Josh Gordon and eBay

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ericbarbour
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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Aug 11, 2020 11:55 pm

Almost TWO months. The "Criticism of eBay" article has undergone almost no editing and still does not mention the Wenig mess. My comment is still on the talkpage.

Deep inside the main eBay article is this. Nothing else. Notrium (a really bizarre wiki-gnome) added it on June 15. Then there was a stupid little editwar. Notrium's version won.
On September 25, 2019, it was announced that Devin Wenig would be stepping down as eBay's CEO, and that Scott Schenkel, senior vice president and chief financial officer since 2015, had been appointed as the interim CEO.[34] On April 13, 2020, it was announced that Jamie Iannone would become the CEO on April 27.[35] On June 15, 2020, eBay clarified[36] that Wenig and five other employees were terminated in September after a law enforcement notification in August because of a possibly criminal case of harassment of journalists perpetrated by some of the terminated employees.[37][38][39] The six are charged with Aggressive Cyberstalking.[40]

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Sun Sep 06, 2020 12:44 am

Almost THREE months later. Still no major changes anywhere and still only one mention of the Wenig scandal. It has disappeared from the news cycle. These are the latest items I could find -- both from back in June. And Josh keeps his usual low profile.

https://fortune.com/2020/06/16/ebays-fo ... g-scandal/

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/new ... icism.html

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Sep 26, 2020 8:09 pm

Today the New York Times ran a large report on the Wenig scandal.

"Inside eBay’s Cockroach Cult: The Ghastly Story of a Stalking Scandal"

And there is STILL no mention of it on Wikipedia, except for a small squib buried in the main article and in the Devin Wenig bio. I seriously wonder what Josh is pulling in the background to keep it off WP.
On September 25, 2019, it was announced that Devin Wenig would be stepping down as eBay's CEO, and that Scott Schenkel, senior vice president and chief financial officer since 2015, had been appointed as the interim CEO.[34] On April 13, 2020, it was announced that Jamie Iannone would become the CEO on April 27.[35] On June 15, 2020, eBay clarified[36] that Wenig and five other employees were terminated in September after a law enforcement notification in August because of a possibly criminal case of harassment of journalists perpetrated by some of the terminated employees.[37][38][39] The six are charged with Aggressive Cyberstalking.[40]
Today Andy Mabbett added a new section about the scandal. Bet it will suddenly vanish. And the edit before it, from four days prior, says:
14:56, 22 September 2020‎ Jpgordon talk contribs‎ 95,462 bytes 0‎ 1999 most certainly is not correct for the eBay style logo; that logo was in use when I arrived there in 1998. Tag: Manual revert

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Oct 27, 2020 7:40 am

Josh must have been warned off or something: there's now a separate article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

And there's one editor basically doing nothing else

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... Truthchild

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:07 pm

More than a month later: it's still there. And links to the stalking-scandal article. (Which is included in three categories, but NOT in Category:EBay. Betting $100 that Josh "had a few words" with various people.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay#Stalking_scandal

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:07 pm

Checking in on the story. This week Phil Cooke, the former Santa Clara cop and eBay "senior manager of security operations for eBay's Global Security Team", got 18 months in federal prison.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... take-down/

The stalking scandal article is STILL rather short and lacking in detail. Creator and primary author, Thriley, is either an ADHD mechaperson or a well-hidden sockpuppet account, can't tell. Judging from the odd mixture of obscure-person biographies and other stuff, I could not rule out a paid editor account. There is no trace of Josh in this article history--yet. And there is still no mention of the scandal in Criticism of eBay, which continues to be openly "pruned" by Josh Gordon.

The scandal is now mentioned in the Devin Wenig bio. Wonderful Wikipedian Andy Mabbett continues to show up occasionally.

And TEN MONTHS after I posted that comment on the Criticism talkpage, Josh showed up there and posted this smug little "suggestion". Almost as if he was daring me to edit his shitopedia. Suck my ass, Josh.
Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, since wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇 14:28, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
No one wants to place money that Truthchild is either Josh Gordon, or a paid editor tasked with keeping Wenig smelling pretty? It's a decently safe bet.

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:46 am

Boston Globe interview with the Steiners

They have a GREAT chance of nailing eBooger for millions.

STILL amazes me that Wenig isn't being prosecuted.

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Mon Aug 02, 2021 4:11 pm

ericbarbour wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:07 pm
And TEN MONTHS after I posted that comment on the Criticism talkpage, Josh showed up there and posted this smug little "suggestion". Almost as if he was daring me to edit his shitopedia. Suck my ass, Josh.
Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, since wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇 14:28, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
It's a pretty cute piece of trollery, that's for sure. Shows what being a Wikipedia Administrator is all about.

On the one hand, it's typical jpg, he routinely says that nonsense to anyone who turns up to criticise Wikipedia content, so he's being a good little Wikishit. Plausible and in character.

On the other, well, let's all just accept that everyone involved surely knows that these days, with BLP policy as advanced as it is, how utterly insane it is for any Wikipedia Administrator to be advising an IP editor to just go right ahead and jump right in, in that scenario.

He's flaunting the fact he can say an insane thing like that, and nobody can touch him.

Thanks to Queen Bishonen, you can't even report that shit to ArbCom in a public fashion as an outsider (emails being easily rejected or just ignored). And if you can't report it, well, under their weird ideas of self governance, that means ArbCom isn't mandated to investigate it, to see if it is indicative of an overall pattern of questionable comments (and thus actions) by this Administrator.

The Wikipedia circle of of trust. Impervious to external forces, and exceedingly useful to all insiders.

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:42 am

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Mon Aug 02, 2021 4:11 pm
He's flaunting the fact he can say an insane thing like that, and nobody can touch him.
And he's seen this thread. And knows many other addicts have his back, should I (or anyone else) be stupid enough to fight with his little weasel ass over eBay related content.

Did you know he was a member in good standing of the OTO back in the 1970s? :jerkoff:

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Re: Josh Gordon and eBay

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:01 pm

Update a year later:
James Baugh and David Harwood got their prison sentences. Others are still awaiting sentencing. The Steiners intend to sue eBay, plus the people responsible for this--including Devin Wenig, the CEO who wanted this done, yet was never charged with a crime. He's still on the board of directors of General Motors. And his minion Steve Wymer got a job at a charity.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... over-ebay/

Boston Magazine did a long-form report last December:
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/202 ... -stalking/
By 2019, Wenig had grown infuriated by Ina’s coverage of him and of eBay on EcommerceBytes. At the same time, Wenig’s position at the top of eBay was in doubt. In January 2019, Elliott Management, an aggressive, activist hedge fund, announced that it had bought a 4 percent stake in the company and that it would seek substantial corporate changes. (Traditionally, the types of changes Elliott sought included unceremoniously replacing the CEO.) Then Elliott published an open letter to eBay’s board, outlining its plans and accusing the company of “misexecution.” Ina included the news in a January 22, 2019, blog post titled, “Activist Investor Eviscerates eBay Management.”

The pressure from Elliott—and Ina’s coverage of it—may have contributed to Wenig’s paranoia over criticism. In email chains and text messages to colleagues and subordinates, according to court files, he fumed about the Steiners’ newsletter (as well as a Twitter account run by “Fidomaster”). In April 2019, Wenig texted a link to Ina’s latest post—which reported that Wenig’s annual compensation was 152 times greater than that of the median eBay employee—to Steve Wymer, eBay’s chief communications officer. Wymer immediately wrote back, “We are going to crush this lady.” One month later, Wenig fired off a text to Wymer with a singular directive: “Take her down.”
The article about the scandal is getting a little longer and more detailed.
The original creators of the article have dropped out. It was heavily rewritten by Sherry "Whatamidoing" Snyder, a WMF employee and "deep insider". I seriously wonder if someone ordered her to rewrite that article, partly to "take the heat" off the main eBay article. As if the fools could possibly counter all the bad publicity this has already created.

And there continues to be NO mention of the scandal in Criticism of eBay, which (yes!) continues to be openly "pruned" by Josh Gordon. He left the comment I posted on the talkpage, which is now 2 years old--and still the LAST comment posted.

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