Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

[Abd]

Wow! The Official Video of Lomax v. WMF. Thanks! I'm going to grab the words and probably blog that video as well. Eye candy. Bloggers love eye candy.

[Graaf Statler]

But, in reality, they live forever, because truth lives forever, whereas lies and illusion pass away.

I think THAT is the most scaring point for me. Because, what is left if lies and illusions pass away? What is left? What will happen if the true becomes naked of WMF and Wikipedia?

[CrowsNest]

In a world where Wikipedia becomes truth, we become Jedi Masters.

Kinda looking forward to it really.

[CrowsNest]

Abd, have you noticed the cacophony of Wikipedia Administrators demanding an explanation from the WMF as to why they have banned Fram for a year, disabling email and locking him out of his en.wiki account, a sanction that is "final and non-negotiable."? Evidently the WMF telling them what may have been the reason, isn't cutting it for them.

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... 9938#p9938

Naturally if the WMF dares to give them a single atom by way of explanation, I will record it here.

Quite why they are so desperate to know right now, when Fram still has the ability to tell them via another WMF website if he can be bothered, is a mystery. Do they think Fram would lie to them? Clearly not.

Oh to have the privileges of status, eh? Who knew rank, service and record alters your "fundamental human rights" and indeed your threat level to other users, in the eyes of the WMF? Another thing for Jones Day to account for.

[Graaf Statler]

Hey Crow,

The reason people are going to bat for Fram and not Abd is a combination of things that you folks at sucks just can't grok.
Competence and personal relationships.

I know you can look those two things up, but they appear to make as much sense to you guys as infrared to yappy dogs.

Service for you, Vig. And he Crow, be careful you are not by physician Vigtroll diagnosed with some deep hidden sexual complex because you have brought Star Wars up here.

[CrowsNest]

I'll put my knowledge of Fram's current situation, who would support him and why, up against Vigilant's any day. Suffice to say, anyone who thinks this is about Visual Editor at al, needs to spend less time opening their mouth and more time reading the wiki runes.

[Abd]

But, in reality, they live forever, because truth lives forever, whereas lies and illusion pass away.

I think THAT is the most scaring point for me. Because, what is left if lies and illusions pass away? What is left? What will happen if the true becomes naked of WMF and Wikipedia?

When we trust her, she removes her veils, and naked, her beauty is such that our individual identities disappear, overwhelmed.

Yes, most of us are afraid of that, but we can choose to trust, and if we do, miracles happen.

WMF and Wikipedia? You won't even be able to see them, they are so insignificant. But one step at a time. We are here, in this realm, and those imagination appear to us. We create our responses, and if we trust reality, what is unreal will vanish.

It has always been this way, and will always be this way, until we return to the origin.

[CrowsNest]

Further to last, it appears Fram was given multiple warnings of impending office action if he didn't do X,Y or Z per the T O U, and he did get told what the reasons for this ban were when it finally happened, and in quite some detail.

It has even been explained to him that the reason the ban, when it finally came, was done without further warnings and without any chance of appeal, is because it was believed he had been given all the chances he deserved, and this was an appropriate escalation (presumably on a path to a full Global Ban if he is not a changed man in twelve months time).

While there are notable differences in your cases (if we are to believe there is no off-site component in Fram's case), there is still nonetheless pretty clear daylight between the due process and transparency evidently afforded Fram by the WMF for violations they have apparently uncovered as part of their own independent investigations which form the basis of the ban, and how you were treated.

You will note too, there appears to be no permanent public notice board where a list of users banned by the WMF for these lesser terms, even though apparently Fram is the third to receive one.

Worth noting also is that Fram is being allowed to use his WMF granted libery to continue to contribute to other projects, as a means to both explain to others his side of the story, vehemently object to the ban on both process and evidentiary grounds (to the point of alleging corruption), assert his apparent right to be tried by a jury of his peers and deny the WMF has jurisdiction, and even formenting rebellion against those who would so cruely cut down our noble brother.....

Any non-violent action taken by enwiki individuals or groups against this WMF ban has my support.

Harassment and even bullying can easily be non-violent. Legal action certainly is.

If this ban was put in pace to prevent the "counterproductive escalations" and other consequences of the abuse and hostile and aggressive acts by Fram on members of the English Wikipedia community and Foundation Staff, it would appear to have failed very quickly, in large part due to the WMF failing to properly manage such things. Fram has claimed the WMF put him under an interaction ban with a user he had been doing WMF-ban-worthy stuff to, and yet depending on the terms, he would appear to have even broken that in the manner of his responses to a community eagerly demanding to hear his side of the story.

For these acts of open defiance, if his ban is not immediately upgraded to a "Temporary Foundation global ban", again, questions have to be asked about the WMF's methodology and indeed motives.

This frankly all needs to be explained by someone at the WMF, and ideally under oath. I will continue to push for this as a general principle, even if lesser critics seem happy with the idea it is only the likes of Fram who are afforded such due process, transparency and indeed liberty.

HTD.

[Abd]

There are indeed some major differences between my ban -- and others -- and that of Fram. My ban was not of an active Wikipedia user, so interest by Wikipedians would be lower. I was also active on Commons and meta but was not a major user such that it would likely attract much notice. The only notice I have seen other than some garbage from the Smith brothers has been on Wikiversity, where it was treated as something done that nobody had any power or say over.

Wikiversity was a wiki with a history of supporting resistance to "Wikipedia Disease." A long time user did tell me that seeing that cold fusion deletion discussion made him feel sick. But nobody even said "boo," except Marshallsumter did two things:

When Umbricht unlaterally banned all fringe science from Wikiversity (imagine a Wikipedia admin doing that on Wikipedia!), Marshall created a page "Fringe science". Marshall has a strong sense of humor. This was about the science of fringes, of special interest to him as an astronomer. Umbricht tagged it for deletion. They argued back and forth a bit, so I went in and implemented an obvious consensus, making the deletion moot. And Umbricht blocked me for removing the deletion tag, when process allows any user to do that and then a discussion on WV:RFD would be necessary.

This was preposterous besides being a recusal failure, blocking me for removing a tag he had added.

I put up an umblock template and Dave Brauschweig wrote that he was going to unblock because my edit could be seen as made in good faith (understatement) but that Umbricht had reblocked me indef. I put up another unblock template and Umbrecht removed it. Anyone who knows standard wiki process would know how abusive that all was.

Malice. Obvious.

Marshall created a discussion on the Colloquium stating his intention to unblock me unless there was consensus otherwise. No consensus otherwise appeared, but there was not much participation. Had there been more, there would have been two likely outcomes. I was pretty popular on Wikiversity and there would have been more explicit support for me, but I was attempting to keep disruption to a minimum (and my first priority was rescuing massive content that had been deleted -- Unbrecht also, totally out-of-process, deleted over a hundred of my user space pages, which held a lot of Wikiversity history). I did not ask my supporters to make a fuss, there was a systemic problem that needed to be addressed first, or it could all turn out very badly.

(I was told that Marshall was threatened with desysop if he unblocked.)

In any case, before I was banned, there was no warning from the WMF, nor from any actor before acting. It appears that it was alleged that I:

1. Harassed Schroeder by doxxing him elsewhere. That's complicated. What I did was quite minor, and caused him no harm. He had already been doxxed, but I updated a page on the Thunderbolts forum. I also put the information on my blog, but actually did not publish that page until after the Thunderbolts posting. (But the blog displays the date a page was created, not when it was published.)

Darryl Smith ordered the pages captured by archive.is and archive.org so that they could not be completely hidden, then went to Schroeder's WP talk to point out how I was harassing him. Lovely, eh? It's obvious: the intention was not protecting Schroeder, but attacking me.

I took down my copy and emailed Schroeder through the WP interface (I still had email access there, it had never been removed). I told him that I would ask Thunderbolts to take down the information. We had some back and forth. He was hostile, as he always had been. I did ask Thunderbolts for removal and they objected, why should it be removed if it was true? I said, "as a courtesy." They removed it.

And then Schroeder claimed I had harassed him by email. I have published those emails. They were not harassment, clearly. And he said he was complaining to the WMF.

2. Doxxed Oliver and Darryl Smith. This was not true until later. Once I included a URL linking to a WWHP page that had "Oliver Smith" in the name. That was an accident, I had not noticed it was in the URL. The whole page was immediately deleted by Braunschweig, but restored without that link, and the page stood for quite some time. Basically, I moved it to meta because the sock attacks were so intense and so disruptive, and meta has far higher admin attention.

3. Filed disruptive checkuser requests. In fact, I filed many requests, most of them before Umbrecht got involved, and all were "successful" except the last.

In the last one, two things were going on. The Smiths had recruited users claiming to be "editors in good standing" on Wikipedia, but editing anonymously. I suspect that if a checkuser looked at them, he got an eyeful. Not merely good standing but an admin (i.e., Chapman). And Umbrecht and Chapman commented in that request (all of which is disliked by stewards), and Marshall also commented. Marshall is not extremely sophisticated as to meta process and made a pile of irrelevant arguments. Basically, however, the conspiracy succeeded in disrupting that request and it was closed without action. Realize that action takes a few minutes, but Vituzzu was also involved and, from an initial hostility (that goes back years) he became more openly hostile, and stewards try to maintain an appearance of "we all agree here." In any case, I did nothing there outside of normal process. It is not disruptive to file a checkuser request for suspicious editing, even if wrong, and would only be a problem if there were repeated requests unfairly targeting a specific user.

4. They also made the usual claims, perhaps, of filling Wikiversity with "nonsense." What was called nonsense was actually the abstract from the most recent major peer-reviewed review of cold fusion in a mainstream journal of high reputation. The Wikipedians are ignorant, and they would remain that way if they trust the Wikipedia article, which long excluded major reliable sources in favor of weaker, much older sources. Science moves on!

(But the WV cold fusion research was basically a pile of research notes, and if anyone objected to it as not being neutral, it was possible to neutralize it with no loss in a couple of minutes, and I did that whenever such controversy appeared. The Parapsychology resource was rigorously neutral, it had been tested. Wikipedians, with their flat mainspace, subpages not allowed, and one article per topic, don't even think of things like that.)

Wikiversity is much more like a university library, including student work, -- original research! -- than an encyclopedia. It doesn't have "articles." it does have a neutrality policy (it's overall WMF policy), but it is neutral-by-inclusion. It is simple to neutralize, Wikipedians really don't understand that (and it is much more difficult on Wikipedia with the assumptions of that project including notability, no original research, no discussion of the topic. Imagine a university with no discussion!)

So, complaints from multiple users, including some with community recognition (admin, crat, perhaps steward)? This was a civil conspiracy to defame, which is a tort that is more serious than simple defamation, because it can be far more damaging. I only realized that in the last few days, and put it in the amended complaint. If a civil conspiracy is found, all who join it can be held responsible for the actions of others. Joining others in a malicious crusade is legally quite dangerous! In all these cases, there is enough to allege malice, and in Massachusetts, truth is not an impregnable defense against a finding of defamation in the presence of malice. So, bottom line, if someone is sufficiently exercised to file an action, one may be forced to defend or suffer a serious loss.

If it is plausibly alleged, which does not take much, whether or not there was malice will be decided by a jury, if a jury trial is demanded (as I am in the AC).

I doubt that Fram would have a case for defamation even though there is some similarity. The ban is mild in implications and may actually have improved Fram's reputation. Nobody is using his WP ban as proof that he is a dangerous harasser (which is how my WMF ban was intended and then used, widely).

However, there might be some basis, if malice can be plausibly alleged, and a retaliation for his confrontation with Laura Hale might look that way. The benefit of filing an action is that one may be able to penetrate the fog of secrecy, of "privacy protection." If complaints were malicious, they would not be protected. (in most states, they must also be false, it can be complicated.)

It might benefit Wikipedians interested in restoring community control to look at Count 4 of my draft amended complaint. This raises a common law issue of an expectation of fair dealing and due process. That can trump the literal words of a contract. It's a long shot, to be sure, but simply arguing it could be of value. I.e., the WMF could be forced to defend its policies and procedures by insisting that they don't have to be fair, and the hell with the community and transparency and fairness. They just might choose not to do that!

I am also demonstrating how someone can file an action that can be effective in at least getting the WMF to take a protest seriously, even without needing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. $400 to file pro se without an attorney. I don't recommend people doing this without extensive consultation!

But advice can be obtained for free in many ways. It's like medical issues. One can, in fact, research them oneself. It's work, to be sure, and there is a huge amount of bad information out there, but . . . is it important enough to spend the time to become informed enough to discriminate?

And I have always done both: talk to my doctor and specialists and research what they tell me, then I go back and have more conversation. The doctors actually love this, but one doctor was offended. That was easy, I just went to another doctor who did not treat himself as God! I have done the same with legal issues, handling what I could handle and consulting a lawyer as much as practical and possible. It's actually a lot cheaper and might even be better in some ways. YMMV!

The core objection of the WP community to the Office bans is really the same as mine. Star chamber process, which wouldn't be so bad if appeal were possible, but without any possibility of appeal, it's an open sore inviting infection by malicious complaints in addition to bias and error.

[CrowsNest]

I doubt that Fram would have a case for defamation even though there is some similarity. The ban is mild in implications and may actually have improved Fram's reputation. Nobody is using his WP ban as proof that he is a dangerous harasser (which is how my WMF ban was intended and then used, widely).

Well, as much as the Wikipedians are pretending it isn't so, Fram basically admitted the actual charges (increasingly abusive and aggressive over multiple conflicts across several years, evidently unaffected by reminders and then warnings), hence they can't be defamatory. He wants a change of venue not because he is innocent, only because he thinks he's been improving enough to satisfy the local ideas of Administrative level conduct, and he already saw back in January that ArbCom just want no part of reigning him in despite him doing stuff he readily admits himself was OTT.

This raises a common law issue of an expectation of fair dealing and due process. That can trump the literal words of a contract. It's a long shot, to be sure, but simply arguing it could be of value. I.e., the WMF could be forced to defend its policies and procedures by insisting that they don't have to be fair, and the hell with the community and transparency and fairness. They just might choose not to do that!

Yeah, I think I said this at some point. In UK law, you'd lead with this, testing for reasonableness is absolutely a legal thing, and I seriously wonder if many corporations even realize it as they perpetuate the cycle of boilerplate contracts to save a buck, but what US law is I would not know.