More Suppressed Edits

[Ognistysztorm]

All the stories that you found regarding the down sides of Wikipedia, including this one should be corralled into one giant feature story that will leave the world a lasting reminder that Wikipedia is totally corrupt. Past that point Eric will finally have a chance to publish the book as wanted.

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 tools on Wikipedia to trace ip addresses, dox people's identities then harass them in real life. The Oberranks clusterf**k 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.

Wow, I can imagine that it is going to be mindblowing for everyone on the internet had the Daily Beast didn't back down, perhaps to a point which will trigger pressures to force authorities (particularly data regulatory) to step in. Here's wondering if a harassment scandal where a NY-based celebrity's Wikipedia article was deleted by editors bribed by a stalker, can be combined into the story which will put it past the libel proof doctrine since the celebrity has robust proofs of how it happened. By then the main point of that will become something along the lines of "How Wikipedia endangers women's privacy and security".

We would have been happy if the Daily Beast didn't back down and you could interview us for our comments to all that.

[Ognistysztorm]

Jennsaurus, your post had gained some attention on Reddit such as the women subreddit. Some people are puzzled as to what laws are being violated in the US if you didn't go and seek out comments from NARA and Wikimedia before publication. Some even think that you should take the hero's way by waiving the royalties and let it be freely published everywhere. Can you explain more on why it's a violation of US law to not seek out comments before publishing the story?

[Jennsaurus]

Some people are puzzled as to what laws are being violated in the US if you didn't go and seek out comments from NARA and Wikimedia before publication.

Pretty straight forward libel laws in US publishing code. If you publish a news story about a person or entity, you have to go to them for comment, otherwise they can sue you for libel. As I said in my OP, when we did that for this story, NARA refused to comment and the Wikipedia Foundation threatened to quash the story with a lawsuit. BTW, the ship is not sunk on this. A rewire will probably clear up the libel fears with Daily Beast but I won't have to do it until I get back from Poland at the end of the year.

[Ognistysztorm]

Some people are puzzled as to what laws are being violated in the US if you didn't go and seek out comments from NARA and Wikimedia before publication.

Pretty straight forward libel laws in US publishing code. If you publish a news story about a person or entity, you have to go to them for comment, otherwise they can sue you for libel. As I said in my OP, when we did that for this story, NARA refused to comment and the Wikipedia Foundation threatened to quash the story with a lawsuit. BTW, the ship is not sunk on this. A rewire will probably clear up the libel fears with Daily Beast but I won't have to do it until I get back from Poland at the end of the year.

Thanks. Someone on Wikipediocracy had claimed the following as a response to a thread that vividly mentioned your story:

I just asked a former colleague who is currently there -- I had long owed him a phone call anyway -- who would have very likely been aware of such a piece if it existed, and he said that he never even heard of such a thing, and even if such a thing existed, there's "no fucking way we'd sit on that for six months." He only spoke to his personal knowledge; it's not like he had time to check with anyone else since it was like 20 minutes ago.

Now, if such a piece existed, they'd probably go well above and beyond the usual norm of asking parties for comment, given the shakiness of the source and the extent of the claims.

Are there any more comfortable ways that you can rebutt the hastily made-up bullcraps designed to gaslight people from supporting the ultimate publication of your stories? This is the best time to release some comfortable breadcrumbs so to establish the credibility of the stories before publication.

[Ognistysztorm]

Some people are puzzled as to what laws are being violated in the US if you didn't go and seek out comments from NARA and Wikimedia before publication.

Pretty straight forward libel laws in US publishing code. If you publish a news story about a person or entity, you have to go to them for comment, otherwise they can sue you for libel. As I said in my OP, when we did that for this story, NARA refused to comment and the Wikipedia Foundation threatened to quash the story with a lawsuit. BTW, the ship is not sunk on this. A rewire will probably clear up the libel fears with Daily Beast but I won't have to do it until I get back from Poland at the end of the year.

Good news and bad news.

With the full-incursion of Israel by Hamas militants people are extremely likely to be more sensitive against antisemitism once again. Assuming that the Holocaust distortions aren't fixed by now, such charges wouldn't really bode well for Wikipedia especially if combined with other scandals.

That being said, Daily Beast has recently got into a little bit of kerfuffle when a white supremacist threaten to sue it for libel if they didn't make some corrections, which was reluctantly carried out eventually. The hurdles for the Wikipedia stories thus might be more harder than expected and so I have reached out and contacted Shell critic John Donovan in hopes of finding more publications who could publish these, as a backup plan if Daily Beast still fails to do that.

[Jennsaurus]

Good news and bad news.

With the full-incursion of Israel by Hamas militants people are extremely likely to be more sensitive against antisemitism once again. Assuming that the Holocaust distortions aren't fixed by now, such charges wouldn't really bode well for Wikipedia especially if combined with other scandals.

The war in Israel certainly has changed my life a bit. I am stationed in Poland these days but have asked to go cover the fighting. As a Jew myself, I have a personal interest in this since I have family in Haifa and used to do summer courses in Jerusalem. Nasty business going on right now, that's for sure.

I gave Daily Beast my story, I'm not sure if they will run it or not. You have to remember the Oberranks case is something of old news, as it happened five years ago in 2018. Oscroft 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 (Hughes) who he had convinced himself was Oberranks.

Hughes probably did operate that account about fifteen years ago from what I can tell, but was one of several people who did. Oscroft 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 Oberranks account was clearly being operated by more than one person. It was actually Goodman (DGG) 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 Oscroft appeared to be blackmail, or some kind of weird plan where he was going to fly to the United States and confront Hughes 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 s**t was going down, Hughes didn't even work at the National Archives anymore.

Also, gotta remember, Oberraks/Hughes 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 CommanderWaterford, who some on Wikipedia actually tried to bankrupt as well as a user named Eustress who apparently there was some type of plan to kidnap and rape. Not to mention Henrettia Gonzalez, 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.

[Bbb23sucks]

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

Kind of off-topic. But people have been killed by Wikipedia. Not directly, but by encouraged suicide. Shows how toxic the site really is.

[Ognistysztorm]

Good news and bad news.

With the full-incursion of Israel by Hamas militants people are extremely likely to be more sensitive against antisemitism once again. Assuming that the Holocaust distortions aren't fixed by now, such charges wouldn't really bode well for Wikipedia especially if combined with other scandals.

The war in Israel certainly has changed my life a bit. I am stationed in Poland these days but have asked to go cover the fighting. As a Jew myself, I have a personal interest in this since I have family in Haifa and used to do summer courses in Jerusalem. Nasty business going on right now, that's for sure.

I gave Daily Beast my story, I'm not sure if they will run it or not. You have to remember the Oberranks case is something of old news, as it happened five years ago in 2018. Oscroft 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 (Hughes) who he had convinced himself was Oberranks.

Hughes probably did operate that account about fifteen years ago from what I can tell, but was one of several people who did. Oscroft 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 Oberranks account was clearly being operated by more than one person. It was actually Goodman (DGG) 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 Oscroft appeared to be blackmail, or some kind of weird plan where he was going to fly to the United States and confront Hughes 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 s**t was going down, Hughes didn't even work at the National Archives anymore.

Also, gotta remember, Oberraks/Hughes 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 CommanderWaterford, who some on Wikipedia actually tried to bankrupt as well as a user named Eustress who apparently there was some type of plan to kidnap and rape. Not to mention Henrettia Gonzalez, 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.

In the aftermath of the horrific 9/11 style attacks against Israel the society will certainly be more sensitive against antisemitism in general. If the Daily Beast couldn't run it, you might want to try your luck on Israeli publications. The best way to honor the victims is to call out and nip the buds of antisemitism in every turn.

[ericbarbour]

I gave Daily Beast my story, I'm not sure if they will run it or not. You have to remember the Oberranks case is something of old news, as it happened five years ago in 2018. Oscroft 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 (Hughes) who he had convinced himself was Oberranks.

Ha ha, good.

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.

Happens routinely. Cults hate being challenged. Let's not forget the stalking of MoiraMoira--by two fellow nl-WP administrators. One of whom was a WMF steward. You rarely hear about it because it happened on Meta and Commons, and the real bullshit was argued about on IRC. Philippe Beaudette wanted it all settled and covered up quickly. (Oh, the things I could tell you about Beaudette.)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Comm ... minship%29
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Request ... d_JurgenNL

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

The vast majority of them are such snivelling little nerdy cowards, the worst they would do is to dox someone. It's quite possible there have been murders over WP editwars--always covered up. They have a very mafia-like mindset. We will probably never know more.

As I keep saying, YOU are not supposed to dox THEM, but THEY can dox you all day long if it helps to maintain their sick little paranoiac culture. And whatever miserable dregs of power the insiders have over it. People like David Gerard and Guy Chapman have doxed others plenty of times, sometimes accurately and sometimes wrongly. SPI "investigations" frequently lead to real identities being tied to WP accounts. They eventually realized that publishing that on a WMF server might be a "problem" so they commonly keep it quiet in recent years.

[Bbb23sucks]

In the aftermath of the horrific 9/11 style attacks against Israel the society will certainly be more sensitive against antisemitism in general. If the Daily Beast couldn't run it, you might want to try your luck on Israeli publications. The best way to honor the victims is to call out and nip the buds of antisemitism in every turn.

What about the Nazi-level retaliation that Israel has been doing?