WR's secret forum and list - WikiEN-l

1 Feb 2008

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.