[WikiEN-l] Private Musings scam

[u/n - adrianm]

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