[Foundation-l] Cabal?

[Ting Chen]

Chris Down wrote:
> Ipatrol has just came on IRC claiming that he has been told that the WMF is
> hiring people to "validate" articles, and that the foundation is doing it in
> secret by using thousands of IPs and academics. He claims that the WMF has
> contracted colleges all across the US have been recruiting academics to
> "validate" articles, and states that admins are involved in this 'cabal', or
> whatever.
>
> [[Afghan Hound]] is going to be rewritten soon by someone being paid
> $1000/month from the foundation, according to his 'source'. His source is
> apparently "an ex-teacher from Wright State University". According to
> ipatrol, the source claims that they have thousands of closed proxies
> operated through closed sites, and that the board are well aware of this.
> Apparently "the site's director" does not know, however. Apparently they
> showed ipatrol a pay stub from "Wikimedia Foundation". Apparently the person
> can also modify the content of diffs, which of course would imply that the
> person had root access.
>
> Yes, this sounds like complete and utter nonsense to me too, but I figured I
> should bring it up here since it is a pretty serious accusation (if
> ridiculous). Ipatrol is apparently going to release the name of the person
> to the WMF in private (naturally -l is not the best place to do such a
> thing), so hopefully that will sort everything out.
>
> Can anyone shed some light on whether this is even feasible? I really don't
> see how it could possibly be construed as being such.
>
> - Chris Down
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>   
If there is anything like that going on, even in planning, the board 
should be acknowledged. I know nothing of such a thing. So I suppose it 
is nonsence.

Ting