Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

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Abd
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Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by Abd » Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:56 pm

Vigilant is on a mission to track my Reddit comments and troll post with every one. The occasion for this was a comment on r/WikiInAction where a noob revealed what the "dumbass" did on Wikipedia, and I looked at it, and he's headed for a block if he doesn't revise his behavior. So I gave him very standard advice. If he wants to be blocked, he can go for that. I'm not his judge. However, this came from Vigilant:
Don't take advice on how to behave on wikipedia from a guy who is in the very small list of globally locked accounts.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Glo ... Foundation
Abd, since 24 February 2018
Just sayin'
I'm posting this here, hoping that someone else will advise the user. Vigilant is not at all attempting to protect that user from bad advice. But if anyone thinks it's bad advice, obviously, correct it! Please, also, don't confuse the user by attacking Vigilant, unless it is brief and very clear and relevant to the post. If you want to say more than that, respond here or as a comment on by blog page, and link to it it there. All this allows Vigilant, overall, to appear as what he is, a dedicated hater and troll.

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Jan 25, 2020 1:52 am

I sent him a Reddit message and encouraged him to log in here. We shall see.

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by Abd » Sat Jan 25, 2020 2:49 pm

Vigilant on WPO (member only forum) reacting to this.
Abd has a sad and calls for help!
Reality here: this was a complaint by a noob, probably headed for a block, unless he stops. Nobody responded but me. The advice I gave him is standard. So Vigilant -- who is obviously tracking my every move, I'm living rent-free in his head -- advises the OP not to pay any attention to me because BAD PERSON, with many posts accusing me of XYZ and the kitchen sink. Occasionally with some "truth," i.e., I am actually office-banned, but.... Vigilant is implying a meaning to that which he knows very well is false.

So Vigilant is, no surprise, a liar.

He doesn't care about the OP at all, and that's obvious. I was not "having a sad." I was simply telling a noob the truth about how Wikipedia works, information he could use (and may be using, he stopped). But any kind of caring, for Vigilant, is contemptable. I pointed to that here because if A gives advice, B claims that A is BAD, a noob will have no idea who is "right," and what is needed is for others to confirm one "side" or the other. Hence the request here. I'm not "sad" at all, there are very many noobs running into the same, But this noob posted to WiA, and I see a WiA feed on the Treehouse server, so I responded, normally.

Meanwhile, just before this last post, Vigilant is considering trying to edit Wikipedia again. His original account still had talk page access open. He never requested unblock from the 2006 block. So he writes this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Vigilant~enwiki
I'm not sure I still have the pw.
I think this could be interesting.
Sadly, Vigilant is also taken.
I'll make a new account that is incontrovertibly me and announce such both here and there and let's just see what happens...
Sad. Vigilant is sad that he did not protect the name, which he could easily have done. He is sad because he did not keep the password and probably did not set up email or may not still have access to that email, after 14 years. What to do in this situation is well-known to experienced users. Yes, the simplest thing to do, within policy, is create a new account, immediately linking it to the old one.

He could also request renaming. He is not blocked on meta, where he could request renaming (so that the new account would have his contribution history. "Vigilant" was taken by an es.wiki user in 2007. That user has not edited for over two years and might not object. But making requests is not Vigilant's style. I used to clerk renamings. If he simply creates with a link to the old on the user page, it is possible that nothing will happen from it, or it will be blocked as a sock, telling him to make an unblock request on the original talk page. But talk page access would probably not be shut down and he could then explain the password problem.

But this is hilarious. I love Poetlister's tag line on WPO:
Nonentities, claiming to be vigilant, are jealous of people with real achievements. They proxy for banned user Timothy Usher, using his dubious claims in vain attempts to belittle them.

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by Abd » Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:48 am

This is utterly delicious. Once I created a generic response, that I could apply immediately when I received notifications, I suspected that Vigilant would stop his Reddit trolling. He did, in fact, stop.

Of course, he declared victory. Victory at what? I get to write an essay about exactly how this troll works. And I didn't give up or stop anything. He stopped, I responded to every Reddit post of his, they are all now decorated with links to a page I control. And he even linked to this thread. Since some of you don't have access to his lair on Wikipediocracy, it's copied to wikitop.cc. Enjoy.

Vigilant
Run away like a little bitch and declare ultimate victory.
No staying power, I hear that happens when you get old.
That took less time and effort than I had imagined
---
Lol
Totally not paying attention to me...
Dude...You're so bad at this.
You've been run in circles and you are only just now starting to realize it.
Your tears of outrage and impotence are like delicious butter on my popcorn.
:popcorn:
Trolls believe they won because they say so. What I know is that, so far, I've accomplished my goals. I learned a powerful technique for handling an aggressive troll without creating collateral damage. He's still alive, this bug has not been squashed yet, but I suspect that his foray into Reddit has left him with tentacles burnt. This is very likely not over, unless he completely hides, which I don't expect.

He's talking to himself on Wikipediocracy now.

"tears of outrage and impotence"? Funny, nothing like that around here, but if he's tasting them, where are they?

And by the way, the noob followed the advice and stopped thrashing about on Wikipedia, so he might survive. He also now has access to guidance, and not just from me. Vigilant was unable to mislead him.

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by ericbarbour » Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:42 pm

Abd wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:48 am
Of course, he declared victory. Victory at what? I get to write an essay about exactly how this troll works. And I didn't give up or stop anything.
Very similar to how Donald Trump deals with public disagreements. Scream, tantrum, drive people away--then declare "victory". Isn't that odd?

It's even more amazing to me that Oliver Smith, or some fool claiming to be Oliver Smith, showed up on your blog to screech at you. What a stupid thing to pull--now we have to suspect the Smiths are behind a lot of this Vigilant "business".

If you want to poke Vig and his "sockfriends", it's your business. At least you're showing how foul the sock drawer at Wikipediocracy really is. I used to think Poetguy was the most annoying but now I'm not sure we know who ANY of these freaks really are, much less who's the "worst".

And having busted their asses to take "semi-control" of WPO, they are squandering it. Letting nuts like Beeblebrox, Kiefer W and PL basically dominate the forum, then giving Fram space on the blog to babble.....that's deeply fucked up....all this just to be "taken seriously" on AN/I? Ha ha ha. Will never happen in any case.

Wikipedia is an insane asylum, and their insanity is contagious. Wikipediocracy is now fully infected. Consider the Yaniv thread from last year. Vig bitching about Fae quickly degenerated into something disturbingly like a Kiwi Farms thread.
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtop ... =8&t=10596

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by Abd » Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:23 pm

ericbarbour wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:42 pm
Abd wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:48 am
Of course, he declared victory. Victory at what? I get to write an essay about exactly how this troll works. And I didn't give up or stop anything.
Very similar to how Donald Trump deals with public disagreements. Scream, tantrum, drive people away--then declare "victory". Isn't that odd?
He actually stopped the flood. There was one more comment today, in r/internet drama. I responded the same. That post was created by a Smith brother. Comment there led me to more Smith Reddit socking, that I had missed, similar patterns, only about Emil Kirkegaard. What is amazing is now many Redditors assume that the basic stories are true. But some smell the rat.
It's even more amazing to me that Oliver Smith, or some fool claiming to be Oliver Smith, showed up on your blog to screech at you. What a stupid thing to pull--now we have to suspect the Smiths are behind a lot of this Vigilant "business".
Smith will take any "friend" of opportunity. The comments on my block were from two sources: Oliver D. Smith (using a well-known email address and writing like Oliver writes), and another, using a TOR node and looking like Darryl.

Vigilant has been doing his thing for a long time, well over a decade, which predates the Smith phenomenon.
If you want to poke Vig and his "sockfriends", it's your business. At least you're showing how foul the sock drawer at Wikipediocracy really is. I used to think Poetguy was the most annoying but now I'm not sure we know who ANY of these freaks really are, much less who's the "worst".
I know who the Smiths are, certainly Oliver. Darryl is more secretive. As to Vigilant, there are clues, but I have no clear lead. By "Poetguy" do you mean Poetlister? One of the saner Wikipediocrats and I knew him from Wikiversity and then wrote defense in his community ban discussion. He was railroaded. There is a story there. What I argued for probably would have ended the drama. But the tide had shifted and Wikiversity no longer had the cojones to stand up against a global ban (which it had done before, successfully). The result was more or less what I predicted, and that caused the office ban. As far as I could tell, from all the evidence Poetlister was harmless. But hated.
And having busted their asses to take "semi-control" of WPO, they are squandering it. Letting nuts like Beeblebrox, Kiefer W and PL basically dominate the forum, then giving Fram space on the blog to babble.....that's deeply fucked up....all this just to be "taken seriously" on AN/I? Ha ha ha. Will never happen in any case.
WTF happened to Kohs?

I'm not convinced that WPO has any coherent purpose.
Wikipedia is an insane asylum, and their insanity is contagious. Wikipediocracy is now fully infected. Consider the Yaniv thread from last year. Vig bitching about Fae quickly degenerated into something disturbingly like a Kiwi Farms thread.
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtop ... =8&t=10596
Started by Vigilant and referring to KIwi Farms as source. "Witches" were women with non-mainstream beliefs, and today there are still witch-hunts for the "weirdos" and "kooks." Jimbo really didn't help with his comment about "lunatic charlatans" which dismissed entire communities, clearly not charlatans even if with nonscientific beliefs -- or experiences. Jimbo did at one time understand neutrality. I think he lost it. People were simply asking for fair coverage, following policies, or at least it could have been interpreted that way. Instead he aligned with the haters.

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by Carrite » Mon Jan 27, 2020 5:18 pm

Abd wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:23 pm
WTF happened to Kohs?
IRL job retaliation by Jimmy Wales or someone close to him.

t

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by boredbird » Tue Jan 28, 2020 1:45 am

Abd wrote:
Sat Jan 25, 2020 2:49 pm
But this is hilarious. I love Poetlister's tag line on WPO:
Nonentities, claiming to be vigilant, are jealous of people with real achievements. They proxy for banned user Timothy Usher, using his dubious claims in vain attempts to belittle them.
The dubious claims Poetlister a.k.a. Michael Baxter is talking about are linked from Vigilant's signature.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/1 ... t_scandal/

Probably all of that news piece was made up and Baxter didn't really do anything wrong. He was sticking up for his friend and her roommates who were wrongly accused of being sockpuppets. Just ask Kelly Martin, Newyorkbrad and FloNight who got them unbanned.

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by Abd » Tue Jan 28, 2020 4:14 am

"face stealer." What is a "face stealer"? Sounds really bad, right? That's the point, trolls love to find stuff that sounds really bad. Today, Vigilant and the Smith brothers joined forces, trolling on Reddit in r/internetdrama, filling it with irrelevancies. Perfect place for that trio. I will probably write it up in a way that will also further reduce the labor necessary to confront these trolls.

In his community ban, Poetlister was accused of identity theft, which sounds even worse than "face stealer." And that was by a WMF board member, showing the level of competence involved. Identity theft is a serious crime, but what Poetlister did was a jape and not illegal. Under some conditions it might be a tort, but probably wasn't. He had created a fake identity on Wikipedia and trolled certain users with it, a woman. And he used a photo of a person with whom he had some connection. He may have done this without permission, but he did not pretend to be a named person, he just used a photo. In fact people often use photos in avatars, of other people.

Poetlister had certain done some things to warrant his loss of functionary privileges, (he'd been a checkuser and 'crat) that wasn't improper. Thanks for connecting the dots for me. That really is about Vigilant.

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Re: Help a noob being misled by Vigilant, action requested

Post by boredbird » Tue Jan 28, 2020 7:27 am

FloNight may be the smartest Wikipedian ever. Not only did she discern right away that Baxter and his alter egos were telling the truth about one another's innocence, she got her boyfriend Lar to back the unban too. Gotta figure Lar received some epic head for that. Poor Russell, it's as canonical as the milkman, wife's doing it with the LEGO guy.

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