sometimes known as the trusted users forum) - can also view one extra forum, the Anti-Cabal sub forum, used so abusively by Kato, and I believe is now used to coordinate attacks against Wikipedia, but for the 2 years prior to this it never was Moderators (once you're a moderator) - Primarily used to decide whether to ban someone from WR, also talking about new rules, people who are applying, etc
That's it for the secret forums. There are 3. 1 for you when you register (not a particularly exciting one), 1 for when you are liked enough, and one as a moderator. Also note that Moderators can see all deleted messages.
As part of the deal that I got because I owned the site but didn't want to be an administrator, they let me view all of these sub forums, and I could comment on administrative decisions, yet I couldn't actually do anything.
When I said that I thought that Kato should be banned from WR for coordinating attacks on Wikipedia, Somey decided to hack my account and change my passwords. And now our hosts, GoDaddy (for the domain) and Lunarpages (for the software) believe that Somey is me, and I am some imposter. I can forward on their e-mails about it. Its all a very ugly situation now, all thanks to Kato.
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adrianm wrote:
I notice a number of misconceptions and some confusion about the whole issue of a secret forum, so I thought that I would clarify a few things. As it seems that my account on WR (both as owner and even as member) has been hacked... [much more snipped]
I'm afraid this will sound terribly callous of me, but please understand I ask only out of mild intellectual curiosity: is there any particular reason we should believe any of this? Is there any particular reason we should care?
The more interesting question, to me, is why we would resurrect a month and a half old thread about WR.
-Phil
On Feb 1, 2008, at 1:27 PM, Steve Summit wrote:
adrianm wrote:
I notice a number of misconceptions and some confusion about the whole issue of a secret forum, so I thought that I would clarify a few things. As it seems that my account on WR (both as owner and even as member) has been hacked... [much more snipped]
I'm afraid this will sound terribly callous of me, but please understand I ask only out of mild intellectual curiosity: is there any particular reason we should believe any of this? Is there any particular reason we should care?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 01/02/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
The more interesting question, to me, is why we would resurrect a month and a half old thread about WR.
I think that's pretty much equivalent to "we should we care?", which is the question I asked myself when I first saw the email.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 01/02/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
The more interesting question, to me, is why we would resurrect a month and a half old thread about WR.
I think that's pretty much equivalent to "we should we care?", which is the question I asked myself when I first saw the email.
We should care about people plotting to harm Wikipedia. I'm not sure if we should care that a WR admin hacked the password of its owner.
Will Beback
<sigh>
Typical WR attempt to get attention. It's pretty hard to take any claims seriously that come out of them.
Philippe
-------------------------------------------------- From: "Will Beback" will.beback.1@gmail.com Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 5:57 PM To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WR's secret forum and list
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 01/02/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
The more interesting question, to me, is why we would resurrect a month and a half old thread about WR.
I think that's pretty much equivalent to "we should we care?", which is the question I asked myself when I first saw the email.
We should care about people plotting to harm Wikipedia. I'm not sure if we should care that a WR admin hacked the password of its owner.
Will Beback
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On Feb 1, 2008 6:57 PM, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
We should care about people plotting to harm Wikipedia. I'm not sure if we should care that a WR admin hacked the password of its owner.
I still read WR from time to time and find it useful as a pointer to some of the controversy and dubious behavior, but increasingly there seems to be a faction there who are rather too interested in doing destructive things.