[WikiEN-l] SHOWCASING Abuses of Admin Power

[A. Nony Mouse]

My apologies to the list, this will be rather long as Maxwell staunchly 
STILL refuses to deal in good faith.

>On 7/5/05, A. Nony Mouse <temoforcomments4 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Kurita77 actually sent emails from MANY IP addresses in his block.
> > >One overlapping IP is all we need for near certainty.
> > When DHCP is involved, no, I don't think so.
>
>The address that was used is allotted to a single HFC network  region.
>The both participants would have to live within blocks of each other,
>in the worse case the same town.  Within that area there is probably a
>dhcp pool of many addresses (hundreds for a geographically larger
>area). The provider in question uses persistently allocated IPs, as
>long as the modem stays on you should keep your IP.

*AS LONG AS THE MODEM STAYS ON* - and if an area is having consistent power 
failures/brownouts (which seems to be a recurring theme in states like 
California and Texas) what happens then?

>The chance of two unrelated people getting the same IP, and both
>editing the same subjects on wikipedia is infinitesimal and once you
>factor in any other additional indicators... it removes all doubt from
>anyone with any understanding of the issues.

ONE conjunction of interest out of multiple subjects of interest, and a 
conjunction of interest in something that is WORLDWIDE a point of argument?

Sorry. That's a "coincidence" on the same order as "wow, who would have 
thought a train would come down those parallel rails of metal conveniently 
arranged over a procession of railroad ties."


> > >It's not. When combined with the overlapping IPs, however, it is very
> > >difficult to dispute.
> >
> > Again, when DHCP is involved, I don't think so. What would you do if it 
>were
> > an AOL subscriber who happened to get the IP of another blocked AOL
> > subscriber and edited on the same topic?
>
>AOL proxies many users behind the same IPs. The case is not the same.
>You are incorrect here.

No, I'm not. This is no different than a user on DSL or dial-up getting 
snagged the same way. DHCP is DHCP, IP addresses change.


> > > > Kurita77 was an example of a bunch of Inquisitionists running around
> > >needing
> > > > someone else to persecute, and biting the newbies. There was no good
> > >faith
> > > > involved in dealing with him.
> > >
> > >Perhaps it could have been handled better initially, I haven't looked
> > >but I'd be surprised if I hadn't posted saying that.
> >
> > If you did, you didn't spend much time on it. In fact, YOU were the one 
>who
> > sent the little "gem" telling him that the only way he'd get his account
> > back would be to hunt down Enviroknot wherever he was and force him to 
>move
> > out of the area.
>
>That was long after he became an abusive pest on the mailing list. In
>any case my advice, though silly still holds. We may have made a
>mistake, some unforeseen interaction... But we've made an effort, and
>now the accused can make an effort...  I don't see why you found it so
>offensive, if Kurita77 isn't the real enviroknott, going and finding
>the real one would probably be useful for all involved.

Yeah. Telling someone to go knock door to door in their neighborhood looking 
for someone to tell them how naughty they are... lame. Beyond lame, even.

And the fact that you can't see what an insult that was? Pathetic.

> > No. You crossed the line, you purposely agitated Kurita77 rather than
> > dealing in good faith.
>
>I think you've lost your mind. I didn't even say "buzz off- you are
>enviroknott" to this user even though I think the likelihood is
>overwhelming.  I said that we just weren't going to change our mind
>for anything short of finding enviroknott... The practice of driving
>unwanted people off the network you are on is well precedents on the
>Internet which is why the antispam services will tend to overblock
>against IPs which permit spamming users.  Yes, I was a bit of a
>smartass in my reply, but the advice was still useful. If you don't
>think I should be permitted to be a smartass towards annoying pests
>flooding my inbox then, quite frankly, you can bite me.

You're supposed to be an example. I'm going to point out the MULTIPLE 
personal attacks you've just made and let that be that, because making one 
back would be against policy.


> > >I have assigned no bad faith to Kurita77, I have only stated that
> > >obvious that his equivalence with enviroknott is nearly beyond
> > >reasonable dispute.
> > And I state for the record that any such assertion is roughly the 
>equivalent
> > of what I remove from my horses' stalls in the morning.
>
>You should focus your attentions on the horse then, because you appear
>to be misunderstanding technology.

No, I understand the technology perfectly well.


>Yadda yadda yadda.  Look, if you're going to make accusations against
>me get your darn facts straight.. and when I catch you slinging
>bullshit, at least you could give me an apology.

You're the one slinging bullshit. Anything else I'd say on the subject (and 
I have edited out my initial instinct here) would be a personal attack.


>Back when you first started posting I argued with others to keep you
>on the list because they thought you were just another troll.  I
>regret that now. I am not sure of your intentions of motivations, but
>I can say with confidence that your repeated attacking messages are
>effectively trolling the list.

In the same way that blacks "trolled" lunch counters during Jim Crow days 
perhaps.

> > > > We should not bite the newbies for actually paying attention.
> > >agreed.
> >
> > At least you agree on that. Too bad you fail to practice it.
>
>Yet another unsupported allegation from you, no shock there.
>:-(

Not at all. Your treatment of Kurita77 proves it.

>Yes users can come to write up on the same thing.
>You need to take a class in statistics.
>When you combine several rare uncorrelated events, the chance of them
>all happening becomes very low very quickly.

DHCP being reassigned - not a "rare" event by any stretch of the 
imagination.

Users deciding to edit on Jihad - about as rare as waiting for a man to walk 
into a barbershop.

User coming in and reading the tutorial before editing - not ALL that usual, 
but when we ENCOURAGE them to do so we shouldn't hold it against them.

What's your point? You clearly haven't got one.

> > I don't buy it. This is a case of admins on a power trip biting the 
>newbies
> > and refusing to admit they were wrong to do so, which was made worse by
> > admins like YOU who saw an opportunity to jump in and cause a personal
> > attack free-for-all on the innocent newbie.
>
>Get off it. We deal with hundreds of newbie editors a day. I agree
>that things don't always go right.. and we do have a few users who are
>too aggressive.  If you'd pay any attention who *who* you're ranting
>at you'll notice that you've yelled at a number of people who spend a
>fair amount of time looking at the work of others and reminding them
>to be more polite and good-faith assuming to all users and especially
>newbies.

No, I'm yelling at the ones who don't practice what they preach, who 
regularly believe that they can lecture newbies and established editors 
about policy and "good faith" all day long while being quite comfortable 
ignoring those same policies whenever the mood strikes.


> > NEVER the way you should treat new users. But you and every other admin 
>who
> > jumped in to start attacking Kurita77 (I think I only saw ONE mail that 
>was
> > even close to being in good faith) showed what you were made of. It 
>wasn't
> > pretty.
> > What's even sadder is that I see this kind of stuff all the time on
> > Wikipedia. The inner clique of Adminship has become a license to make up
> > rules as you go along and break the existing rules with impunity, rather
> > than a trust to enforce them and stay within them. Calling it a 
>"despotism"
> > isn't far off from the reality.
>
>You know what, if you think wikipedia is so broken why don't you start
>your own?  You can even start off with all the articles that exist in
>the current one.   I'll even help you setup the software.

I'd rather fix the one that's here. It's worth saving.

> > We'll start with this one, thank you very much. Now address the points.
>
>It is your choice to waste your time on the nearly indefensible, as it
>was your choices to reply to my offlist email on list... in violation
>of netiquette, common courteous, and copyright law. ... and as it is
>my choice to petition the list moderators on list to deny you
>participation because you are antagonistic, disruptive, and
>disrespectful.

Netiquette - riiight. Since when do you care about that?

Common Courtesy - I'm keeping things right out in the open. If YOU want to 
hide what you're doing, that's your problem.

Copyright Law - quoting someone's words is fair use, so I rather suppose 
that you can (as you said to me earlier) "bite me".

A. Nony Mouse

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