How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

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How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:58 pm

If there is serious interest, I could post a few tutorial items on how to develop personal dossiers on usually-secretive-as-hell Wikipedia insiders. Having done it dozens of times myself, and learned much from earlier Wikipedia critics like Daniel Brandt, this might be a good place and time to share the not-very-secret "secrets" of outing idiotic wiki nerds who do not wish to be outed. (This is stuff you cannot discuss openly on Wikipediocracy anymore.)

None of this is especially clever or obscure. Googling personal details of Wiki-goobers can be most rewarding; it's so rewarding that I've seen them frantically go to various website sysops and beg them to remove old pages that talk about their personal lives. (Daniel "Wizardman" Tylicki was a perfect example of this nonsense.) Yet they themselves have done similar things in order to ruin people they were fighting with on wiki: today I was reminded of Georgewilliamherbert and Will Beback trying to silence/humiliate/whatever Jayen466 back in 2009. So these techniques are well known. Wikipedians, despite hating it when someone doxes them, have no problem with doing it themselves. The little hypocrites.

Indicate your opinion below. If sufficient interest is posted, we can make this a "sticky" topic. Others are welcome to share their techniques here.

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by Daniel Brandt » Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:33 pm

Go for it!

Here's some stuff from 8 years ago. Most of these people have retired from the Wikipedia playpen, but that's no reason not to try!

https://archive.is/Ku5u7

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by SkepticalHistorian » Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:55 pm

Daniel Brandt wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:33 pm
Go for it!

Here's some stuff from 8 years ago. Most of these people have retired from the Wikipedia playpen, but that's no reason not to try!

https://archive.is/Ku5u7
That’s an interesting website. Had an article copied from Wikipedia-Watch from about SarahSV: Spies in Wikipedia, From Computerra magazine, Author: Kiwi Bird, Published on 26 September 2007, Translated from Russian https://archive.is/2009.11.25-064415/ht ... ssmag.html

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Jul 08, 2021 3:15 am

No one else has a comment or opinion?

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:38 am

You should probably say something about how Wikipedia handles renames and vanishing, and thus how to track down personal information that Wikipedia editors unwisely exposed before they realised Wikipedia really isn't safe.

And for the benefit of anyone who still thinks that panty sniffing wierdo and Wikipediocracy Moderator Tarantino is a force to be reckoned with, rather than just a contemptible digital sex pest, maybe a general reminder that if all you can ever find out about a Wikipedia editor is their vague location and general interests, then you're either not really very good at this doxxing lark, or you have wasted a lot of time trying to doxx someone who is undoxxable (which is what someone who is not very good at this doxxing lark, would do).

It is simply the nature of the beast that over time, most Wikipedia editors will have revealed at least their general location and broad interests through their general edit history. Smart people know that, and would reveal nothing more, from day one of their Wikipedia journey.

It has always been a supreme irony that those who genuinely approach Wikipedia as if it were an altruistic exercise in building an encyclopedia, rather than a selfish pursuit where unemployable wankers distract themselves from the diminishing sands of time of their worthless lives, would be undoxxable by default.

For what they would probably teach you in No Original Research / Neutral Point of View Club, were there to be such a thing (and theoretically, the collective of elite content creators of Wikipedia are that thing), is that the best way to adhere to the guiding principles of NORNPOV, is to only edit subjects that you have no connection to at all. As in, not even stuff you are vaguely interested in or geographically connected to.

If you put stuff like this in any guide, then you're bound to depress a few people who previously thought they were Super Wikipedians, and they'll get sloppy and make a mistake, thereby making it essier to out them.

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Jul 08, 2021 9:08 pm

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:38 am
And for the benefit of anyone who still thinks that panty sniffing wierdo and Wikipediocracy Moderator Tarantino is a force to be reckoned with, rather than just a contemptible digital sex pest, maybe a general reminder that if all you can ever find out about a Wikipedia editor is their vague location and general interests, then you're either not really very good at this doxxing lark, or you have wasted a lot of time trying to doxx someone who is undoxxable (which is what someone who is not very good at this doxxing lark, would do).
Heh. As I said years ago: NO ONE has any idea of "Tarantino"'s real identity. When Wikipediocracy started up all he would admit was living in Tennessee and always using TOR to connect to the internet. (He "doesn't trust VPNs". THAT is PARANOIA.) He was quite good at the doxing business although very judgmental of those who did the same. And in 2015 he managed to talk that consummate sucker Wee Billy Burns into dumping many of WPO's original moderators.

And a couple years after that, who ended up being the ONLY moderator? Take a wild guess
Screenshot_2021-07-08 (2) Wikipediocracy - The team.png
Screenshot_2021-07-08 (2) Wikipediocracy - The team.png (19.02 KiB) Viewed 6368 times
And since then, WPO's "unofficial rule" has opposed "doxing" anyone for any reason. Thus did they attract a number of Wikipedia admins and arbitrators to hang around and give their useless and predictable "opinions" about WP operations.

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by Daniel Brandt » Fri Jul 09, 2021 2:51 pm

This is a comment about doxing in the U.S., and how it's more difficult these days.

AT&T had a near-monopoly on telephone service in the U.S. until approximately 2010, give or take five years. That's because nearly all U.S. households, including apartments, had the old twisted-pair installed already, even if the service was not connected. This became less of a monopoly when smart phones took over in the U.S.

Now the twisted-pair is obsolete. When that went out the window, so did the old-style "telephone book" that listed everyone with a twisted-pair landline. When you moved to a new apartment or home, you called AT&T and got a new telephone number. Your name and address went into what they called a "telephone book", which had white pages (residential) and yellow pages (business). You could ask AT&T, when you first signed up, to keep your address out of the white pages, and just list your name and telephone number. That was free. But obviously, if you forgot to do this when you first signed up, you lose out. That's because the telephone book was a fat volume and everyone had one, and once published and distributed you cannot change anything.

If you wanted to go further when you first signed up with AT&T, and insisted on getting totally delisted -- name AND address AND telephone number -- it cost you extra. I think this was a monthly charge that was added onto your phone bill; I don't know because I never tried it.

Since the smart phone arrived, and also since cable was increasingly available for both apartments and houses, AT&T started losing its monopoly. It took a while, but eventually the old telephone book became extinct. AT&T is not doing cable, as far as I know, and they are just now getting into fiber, but they are way behind Google's fiber. Apartments are typically wired for cable by now, but not for fiber.

The bottom line is that I could do better doxing back then because there were a couple of websites that seemed to offer, for free, the name and street address (white pages) for the entire U.S. Today these sites are gone, because nearly everyone is using smart phones or cable. Furthermore, the big push for SSL connections came shortly after the 2013 revelations from Edward Snowden, which showed that the NSA had tapped into the major Internet companies (see the PRISM graphic at the bottom of http://www.crimeflare.org:82/honeypot.html ). The white pages are a relic these days. AT&T will no longer install the old-style twisted-pair landline for a new account. They have to keep it going to some extent (for doctor's offices and such), but they won't take orders for new accounts even if a twisted pair is already sitting there unused.

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by ericbarbour » Fri Jul 09, 2021 6:08 pm

Daniel Brandt wrote:
Fri Jul 09, 2021 2:51 pm
AT&T had a near-monopoly on telephone service in the U.S. until approximately 2010, give or take five years. That's because nearly all U.S. households, including apartments, had the old twisted-pair installed already, even if the service was not connected. This became less of a monopoly when smart phones took over in the U.S.
And remember that was thirty years AFTER AT&T was broken up by consent decree in 1982. It was chopped up into "regional Bell companies" that were theoretically semi-autonomous. In return AT&T were allowed to get into the computer and cable-tv businesses, which had been denied to them before. (Huge flop.) They started an early cellular system of their own, which also flopped.

But during the Reagan-Bush years AT&T and the "baby Bells" began to pull strings at the FCC and Dept. of Commerce to allow them to re-merge. That accelerated under Clinton ("a Democrat" ha ha) and the 1996 Telecom Act. All this was before cellphone OR broadband internet service became really popular. Then SBC, one of the "baby Bells", grew large enough to buy the shreds of AT&T in 2005. Dubya Bush's minions apparently said it was a-ok to start ignoring antitrust laws. And THAT process continued under Obama and Trump....and blah blah blah ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... n_services

Now wired telephone service is dying out. Most people keep their landlines mostly to get DSL internet, which is ALSO slowly dying out. Every idiot cool-kid-wannabe in America, and increasingly around the world, is carrying an idiotPhone and using social media apps to "do internet". Tiktok, owned by a Chinese corporation and the dumbest social system I've ever seen, is slowly killing off Instagram and Twitter and Youtube. AT&T has been snapping up wireless companies. Today the cellular system, once a crazy patchwork of US companies, is dominated by three monsters: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Remember that AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile and failed. That was a little too "monopolistic" for the feds. AT&T bought DirecTV and that was also a giant turd. Somehow they buy one business after another and crash them, and still keep growing.

Now only the NSA reliably knows who owns an IP address or a phone number. (This will tell you what the NSA is really like.) Despite internet companies trying to "lock" IP addresses to a single subscriber, probably because the Feds wanted it, it's easier than ever to hide your identity online. The only way doxing can work is because of the stupidity of internet users--and goddamn, most of them are really quite stupid. Including Wikipedia grinders.

More later.

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by SkepticalHistorian » Sat Jul 10, 2021 1:53 am

Why do Wikipedians like to use fake names, what are they hiding? I don’t use a fake name there.

I use fake name here because I was recently blocked by some knee-jerk bigots and plan to appeal the block soon.

In my legal business I have to “skip trace” (find) people, one of my favorite websites for free searching is/was fastpeoplesearch.com these sites change format often so I’m always looking for better sites.

Therefore, if the Administrators of this website know my email address, please don’t doxx me to the haters/ bigots. :mrgreen:

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Re: How to "dox" Wikipedia insiders/fanatics

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Jul 10, 2021 4:41 am

No one will dox you. But I will show you how to dox yourself.....or anyone hiding behind a stupid pseudonym.

FIRST:

Got a problem with an anonymous Wiki-nerd? Want to know who you're fighting with? I know this is obvious, but it still works in many cases. Take his/her/whatever's stupid WP username and Google it. If it leads to a forum, Reddit, Steam, Deviant Art, or other account on any other website, look into its activities there closely. I, Brandt, Tarantino and a few others have managed to figure out the real identities of numerous WP admins and other insiders in this manner.

Sometimes they show up and edit, or learn to patrol vandalism (very common now), under a bare IP address or another username. In the next post I will cover that.

A very, very long time ago on Wikipedia Review, I easily "outed" a rather stupid WP admin named "Coredesat" just by googling his username. Even found a photo of him on a forum. When he realized his cover was blown, he resigned his adminship and showed up on WR to "complain" or "explain" or whatever he was trying to do. Selina later deleted the Coredesat thread, but left this secondary thread instead. ("One" on WR was Wikipedia admin Alex "Majorly" Newman, the very admin who was bleating on wiki that I "deserved" to be "punished". Majorly had recently been desysopped for being a rude jerk; in 2013 he quit Wikipedia in disgust.)

As was said there: Wikipedia is an MMORPG first and foremost. Secondary function is a cultish "social media" for Wikipedia stans. The "encyclopedia" is relatively low priority, just a pheromone to attract the nut case types.

Majorly brings up the next trick, which only works with longtime insiders who have been on Wikimedia email listservs for many years.

SECOND:

Go into the mailing list archives and search for your abuser's WP username. An ASTOUNDING number of early insiders shared their real identities on the old wikipedia-l, or the current WikiEN-l/foundation-l or other major list. All the lists are linked in this article. Be selective; like the hundreds of IRC channels Wikimedia controls, most of the mailing lists are either dead or nearly so. It is a tedious process but sometimes can yield precious info. And it will show you what those insiders REALLY think of the people they block, ban and revert every day. Note that this will probably not work with the more recent generation of deletionist/patroller types; they do their sucking-up on IRC or elsewhere.

One name you will see on most important mailing lists, over and over, is Gerard Meijssen. He was a very early Wikipedia fanatic who trolls mailing lists for anyone criticizing the "Wikipedia Way" or saying anything of a less-than-loving nature about the WMF or Jimbo Wales. But he doesn't actually do very much of importance on any Wikimedia project I know of. One of the "Great Project"s most enduring and annoying suckers.

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