Difference between revisions of "En-WP:Press Release / An Open Letter to ArbCom"

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<li><b style="color:#503030;">Objective 3000</b>:  possibly more central than the account seems, Clinton talk page worker.</li>
 
<li><b style="color:#503030;">Objective 3000</b>:  possibly more central than the account seems, Clinton talk page worker.</li>
 
<li><b style="color:teal;font-size:11px;">TimothyJosephWood</b>:  closely associated in my mind with Objective3000 and Calton:  back-line defenders.  my interactions with TJW have been very unpleasant.</li>
 
<li><b style="color:teal;font-size:11px;">TimothyJosephWood</b>:  closely associated in my mind with Objective3000 and Calton:  back-line defenders.  my interactions with TJW have been very unpleasant.</li>
<li><b style="color:#503030;">Volunteer Marek</b>:  famous member of EEML (EE = Eastern Europe Mail L(eague?), closely associated with my very best wishes, Bishonen (perhaps <i>the</i> power admin), Drmies (ArbCom).</li>
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<li><b style="color:#503030;">Volunteer Marek</b>:  famous member of EEML (EE = Eastern Europe Mailing List), called the "Whitewasher in chief" for his censorship work on CLinton pages, e.g. [https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py?name=Volunteer+Marek&page=Clinton_Foundation&server=enwiki&max= Clinton Foundation], protectors: Bishonen (perhaps <i>the</i> power admin), Drmies (ArbCom).</li>
 
</ul>
 
</ul>
  

Revision as of 13:42, 26 June 2017

I think I should not participate in this silliness any further. I am certainly not perfect, but this is a ragtag mob of activist editors and a couple of others who are taking their slander at face-value. I would request an admin to carefully go through my editing history - and perhaps the editing history of some of those most keen on getting me banned. I trust Wikipedia works well enough that such blatant gaming of the system will not work. Thank you.

-- an anonymous editor who recently left Wikipedia and whose privacy I will respect by not posting their story, but my own.

Subject: Astroturfing and censorship

Overview

This page is an Open Letter to the Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia and to interested third parties. It concerns astro-turfing accomplished by a "new account" on en.wiki. In a separate section, I will address the recent disclosure (990 form) that Wikimedia paid $436,000 in consulting fees to Minassian Media (an S-Corporation which the web suggests may well be Craig & Shawna Minassian's family business. One of the people working through this corporation (Jove Oliver) preceded Craig Minassian as Chief Communications officer at the Clinton Foundation and has his own company, so it is odd that he chose to work through Minassian Media. The reader should keep in mind that no claim is being made that this new account ("Sagecandor") is associated in any way with this company. Facile association with Sage (Wiki Ed) may well be wrong. Determining if it is would need extensive further research that I personally do not wish to conduct. The point is: Wikipedians should not be expected to try to find the RW folks behind the accounts, but simply identify behavioral patterns which need to be addressed. Nobody disputes the behavioral patterns I've found (to my knowledge) yet nobody has taken any (public) action to stop the astro-turfing. The bullying response and outlandishly disproportionate sentences I've received every time I've tried to draw attention to the problem of DNC infiltration speaks volumes.

Sagecandor opened their account on Nov 17, 2016, a little over a week after the US presidential election and promptly became one of the most prolific editors on the site. They edited English Wikipedia intensely until the 22nd of December, 2016 focusing primarily on DNC talking points and during these first 30 days on Wikipedia they demonstrated a remarkable mastery of some of the more complicated processes, syntax, procedures, rules and power centers on Wikipedia. (By early December many people both on and off wiki had identified them as a faux new account.)

During this time, they began working—in particular—on the entry "fake news webpage" (a page that the WMF's Victor Grigas was interested in at exactly the time Sage stopped editing as an IP through VPN and created an account (§ page history § )). This struck me, since Victor Grigas has worked closely with Minassian Media on projects in the past, and WP's "reliability" was a subject that the September 2016 Minassian media audit suggested should be a priority for WMF public relations. Sage's attention soon migrated to the "Russian interference in the 2016 US election" page which they worked extensively on.

They disappeared immediately after getting me banned on December 19th, 2016 (in principle because I asked them why they were promoting "And you are lynching Negroes" for Good Article status). They returned in February 2017 primarily (I believe) to formally test the idea that Wikipedia entries about books are not easily deleted. With the verdict in (it is difficult), they took another break (by and large) until May, got back into "battlefield editing" for a while before turning their attention to the mass editing of three bibliographies: i) books by or about Donald Trump and ii) books by Malcolm Nance and iii) books about Russian spying. 19 book reviews averaging well over 20K each. This was a small, but not insignificant part of their total editing during the period.

At 14:30 on the 22nd of June, I congratulated SC on their many book review reviews at "Bibliography of Donald Trump"; eight minutes later at 14:38 they plopped down 11K of an amazingly intricate complaint and began calling up the troops to have me banned from Wikipedia for daring to question their "sources and methods". I was indefinitely banned less than 20 hours later, and the substance of the complaint (astroturfing) was not addressed, not even once. This is how things are done on English Wikipedia. Paint any criticism (or in this case a compliment) as a personal attack...

To understand how the cabal works, it is important to compare the "expert witnesses" who answered the call to come defend "Snooganssnoogans"—who got caught mass-POV editing in late May (see case below)—with those who came to help Sagecandor attack me in June to avoid addressing the substance of the talk page comment (astroturfing). Many of these "jurors" / "expert witnesses" are the same, in particular:

  • Bullrangifer: Also very motivated on Russian Interference in 2016 US elections
  • Neutrality: Author of Wikipedia's famous 5 pillars. Anonymous. Tarantino has associated him with a former Democratic Underground forumer. Very active admin and very media-savvy. Unfortunately also a bit partisan and quite good at dissimulation
  • Objective 3000: possibly more central than the account seems, Clinton talk page worker.
  • TimothyJosephWood: closely associated in my mind with Objective3000 and Calton: back-line defenders. my interactions with TJW have been very unpleasant.
  • Volunteer Marek: famous member of EEML (EE = Eastern Europe Mailing List), called the "Whitewasher in chief" for his censorship work on CLinton pages, e.g. Clinton Foundation, protectors: Bishonen (perhaps the power admin), Drmies (ArbCom).

Journalists or Wikipedians wishing to study this further would probably do well to look into the "editors" subforum at Wikipedia Review, where there are several perspectives on these folks and their protectors. Some threads of particular interest: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Sagecandor. My own thread there is post-banning. Anyone wishing to look into my own en.wiki editing history is welcome to, I won't take you to Arbitration Enforcement if you do. ^^

I have been indefinitely banned from en.wiki for notifying Sagecandor that evidence of astroturfing was publicly available to the press, and that it might be more helpful to Wikipedia as a project that they focus on community-identified vital pages, rather than "becoming wiki-voice" for a certain number of DNC talking points: Donald Trump & US-Russian relations.

If I were to cherry pick one edit from all I've seen from Sagecandor to paint that account as really WP:NOTHERE, it could be this rhetorical redirect they created from "Sources and Methods to "Clandestine Human Intelligence" ( § ). Or I could also find an example of bullying. There is a lot of data on The Sagecandor Incident, only some of which is reproduced here. Sage appears to have temporarily stopped editing with this account while this blows over. (over 24 hours, which is unprecedented since at least May)

Archived info

Evidence of Astroturfing

Major Themes

The major themes that Sagecandor works on have varied over time. Just after the election the focus was on fake news and on the Russian interference in the US election story. Since returning, while it's true they've also been involved in the Whopper dispute and the United Airlines David Dao incident, they've remained focused on the issues that originally interested them (Seth Rich, Pizzagate, etc.):

Now, they have moved on to other issues, such as...

There is a lot more below, for the moment let's not get ahead of the story. The next section is quite important as it shows the professionalism of the operation.

Proof of Concept

To test whether it was easy to delete book review reviews or not, in February 2017, Sagecandor nominated a couple of books for deletion.
In Wikipedia jargon, he "initiated an AfD" (Article for Deletion) for the following books:

One account present in both deletion discussions was Captain Raju, who appears to work in that area of Wikipedia.

Book Reviews / Did you know (DYK) / Good Article (GA)

These book reviews were authored from 2 Jun to 23 June 2017. For new ones, you can look at their contributions, though they seem to have taken a break now that their astro-turfing has been identified. A fellow critic estimated that each book review might take around 4 hours, and assuming that they have a reasonable system of vacuuming up references and converting them to Wiki-syntax automatically, I would be ready to believe that (though it is much, much faster than my own rate of production).

So, 19 book reviews x 4 hours each (min.) = 76 hours of work from 2 June to 23 June. Most likely the work was actually done after the test of concept in late February. Given the 7-10 hour editing days in May and June, with major texts being plopped down in a matter of minutes most days, it would be very difficult to believe only a single person was involved with the account. More logical, given the consistent prolix style (from what I've read), is that the articles were mostly written between March and June after it had been established that book entries were tough to delete.

  1. Disinformation: 2 June 2017 | history | 16K | 27K | (DYK nomination), self-nominated it for GA (awaiting review)
  2. The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: 3 June 2017 | history | 18K | 18K
  3. Dezinformatsia: 3 June 2017 | history | 21K | 23K | self-nominated for GA (review pending)
  4. The Case for Impeachment: 5 June 2017 | history | 28K | 31K | Sage nominated this entry for GA, which it failed.
  5. The Plot to Hack America: 7 June 2017 | history | 26K | 31K | Sage nominated this entry for GA (review not yet undertaken), discussed below (see Malcolm Nance, below)
  6. Defeating ISIS: 8 June 2017 | history | 25K | 24K | AFD nomination, failed/withdrawn from GA, discussed below (see Malcolm Nance, below)
  7. Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel: 10 Jun 2017 | history | 28K | 29K |
  8. The Terrorists of Iraq: 9 June 2017 | history | 21K | 23K | self-nominated for GA (awaiting review), (see Malcolm Nance, below)
  9. An End to al-Qaeda: 9 June 2017 | history | 20K | 20K | self-nominated for GA (awaiting review), (see Malcolm Nance, below)
  10. Terrorist Recognition Handbook: 10 June 2017| history | 22K | 22K | self-nominated for GA (awaiting review), (see Malcolm Nance, below)
  11. Trump: The Kremlin Connection: 11 June 2017 | history | 20K | 20K
  12. Think Big and Kick Ass: 13 June 2017 | history | 38K | 38K | self-nomination for GA (awaiting review)
  13. Why You Want to be Rich: 14 June 2017 | history | 20K | 22K | self-nomination for GA (awaiting review)
  14. Midas Touch: 15 June 2017 | history | 23K | 24K | self-nomination for GA (awaiting review)
  15. Insane Clown President: 16 June 2017 | history | 30K | 30K | DYK nomination
  16. Time to Get Tough: 17 June 2017 | history | 31K | 30K | self-nominated for GA (awaiting review)
  17. Trump Tower: A Novel: 20 June 2017 | history | 18K | 21K | DYK nomination, indefinite full move protect request
  18. Trump 101: 22 June 2017 | history | 23K | 23K | self-nominated for GA (awaiting review), DYK nomination
  19. Trump Revealed: 23 June 2017 | history | 42K | 41K | DYK + GA nomination

Total new book review text (as revised): 468K (counts only reviews themselves, this does not include talk pages, GA self-nominations, GA QPQ, DYK, DYK QPQ, noticeboards, talk pages of those who challenge their edits, author pages, book review outlets, book publishers, RS/N, AfD, welcoming newbies to WP, awarding barnstars, etc., etc.)

Categories created

Because it is quite time-consuming to list all the categories, I've focused on just a very few of those that they've created this month (these were created in the space of a few minutes). There is little point searching for all of the categories they created... I did notice these in particular, though... No other person in human history has any of the following "critical of" categories currently dedicated to them at Wikipedia. There is a deletion discussion currently in progress for the one other human taxed with a "Parodies of" page (Sarah Palin). Sagecandor has voted keep.

  • Music critical of Donald Trump (history)
  • Works critical of Donald Trump (history)
  • Films critical of Donald Trump (history)
  • Books critical of Donald Trump (history)
  • Parodies of Donald Trump (history)
Miscellaneous pages
  • Memorandum of Conversation: 17 May 2017 | history | 1K | 4K
  • Great America Committee: 19 May 2017 | history | 11K | 11K (This page, as originally written, was clearly a take-down piece / hack-job. It is studied more closely in Sagecandor's editor thread at Wikipedia Review
  • 2016 Trump Campaign Leaks: 30 May 2017 | history [ 36K | redirected | AFD nomination (for redirected article), content originally from another en.wiki page Sagecandor has worked extensively on.
  • TrumpiLeaks (website): 7 June 2017 | history | 19K | 19K
  • Roy Godson: 3 June 2017 | history | 3K | 6K
  • Clint Watts: 3 June 2017 | history | 6K | 31K | self-nominated for GA (awaiting review)
  • Michael R. Caputo: 8 June 2017 | history | 18K | 18K | self-nominated for GA (awaiting review)
  • rewrote the Wikipedia entry for the New York Journal of Books (post rewrite), quintupling its size (original) because it was the only entity that had reviewed The Plot to Hack America.
  • rewrote Malcolm Nance (contribs)
Link-spamming Sage's book reviews to political opponents' BLP pages

One example I noticed because I follow Tulsi Gabbard's page.

Captain Raju added the link to Sagecandor's book review of Malcolm Nance's Defeating ISIS to eight pages (including other BLP) using the same method.

Behavior

I am aware that I am not the only person that Sagecandor has attacked and others have told me that they are willing to share their stories. I am not in contact with all of the people I have seen bullied or misrepresented by Sagecandor along the way. But I do know of at least five current or former Wikipedians journalists (or Arbitrators) could contact for comment.

Censorship: An "outsider" gets TP-Gagged


excerpted from my talk page at en.wiki (source), which despite the allegations leveled against me there I may not edit.




I do not see how informing ArbCom of some of the facts about this pretty clearcut case of astroturfing is "intimidation", it would seem (again) that it could be more correctly referred to as notifiying them that they have a PR headache down the road because the Community continues to protect its various cabals rather than address the obvious COI problems.1

It took a while for the first account I pointed out to ArbCom to get sanctioned by the community for Mass POV editing (see link below to TParis v. Snooganssnoogans). I suppose I could be patient and wait for you to be faced with an overwhelming communinty based call to address this problem, but I think I'd prefer to have the public informed / warned (yet again) of the terrible COI between the English Wikipedia and the Democratic establishment.

[...]

[I]t's unfortunate you did not remember the advice of TRM: behind every account there is a human being. Talk more, block less, etc. This is why, in diff 3 when I provide the list of SC's 18 recent book review reviews, I congratulate them for their output, even if I know that it is dangerous to the encylopedia to have so much weight provided by one account and the RW person (or people) who are making use of that role account.

You are welcome for the scholarship added to your François Rabelais entry. I am sorry to learn that you have taken this action to pander to (vocal parts of) the community who value the current DNC fear-the-Russians-and-fear-Trump agenda more than actual encyclopedic content. SashiRolls (talk) 13:25, 23 June 2017 (UTC)




  • As you are blocked for an indefinite period of time, your talk page should be used if you seen to appeal or modify your block. It isn't for soapboxing, casting aspersions or making vague and unsubstantiated claims about others. You can email Arb any information regarding what you consider to be OUTing and that information will be held in the strictest confidence. You may use this page to file your appeal, asking someone else to copy/paste it to the proper venue. If you use your page for anything that remotely breaches policy, you will have your talk page access removed, and WP:UTRS (or Arb) will be your only avenues to appeal your sanctions. I'm not going to debate the finer points of your block (which I stayed uninvolved in) or my comments herein as they speak for themselves, and instead just tell you that you have received fair warning. You know me well enough to know I don't warn twice. Dennis Brown - 14:07, 23 June 2017 (UTC)




Hi Dennis, thanks for your comment. I'm not sure exactly what you meant by "seen" in your sentence above (I assume it is a typo for "want"?) your talk page should be used if you seen to appeal or modify your block.

If so, yes I do want to appeal or modify my block, so it seems to me a justifiable use of my talk page based on what you said above. In doing so it would be wise to point out the obvious: the so-called "community" calling for my indef block also testified for leniency in the mass-POV editing case TParis v. Snooganssnoogans (20-24 May), to wit: Sagecandor, Neutrality, Bullrangifer, Volunteer Marek, TimothyJosephWood and Objective3000. Tryptofish & Neutrality were also both involved in arguing for the inclusion of a copyright violation of a piece placed in an IAC paper (Chelsea Clinton on the BoD). The piece was written by a DNC-associated author and the copyvio was added to the BLP page of a political opponent within 24 hours of its appearance. (Jill Stein BLP) (as was pointed out in evidence provided in the case). Tryptofish testified against me without providing any evidence in December and Neutrality's August 8th comment on my talk page was adduced against me as "evidence" in 2016 & again in 2017. Dennis Brown and Goldenring were involved in both the Snoog's case and Sage's case, but this seems to be primarily a consequence of their function as administrators who work the AE board. Goldenring has not had sufficient time to look into the merits of the case and seems unaware of the remarkable consistency of the group who come to defend DNC-friendly editors and to prosecute encyclopedia-friendly editors.

No comment was made (ndlr: by any other "expert witness" or "judge" during the AE "case") regarding the crux of the case—astro-turfing—for which significant evidence was adduced: the 18 book review reviews and the ways in which reference to them was being spread on political opponents' BLP pages (here, Gabbard).

Because the issue at hand was not dealt with at all and because the vast majority of the commenters are verifiably involved in compromising POV-motivated behavior at AE, I would urge ArbCom to throw this case out and focus on the problems associated with groups facilitating POV editing on English Wikipedia.) Thank you, members of ArbCom and of the Community, for considering this request to appeal or modify my block, which—as it is—appears to be entirely politically motivated. SashiRolls (talk) 12:42, 24 June 2017 (UTC)




  • As you are using this talk page to continue to attack others, I have revoked your ability to edit it. If you wish to appeal against these sanctions, I think contacting ArbCom by email is the only realistic way you can do it now, as there's no way that simply repeating the same accusations over and over again is going to achieve anything here. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:52, 24 June 2017 (UTC)




Post-gagging comment: My second comment introduces further evidence not mentioned at the show trial or in my first comment: the surprising correspondence between the "jury" in TParis v. Snooganssnoogans and in Sagecandor v. SashiRolls. In fact, the admins Goldenring and Dennis Brown (admins are traditionally "judges" at AE, for lack of a better word) participated in both cases. I only participated in the latter case (as the defendant).

My revelations were in line with not only the spirit but the letter of "milieu 4" for working to expose COI (posted to the ArbCom Noticeboard Talk page]. There are other further policy justifications for this call for attention to inappropriate behavior, including the 5th pillar of WP:5P itself, which is sometimes interpreted as "ignore all rules" (see the Wikipedia essay) for the greater good of the encyclopedia. Claims that I have violated NPA (no personal attacks) by providing verifiable evidence (cf. WP:V) have some potential grounds. However, I do not know how being attacked from all quarters without evidence, I can respond without stating conclusions that reasonable uninvolved participants can draw from the evidence.




1 Conflict of Interest traditionally means working for some organization. Here it can also be interpreted as conflicting with the overriding interest of neutrality which is one of the 5 pillars of Wikipedia. It is an amusing sidenote that the author of these pillars is an anonymous guy named Neutrality, who, though he formerly served on ArbCom, remains anonymous to the community. He insists that Islam (notions of zakat, shahada, etc.) had no place in his thought-process when rechristening the founding tenets of en.wiki. I suppose that's almost plausible given what I know of "Neutrality" (which is that he, too, will misrepresent facts)

"Cuisine Interne" / Inside the "sausage factory"

Much of the Wikipedia "Game" as practiced these days consists of smearing your opponent without evidence at various venues.

Sagecandor's "court of choice" is Arbitration Enforcement. They have been involved in at least 17 cases, 7 of which as a prosecutor, 10+ as "expert witness" / "juror", and 0 as a defendant. They have also sought out admins to ban at least one of their opponents outside of the AE apparatus.

They have been brought to ANI as a defendant twice. The first time was for smearing (actually denouncing by innuendo) a couple of contributors as Russian propagandists at the neutral point of view noticeboard. The second time was for being (frankly) a condescending jerk to a long-time user. Both cases were quickly closed by a power administrator User:Black kite. ( 1 | 2 )

What possesses someone to go to AE at least once every five days present in the projects? What causes them to canvas administrator's with talk page messages and barnstars? Quid pro quo (QPQ)...

Evidence of inconsistent sentencing in POV cases

This has been a notorious problem of long standing on Wikipedia. Many thanks to User:James J. Lambden for the work on this table recapitulating the major "trials" and associated sentences.

En-WP: Sentencing

Minassian Media, Inc. (the Clinton Foundation-WMF connection)

More on this larger story as time permits in the next couple days.

  • The WMF 2015-2016 990 Form shows a payment of $436,000 to Minassian Media, Inc. for public relations contracting work on the last page.
  • The Clinton Foundation 2015 990 Form shows that Craig Minassian is already paid over $200K for 50 hr/wk (p. 43 of 117)
  • Communication WMF Quarterly Review 02 2014-2015: Minassian media is specifically tasked with developing and executing first media training module for c-level, director, managers and with Media/PR: Ongoing support for media events (60 Min, ACLU, emerging threats, etc.)(p. 7). I've asked for comment on this from a number of WMF members. Nobody has replied in substance. In this document, Jove Oliver1, Helen Platt & Dasha Burns are identified as working for Minassian Media (p. 5)
  • Victor Grigas collaborated with Dasha Burns and Helen Platt to make this spot in late 2014.
  • September 2016 Minassian media audit: substantive study (though not to the tune of $436,000) of press coverage related to the WMF. Going forward, the report urges focusing on reliability, the trustiness of WMF™ news.
  • "Fostering relationships with both friending and unfriendly journalists is recommended as way to improve media relations across the board." Two mistakes in this sentence, but the sentiment is appreciated. ^ _ ^
  • "[T]he Communications team currently provides comment on articles infrequently, generally based on the tier of the outlet (i.e., we prefer upper-tier outlets over lower-tier publications and blogs), and whether a comment would shed positive light on our organization. In the future, it is suggested that we begin to check the sentiment, tone and the author and outlet’s history with Wikipedia. This will help us gauge whether it is worthwhile to offer a comment, should one be requested. For instance, given the articles written by Jason Koebler (Motherboard) recently, offering a comment would most likely do little to advance our messaging strategy". (p.38)





1Jove Oliver preceded Craig Minassian as Chief Communications Officer for the Clinton Foundation. As mentioned above, it is unclear why he is working for the WMF through Minassian's S-Corporation instead of through his own company.