SlimVirgin dies

[Daniel Brandt]

I searched for "Sarah Gibb" and found several bylines in Saskatoon publications. Here's one that is useful, about Joni Mitchell:

https://jonimitchell.com/library/print.cfm?id=1036

It's not a byline, but it's useful. Most of the Sarah Gibb bylines I found were from 2004, also in Saskatoon publications.

"The initiative was undertaken by Sarah Gibb, an expatriate Englander who moved to the city last year and has been a longtime fan of the accomplished painter, poet, singer and songwriter."

This article about a Joni Mitchell statue tells us that she moved to Saskatoon in 2001 and was using the name "Sarah Gibb" in Saskatoon at least by December 6, 2002 (the date of this article).

[ericbarbour]

That business about Joni Mitchell makes me laugh because Joni is REALLY pissed off with her hometown by now:
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/07/2 ... 47004.html

"Saskatoon has always been an extremely bigoted community. It's like the deep south," Mitchell said in an interview published by the Star Phoenix Wednesday.

And THAT 2013 report can't be found on the Star Phoenix website now.

Lemme guess, it's the kind of place anyone with brains, talent or ambition leaves behind. In 2018 two miserable plaques were finally installed. And Mitchell herself didn't show up. She obviously has a lot of fans there. Not including the city government?
https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-n ... n-together

Now, back to the virgin.....

This article about a Joni Mitchell statue tells us that she moved to Saskatoon in 2001 and was using the name "Sarah Gibb" in Saskatoon at least by December 6, 2002 (the date of this article).

But as you said in 2007.....

9. Linda Mack next shows up in Canada in 2002, registering the domain slimvirgin.com, using the name S. McEwan and a PO box in Swalwell, Alberta, Canada.

Dollar sez she was living in Saskatoon and ran a mail drop in Swalwell, 500 km away, "just for the giggles". Looneytoon.

Slimvirgin.com is still a parked empty domain. The DNS registration is a bizarre mess. Why does a blank domain need so many encryption keys? Most functioning websites have maybe one or two.

[Daniel Brandt]

Maybe the slimvirgin.com domain was set up by a handler and Slim didn't approve. So she buried it under red tape. Or maybe she got a little freaked out that everyone seemed to be stalking her. I tried to find out by using a pseudonym and a new Gmail account:

To: slimvirgin@gmail.com
Date: Oct. 23, 2005

Would you be interested in selling the slimvirgin.com domain? I think it's a cool name.

Thank you,
Ed McKay

__________________________

Date: Oct. 23, 2005

Hi Edward,

There's a slimvirgin.com? I can only imagine. Sorry, it's not owned by me.

Cheers,
Sarah

__________________________

10.45.64.70.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer S0106001124dba11e.ss.shawcable.net.

User=SlimVirgin

The important point is that 70.64.45.10 is listed here as related to SlimVirgin in 2005-2006.

The 70.64.45.10 is the Calgary-area IP address I decided was hers back in October. This same address last accessed the wikipedia-watch.org home page on Feb. 18. The user agent is Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

That's her -- I saw a post she made on a Wikipedia traffic monitoring site where she mentioned that she used a Mac with Firefox.

[Daniel Brandt]

This is the most thorough collection of links to information about Wikipedia's dark side that I have ever come across. It will take days to read it all:

https://swprs.org/wikipedia-disinformation-operation/

[ericbarbour]

https://swprs.org/wikipedia-disinformation-operation/

I've considered making a sticky thread listing things like this. Anyone willing to help me assemble an itemized list?

And oh btw, Wikipedians do not like the SWPRS website.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Policy_Research

The Swiss Policy Research site has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories including claims that QAnon was a psyop of the FBI.[4] and theories relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.[2][5] German public broadcaster Tagesschau calls SPR a propaganda tool.[6]

As you might expect, a large chunk of it was written by two IP addresses, both obviously belonging to someone in Dallas....

[Cla68]

I may have been wrong in my conjecture that SV was using speed to enable her editing for 24-hours straight. If she had a serious medical condition that inhibited her breathing, she may have stayed up that long because her breathing problem kept her from being able to sleep well, or perhaps her medication kept her awake. Alternatively, if her husband Gibb was a journalist, he may have been able to share her account and sound (read) just like her in his editing and behavioral characteristics. It would be interesting to find out how they met. I would guess after she divorced the Mack guy that she met Gibb in Europe and acquiesced to his offer to come to the thriving metropolis of Saskatoon and write for his newspaper. As to why they had a location identifier to Swalwell, Alberta, it's probably something anodyne such as where Mr. Gibb's parents lived or something such and they spent some time there.

One interesting idea comes up from if she was sharing her account with her husband. Is the person behind the SV account who was so nasty to me (especially during my RfA) and to others really her, or was it her husband? Perhaps she's getting a bad rap. I need to say something here, however. I spent 10 years in the military and encountered some serious martinets and charlatans during that time of service. Yet, I've never had anyone act as vindictive and downright mean to me and others as the SV account did during that 2006-2008 timeframe. Not even close.

BTW, I know there has been some conjecture over the nature of her alleged intelligence work. If she traveled around Europe working as a private English teacher after destroying her journalism career in the UK, she likely did have some access to industrial and diplomatic intelligence as she probably would have secured some jobs working for business executives or diplomats, especially with her above-average looks, who needed their families to get some private English instruction. Most likely she was not a civil service employee for MI5 or MI6, instead either working for a contractor (like Snowden for the NSA) or doing freelance. Whenever she had some information to share, it would be simple for her to contact the British embassy in whatever country she was in and go there for a debrief and to collect some pocket cash (a few hundred dollars). There are thousands of freelance intelligence collectors who do this kind of thing around the world and it's no big deal at all. Very UN-cloak-and-dagger, although one of the reasons they often do so is because it makes them feel like they're acting in a movie. Most real, full time secret agents never talk about what they do, unlike SV, because true professionals don't have a need to seek status in that way. Plus, they would receive censure from their colleagues and perhaps adverse legal action.

As an aside, she and her husband don't appear to have had a large social circle, based on the number of comments on her obituary.

[Daniel Brandt]

Cla68 said:
"As an aside, she and her husband don't appear to have had a large social circle, based on the number of comments on her obituary."

That's an understatement. Her husband was editor or chief editor for 17 years at the StarPhoenix newspaper in Saskatoon. Apparently they were married in 2001, but I cannot find anything at all about the wedding. And the assumption that "Mack" was her name from a previous marriage means that there should be some information about her ex-husband of the same surname. But I haven't seen any.

Sarah even wrote a fair number of feature articles around 2004, plus or minus a few years, for the StarPhoenix.

All considered, the two, Steve and Sarah Gibb, are very talented when it comes to staying out of Google search. Maybe they had coaching about how to do this. Or at a minimum, Sarah's obituary had prior approval from the spooks.

[Cla68]

Cla68 said:
"As an aside, she and her husband don't appear to have had a large social circle, based on the number of comments on her obituary."

That's an understatement. Her husband was editor or chief editor for 17 years at the StarPhoenix newspaper in Saskatoon. Apparently they were married in 2001, but I cannot find anything at all about the wedding. And the assumption that "Mack" was her name from a previous marriage means that there should be some information about her ex-husband of the same surname. But I haven't seen any.

Sarah even wrote a fair number of feature articles around 2004, plus or minus a few years, for the StarPhoenix.

All considered, the two, Steve and Sarah Gibb, are very talented when it comes to staying out of Google search. Maybe they had coaching about how to do this. Or at a minimum, Sarah's obituary had prior approval from the spooks.

If they bought a house, the purchase should be public record. That's the way it is in the US and one of the easiest ways to find someone. Private detectives use it all the time. Is it the same in Canada? Perhaps local governments shield their house purchase records from Google search spiders, but you should still be able to go to the individual websites and search. If she convalesced in that public hospital in central Saskatoon, she and her husband's house was likely nearby.

As to why she and her husband had such a small social circle, I really don't know. Most artist types such as Mr. Gibbs cultivate a large social circle, in my experience, because they need one to make money from their art. Also, one reason people go into journalism and the arts is often because they like the social aspect of it, very much enjoying the bon vivant and lounge lifestyle. I can understand SV not being able to do that because of her illness, but why wasn't her husband out doing things? Was he fully occupied taking care of her? Or, was he busy helping her edit Wikipedia with the same account?

As a further aside, although I had my run-ins with various cabals in Wikipedia over the years, including the IDCab, the global warming fanatics, the alternative medicine haters and Big Pharma proponents, Mathsci, Gary Weiss, etc none of my conflicts even approached the level of intensity that I had with SV. Before she torpedoed by RfA, I was getting about one article a month passed for Featured Article (FA) on the Pacific War. I had planned on doing so indefinitely, and had purchased several thousand dollars worth of books, including some that were out-of-print and/or very rare. The brouhaha with her basically stopped me in my tracks. If not for her, I probably would now have brought at least 100 more articles on the Pacific War and related topics to FA-level and Wikipedia would be considered the pre-eminent source for information on WWII, even higher than scholarly books in libraries. I mention this to emphasize how, at least in my case, her behavior did irreparable damage to "the project."

[ericbarbour]

If they bought a house, the purchase should be public record. That's the way it is in the US and one of the easiest ways to find someone. Private detectives use it all the time. Is it the same in Canada? Perhaps local governments shield their house purchase records from Google search spiders, but you should still be able to go to the individual websites and search. If she convalesced in that public hospital in central Saskatoon, she and her husband's house was likely nearby.

Canada has real estate laws roughly similar to the US. Local government always has a website where property can be searched by owner name, lot number, address, etc. Such things are "public records". This is the one for Saskatchewan--you need to create an account to use it.
https://www.isc.ca/LandTitles/FindTitle ... earch.aspx

As to why she and her husband had such a small social circle, I really don't know. Most artist types such as Mr. Gibbs cultivate a large social circle, in my experience, because they need one to make money from their art. Also, one reason people go into journalism and the arts is often because they like the social aspect of it, very much enjoying the bon vivant and lounge lifestyle. I can understand SV not being able to do that because of her illness, but why wasn't her husband out doing things? Was he fully occupied taking care of her? Or, was he busy helping her edit Wikipedia with the same account?

good questions, and I expect to get no answers

As a further aside, although I had my run-ins with various cabals in Wikipedia over the years, including the IDCab, the global warming fanatics, the alternative medicine haters and Big Pharma proponents, Mathsci, Gary Weiss, etc none of my conflicts even approached the level of intensity that I had with SV. Before she torpedoed by RfA, I was getting about one article a month passed for Featured Article (FA) on the Pacific War. I had planned on doing so indefinitely, and had purchased several thousand dollars worth of books, including some that were out-of-print and/or very rare. The brouhaha with her basically stopped me in my tracks. If not for her, I probably would now have brought at least 100 more articles on the Pacific War and related topics to FA-level and Wikipedia would be considered the pre-eminent source for information on WWII, even higher than scholarly books in libraries. I mention this to emphasize how, at least in my case, her behavior did irreparable damage to "the project."

This being FAR from the only harm an insider did to their encyclopedia, by abusing a content writer for petty/no reasons. It was routine. It remains routine--this very forum continues to routinely document bullshit tricks pulled by people like David Gerard and Guy Chapman. And the Wikianals CONTINUE to deny it happens.

[Daniel Brandt]

I'm in San Antonio and I rent an apartment. I'm not in the phone book. This is increasingly true for everyone, as they abandon their overpriced AT&T twisted-pair land lines in favor of smart phones.

But I have a couple of friends that own property in San Antonio, and the county property records are on the web. Usually all you need is the full name. If it's a common name, you need a street address for the property. Maybe a business name will work, if the person owns a business.

We might be able to find Steve Gibb's address this way. A query to that newspaper where he worked for 17 years might do the trick -- after all, reporters do this sort of stuff all the time and they'd hardly be offended by a query. What would surprise me is if the newspaper responded that they don't give out such information.

I think we should ask Steve about Slim's possible intelligence connections. I'm not in the mood right now, but if nothing happens within the next two months, I might get into the mood.