from Hacker News

Admin unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was banned in 2015

by akolbe on 11/6/23, 9:29 AM with 127 comments

  • by chmod775 on 11/6/23, 11:44 AM

    > What was the point of spending years as a productive administrator, making tens of thousands of edits and logging thousands of actions, to implode the whole thing over a pointless argument on an RfA talk page?

    Maybe they just honestly enjoyed the work, then they didn't feel like it anymore, and banned themselves.

    It let them have the last laugh - they just kept doing what they wanted even after being banned, then ended it on their own terms when they felt like it.

    It's not like they lost anything, except the opportunity to perform unpaid work and get more articles written about them from people who cannot fathom someone would voluntarily relinquish some meaningless position.

  • by Aardwolf on 11/6/23, 11:52 AM

    I don't know why, but this all reminds me of when I was in secondary school, and many of us were in IRC channels of local ISP's and sites, and things like being channel operator or admin, or getting kicked, banned or k-lined could all give incredible feelings of power or despair. The political structure in the IRC channels and servers could change dramatically any evening, and some would boast about their mIRC war script skills, or things like knowing the cousin of a server admin, the next day in school
  • by akolbe on 11/6/23, 9:34 AM

    The admin in question had previously been the subject of a Newsweek article:

    "Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School"

    https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-p...

    That was back in 2015.

  • by JKCalhoun on 11/6/23, 11:55 AM

    It seems strange that administrators hide behind anonymous accounts on Wikipedia. I know providing who you are in real life has privacy issues for many, and regardless it is not clear there is even a reliable way to make sure someone truly is who they say they are. But it seems that at the administrator level Wikipedia could make an attempt at this.

    User Beeblebrox, Wifione, Lourdes... It's weird reading this — like it's some kind of secret club in grade school where everyone has code names.

    I know I am not typical in that my user name is my own name. Part of me cast off anonymity on the internet though if for no other reason to keep myself honest in my postings — a deterrent to allowing some kind of alter-ego to shit post and such.

  • by victorbjorklund on 11/6/23, 10:55 AM

    "was extremely banned in 2015"

    Just made me laugh. How are someone "extremly" banned? Either you are banned or not.

  • by Temporary_31337 on 11/6/23, 12:54 PM

    I have a bit of silver lining - I saw an article on Wikipedia about Unicode that was factually incorrect and I edited that anonymously, fully expecting that some overzealous bot will overturn my edit. It’s a few months later now and my edit is still live for the whole world to enjoy!
  • by Havoc on 11/6/23, 12:05 PM

    Wiki seems to have the exact dynamics at play as Reddit power mods.

    Not healthy

  • by contingencies on 11/6/23, 11:23 AM

    I retired from admin status earlier this year. Can't stand the environment on Wikipedia these days. You can't even stay out of politics and contribute, ignorant people delete good faith contributions constantly.
  • by teddyh on 11/6/23, 11:13 AM

    > In short: what?

    Excellent summary.

  • by batch12 on 11/6/23, 12:34 PM

    Does it seem strange to anyone else that the confession is written much better than the user message?
  • by bradley13 on 11/6/23, 3:17 PM

    Back in its early days, I used to maintain a few articles on Wikipedia. Then the admins got full of themselves.

    Wikipedia is a valuable resource, and it does need editors. However, some people get drunk on a little power, and that us exactly the type of person attracted to this kind of unpaid role.

    It wasn't worth dealing with them 15 years ago, and it sounds like it has only gotten worse...

  • by praash on 11/6/23, 11:54 AM

    Is there any chance of the account being hijacked? It would make this act of self-destruction even more bizarre due to the massive opportunity for abuse, though.
  • by symlinkk on 11/6/23, 1:25 PM

    How effective is a “ban”? Can’t he just make a new account? If they ban his IP it’s easy to get a new IP too.
  • by bawolff on 11/6/23, 1:16 PM

    Meh, its the internet. If you create a new account, dont do anything evil, nobody will know its you.
  • by moomin on 11/6/23, 2:30 PM

    Guarantee you there’s a third admin account. And maybe a fourth.
  • by kurtreed2 on 11/6/23, 8:00 PM

    There are even juicier, serious, and damning scoops waiting to be put into the limelight by mainstream media.

    There are two dozen sexual harassment scandals against women on Wikipedia, involving editors, admins and even high-up stewards and sysops.

    https://wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=26833#p...

    https://rdrama.net/post/215764/there-are-two-dozen-sexual-ha...

    A user who claims to be a reporter had said that Daily Beast killed the story about Wikipedia's harassment scandals against women on a Wikipedia criticism forum.

    Excerpt with further redaction to profane words:

    > For the folks at home, the story I was working on was going to be published by the Daily Beast in Spring 2024. Everything was in place then we had to go to both Wikipedia and the National Archives for comment, as required by law. Archvies wouldn't speak to us and Wikipedia threatened to sue, I suspect because of what we had found out about their administrators. The piece had mainly been about administrator abuse, using cowtools on Wikipedia to trace ip addresses, dox people's identities then harass them in real life. The (Male Victim) clusterf** was a big part of the story, but not the entire story. The real beef of the article was about female editors on their site being stalked and even assaulted after having their identities revealed online by administrators. I found several cases of that including a woman who was stabbed outside her home in Mexico City by a stalker who had researched who she was off of her Wikipeida profile.

    > Daily Beast backed out because of the lawsuit threat, but I still have the whole story and might one day sell the rights. For now, its back to Eastern Europe covering real news.

    She also disclosed further details about these scandals.

    > I gave Daily Beast my story, I'm not sure if they will run it or not. You have to remember the (Male Victim) case is something of old news, as it happened five years ago in 2018. (Perp) and his internet activities were more recent, but he's been quiet now for about two years since I think he actually got a bit scared after his name started popping up on law enforcement radars. I've confirmed he was talked to at least once by law enforcement, mainly about his obsession with the U.S. government worker (Perp) who he had convinced himself was (Male Victim).

    > (Male Victim) probably did operate that account about fifteen years ago from what I can tell, but was one of several people who did. (Perp) and his buddies don't like it when their narrative gets spoiled, and refused to ever admit, even with the evidence staring them in the face, that the (Male Victim) account was clearly being operated by more than one person. It was actually (Witness) who confirmed that for me in one of our interviews and had himself spoken to two of the people who operated the account.

    > For those wondering, the end game of (Perp) appeared to be blackmail, or some kind of weird plan where he was going to fly to the United States and confront (Male Victim) in person literally at the front door of the National Archives and be some kind of Wikipedia hero - that's how crazy that guy is. He never went through with his plan since, like I said, law enforcement started taking an interest in him especially after it appeared he really did have a plot to travel internationally to a US federal building in Washington DC. What's really ironic is that when all the (redacted) was going down, (Male Victim) didn't even work at the National Archives anymore.

    > Also, gotta remember, (Male Victim) was only a small part of my story. In three years of research, I found over two dozen cases where Wikipedia administrators had misused their authority, traced ip addresses, and stalked people in real life. Two of the worst cases ever were (Female Victim A), who some on Wikipedia actually tried to bankrupt as well as a user named (Female Victim B) who apparently there was some type of plan to kidnap and rpe. Not to mention (Female Victim C), who never told me her user name, but was attacked outside her apartment in Mexico City after a Wikipedia administrator traced her ip address and gave the information to her attacker.

    > It's actually a wonder no one has been killed yet by some of the people on that web site.

    More breadcrumbs about the scandals.

    > The (Female Victim D) case was a major part of my recent article, and I spent about a year investigating what happened and interviewed her twice (virtually). What the Wikipedia case didn't report was that those two men did a "trial run" to her village a week or two beforehand and were seen on the street leading up to her home taking pictures and apparently watching her come and go, timing when she would be alone. They were seen by neighbors which is actually how she got tipped off about what was going on, but then the d*kheads started calling her house with both prank and hang up calls. When they came back for "the real thing" she was on her guard and saw them coming. That was also no innocent prank, and it certainly wasn't a misunderstanding where they "got lost on the train" and just happened to wind up on her remote street. I actually think they were trying to kidnap her.

    > After getting in touch a friend who in turn interacted with the reporter for more details, I learn that there are also a p-dophile scandal within where one of the corrupt Wikipedia administrator tried to traffick a teenager from Thailand into his home.

    > Sorry I have been out of the loop for a while. That question was posted by a man in Thailand named (redacted) and was connected to a rather despicable incident involving (redacted - perp). I'd previously sent the details to this site's administrators.

    Imagine if Daily Beast gets its gut together and pull a John Carreyou against Wikipedia next year? The results and impacts could be greater than the downfalls of Theranos, Johnny Kitagawa and Weinsteins combined together. Although the publication schedule was set at next year, there are realistic possibilities that because of WMF legal threats and so on, it could be delayed into the future. Which brings an interesting possibility, what if the Daily Beast feature story is released concurrently with Marvel Secret Wars?

  • by spandextwins on 11/6/23, 1:47 PM

    Wikipedia will probably be replaced by AI soon. That should end all that.
  • by throw932490 on 11/6/23, 11:50 AM

    The whole concept of "ban" (like removal) is stupid. Wikipedia should be a tree of various interpretations. With single topic, I want to see texts from all sides.
  • by spandextwins on 11/6/23, 2:06 PM

    All of wikipedia fits on a thumb drive. You can mirror it and host it yourself. Not sure why there's so much buzz around it. And wow! They do know how to spend money there!