[WikiEN-l] WR's secret forum and list

[Nathan]

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 at 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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