Rome Viharo re-emerges....

 For the uninitiated, Rome Viharo was/is Wikipedia's Abused Stepson, the guy who tried to balance the BLP ("biography of a living person" to spell out the Wikipediaese) of Rupert Sheldrake which was being loaded to near-libel by the Guerrilla Skeptics, was kicked out of en.Wikipedia, then "earned" a very stupid article on RationalWiki, to which Viharo ran a blog trying to explain the mess titled Wikipedia, We Have a Problem (2013-2019). Viharo unfortunately let a renewal slip and the URL was taken by the Wiki/RationalWiki psychos. He is now on Medium discussing what happened.

Related to all this is something that Dyskslyver posted to the WikipediaSucks messageboard:

WWHP wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 11:33 pm

Well I did have a straight confrontation with Wikipediocracy.

Unfortunately, despite receiving a notification on WPO, this thread only just now came to my attention because I don't use the internet enough these days to receive timely updates. The WPO thread is currently locked, nevertheless I would like to respond to what you directed at me specifically in your WPO post dated Dec 21, 2021.

WWHP wrote:You're a rationalwiki editor right? You are aware of Oliver, right? Well because you are a rationalwiki editor, and you know Oliver, and I know you know who I am, I am holding YOU personally responsible for that article about me on that platform.

You know that is wrong, why don't you change the article? Why dont you ask for it to be removed?

Do you support rationalwiki conducting harassment and misinformation campaign against personal targets?

Apparently, you do

There are several questions here. Firstly to "You're a rationalwiki editor right?" I can confirm that I was a RationalWiki Editor prior to April 2021 with the usernames D and Judge Dredd. However, I am no longer involved with that project.

Secondly, to "You are aware of Oliver, right?" I can confirm that I most certainly am, since I was the one who banned him from RationalWiki in the first place, I have furthermore suffered substantial interactions with him on multiple boards where I have commented on his antics extensively.

You wrote; "You know that is wrong, why don't you change the article? Why dont you ask for it to be removed?" and to that I will simply say this, your article was a low priority, hidden among the countless other hit pieces written by the same author. When I failed to gain the upper hand on the author, the articles survived unscathed.

To give some context. When I was elected to the RationalWiki Board of Trustees in 2020 I quickly discovered that nobody actually runs the website, the owner, Trent Toulouse, logs on twice a year to collect donations and pay the hosting service. Every so often David Gerard organises someone to update the website software on an ad-hoc basis without board involvement. The main email contact for the foundation is generally not read, and there is no internal communication regarding any mails received, most of which are binned, assuming the email address you are using even receives mail at all, which they normally don't due to being broken. The foundation website was last maintained by a now banned user. The board has forgotten to file critical legal documents so many times that there is a backlog reaching back to 2013 and it's questionable if the board will ever catch up given that they meet twice a year for an hour and all board matters are conducted in that time.

A short time after I joined the RationalWiki Board of Trustees, I became involved in a high level dispute with the community regarding my decision to unilaterally exploit a configuration error in the edit filter, to check the IP addresses for all suspected sockpuppets of Oliver D. Smith, Michael Coombs, and Abd ul-Rahman Lomax. This exercise was inspired by Abd giving me a large amount of behavioural analysis on Smith, asserting that Smith was operating a "good hand, bad hand" approach where the bad hand was an impersonation of one of his enemies. I found through technical analysis that this appeared to be true, the majority of blocked accounts attributed to Abd, Mike, and Smith were infact all operated by the same person. Smith had also impersonated several other people he'd written about on the site, resulting in them getting banned, thus pre-emptively closing a means of complaining about his articles.

The majority of the board was not amused by this exercise, and unanimously voted to remove me from the board at the beginning of their next meeting, citing misuse of technical access to user data. I was also forced to give up the 'tech' role and thus lost sysadmin access to the site, resulting in Smith resuming activity. I thereupon became involved in an action to ban formally Smith and Abd from RationalWiki, this succeeded, but it gave Smith a forum to air opinions and he was successfully able to influence other editors to informally ban me shortly after. Smith himself is still actively maintaining his articles with an army of new sockpuppets. In the meantime I stopped bothering, it doesn't affect me personally and I have better things to do than try to regain standing on that project.

Short of taking legal action against Trent Toulouse, your article will persist on RatonalWiki as long as the site remains on the internet. The web of manipulation and lies runs far too deep for any editor to be able to delete it even if they were so inclined, the mob would ensure that such an action was quickly reversed. There is no oversight of the editors, they do as they please in a form of direct democratic consensus, so complaints to the board will remain fruitless. In short you are fucked.

****

It is absolutely insane that RationalWiki is that poorly run. But then, Wikipedia suffered a memory wipe in 2006 or 2007 and everything had to be pieced together out of salvaged stuff over a VERY long weekend, so that's where David Gerard learned his rickety "online skillz" from. Click and read those links above and see the horror for yourselves.....

"Cranks" from the Wikipedia_POV secret wiki

 

Cranks

From The Wikipedia POV

Jump to: navigation, search

On Wikipedia-l in 2002 [1], Michael R. Irwin wrote: "I have not seen him attempt to initiate lynching efforts by titling threads such as: internet kook, etc. I've referred to certain newcomers as "crackpots", not "kooks", based solely on what they have written in articles, talk pages & meta. Perhaps it's offensive that I've judged them and labelled them as such, but it's based on their actions and that alone. If their behaviour changes, so will my opinion of them."

Nevertheless, Wikipedia would be far smaller and less detailed if not for certain cranks. This subject overlaps with items discussed in Mentally ill.

Contents 1 Helga 2 Hopiatkuta 3 WTC 9/11 4 "Lunatic" editors responsible for two major articles in 2014

[edit] Helga

See: Helga Jonat

• Jimmy Wales Sep 3 14:11:20 UTC 2002 "Stephen Gilbert wrote: " "Ed Poor wrote: *sigh* if only Larry were still here." "Larry's not a magic bullet. I respect Larry, and I think he deserves a lot of the credit for getting this project off the ground. He has, however, been less than diplomatic in certain past situations." Yeah, actually Larry was less "appreciative" of bullshit than I am. He'd have called Helga a troll and banned her a long time ago. So, maybe we *should* wish Larry was still here, but only because he was Schwartzkopf to my Powell." (sic)

[edit] Hopiatkuta

A very strange situation, posted here for lack of a better place. Per Tarc on Wikipediocracy: "A recent example is Hopiakuta, subject of a discussion at AN. Creates bizarre redirects, article additions, etc... responses to concerns are near-unintelligible, so they block him. Others are objecting and asking for the users' disabilities to be taken into consideration. I think it will be quite a downward spiral if problematic users are given this sort of trapdoor to avoid responsibility for their negative contributions to the Wikipedia."

[edit] WTC 9/11

Nice August 2012 thread on WO [2] where Devil's Advocate turns out to be a conspiracy theorist. AE enforcement [3]. Murphy says "Create a culture where it's seen as acceptable to ask people questions about their background and location, and a little dodgy to refuse to address things."

[edit] "Lunatic" editors responsible for two major articles in 2014

WO thread: [4]

"According to VentureBeat the most edited Wikipedia pages were:"

• 1. Deaths in 2014 (19,324)
• 2. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (10,166)
• 3. Japanese dissidence during the Shōwa period (8,101)
• 4. Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa (7,644)
• 5. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (7,312)
• 6. 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict (6,485)
• 7. Shooting of Michael Brown (5,419)
• 8. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (5,147)
• 9. 2014 Pacific typhoon season (4,954)
• 10. List of works by Eugène Guillaume (4,229)

Further comment:

"Do they not even stop to think how insane it is that #3 and #10 are on that list?"

"Japanese dissidence during the Shōwa period"

"...is the work of a lunatic editor." Greg723 (T-C-F-R-B)

"And List of works by Eugène Guillaume"

"...is the work of a lunatic editor." Weglinde (T-C-F-R-B)

Academic Jobs Wiki: The Worst College Job Searches (a taster)

The Academic Jobs Wiki is a site run by ex-grad students looking for tenured jobs in academia. They have a page titled Universities to fear which has been up since the Bush II years. The narratives you see on these pages are from the following: weird interactions with search committees at the various conventions for each branch of the Liberal Arts (for example the Modern Language Assoc. convention is in January; if it's in Philadelphia, they use the Doubletree Hotel downtown both to hear papers read and to have university search committees look at English/Literature/Composition wanna-profs strut their stuff. They do these interviews in the hotel rooms.); from ex-employees of these schools (mostly adjuncts who worked by semester); and from the people invited to look at the schools who were put off by things. There is a lot of odd stuff going on out there in private (non-religious) colleges.

Bishop's University  Sociology

The department of three full time faculty members have no respect for their sessional and junior faculty. The one genuinely nice faculty member is currently on a leave. They expect you to just take their abuse and accept that is the way the world works. They put you down to make themselves feel better, particularly one senior faculty member. Since I cannot mention any names, I will call her "fake nails," the fake "nice" personality goes well with the nails. You will be in for a shock, when she reveals her true character. If you have good publications, you will see it sooner rather than later. While publications will get you hired here, they will not get you friends in this department.

This was a really nice, supportive place when the faculty needed me to fix their program, but that all changed once I finished writing the course descriptions for their course catologues, course names, and assisted the faculty in updating their degree requirements. Once they think they have their hooks in you, the corrupt institutional behaviour begins. The university and APBU president don't know anything about employment and human rights legislation in Canada. Their overt violations of employment law in Canada is unbelievable.

The faculty gossip with students about their colleagues' teaching. If a student is angry with you, they will actually use statements made by other faculty you thought were your friends. Most of the faculty get rewarded for teaching nothing in their courses. It's perfectly acceptable to play videos in your classes all semester. Even after holding two sessional appointments, the faculty never let you into their circle. You always feel like an outsider in this department and unworthy to be there. The faculty hold yearly teaching evaluations with the dean and two students. You know nothing about this until the faculty appoint two students who hate you enough to actually slander you on the committee. When you try to defend yourself and even receive letters of support from students to prove those were slanderous comments, the faculty will treat you even more like an outsider and call you crazy. This is, by far, the most toxic department I have ever been a part of and the administration is utterly useless in helping you. You have to make friends with people in other departments to survive Bishop's. The people in sociology are fake and get off on bullying junior faculty and trying to make them feel horrible about themselves. The only conversations you have with faculty involve them disparaging a previous instructor who taught your courses. None of the faculty have any experience teaching methods, so they base this opinion entirely on what students say, although they take opinions from students with the lowest grade in your course.

I feel so bad for the contract instructor who taught my courses. When she applied to teach the aging course in 2018, I was present when "fake nails" ridiculed her application. She made fun of her for talking about taking care of her elderly mother in her cover letter. This poor instructor has no idea how little the faculty of her. They make fun of her every chance they get. She teaches in the psychology and sports studies departments but has no idea that the sociology department will never hire her to teach a course again because of some rumours that probably are not even true. She teaches so many courses, there is no way there is any truth to what the faculty say about her. She's been casted out of the department of sociology clique. Once your casted out, your dead to the faculty.

A yearly evaluation can easily turn into a reputation smearing campaign if the two students hate you. The faculty will not tell you which students they select to assess your teaching to the entire department and dean (apparently withholding this information is a requirement) nor ask for your input on which students to appoint.

If they are out to smear your reputation, they will appoint the least appropriate students to the committee: two students who were the least prepared for the most difficult course you teach, out of 12 classes, an upper level statistics course. Yes, the university deems it acceptable to appoint students who have only taken one course out of 12 with you, have no actual mentorship experience with you to be able to present in the meeting, were not adequately preparred for your course, and (one student had the lowest course grade). This is considered a fair and just practice at Bishop's University.

You have no support. The APBU is useless. If you are a victim of harassment and bullying, you are on your own and have to remain sane somehow.

They use you to fix their undergraduate program and are nice to you when they need something from you. After they get what they want from you, they humiliate you and then expect you to be happy because you were selected for the position. You are lucky, lucky, lucky. You are lucky if you can keep your sanity. The faculty also don't care about their good students who are quiet. They focus all of their attention on the loud, outgoing students, so much so those students think they have complete control over you as a junior faculty member. The students and the university are not bad. The sociology faculty are absolutely toxic. If you have more scholarly output than they do, they (particularly one senior faculty member) will use students to make herself feel superior to you, while the other faculty follow. (Hint: Fake nails, fake personality). My entire class told me about how terrified students are of this one particular person. No one speaks in her classes. When one student questioned what she was saying in front of the class, he was never able to return to her class again. The faculty are all two-faced. They will act nice to your face but look for anything to smear your reputation behind your back. The worst part is that you will hear about it from students appealing their final grades in your course.

You will be stuck teaching the largest courses (130 students), the required courses students hate. Apparently, none of the full-time faculty are competent in research methods or statistics.

Other points: Eighty per cent of students plagiarize and instructors are stuck dealing with it. You can imagine how unmanageable this becomes in a class of 130 students.

Their retirement pension plan does not have enough money to support all the faculty currently retired, so you have to pay an additional 9% of your bi-weekly salary into their retirement pension plan (about 18% total). It keeps going up every year. Your salary will look amazing on the surface but expect about $20,000 in deductions for taxes and the retirement pension plan.

There is limited parking space. If you teach class after 9am, you will have to park all the way at the Sports Complex or spend 10-minutes waiting for someone to leave.

The university does not put any salt on the actual parking spots in their parking lots. Walking to your car in the winter is dangerous, plowed or not, and their winters are cold and long. They get an insane amount of snow. Don't come here if you are single. Sherbrooke is nice on the outside, but the majority of people living here are without a secondary school education, underemployed or on welfare, and many of the town folk don't speak English. Most of the people living in Sherbrooke are poor and in poverty. 4-litres of milk costs over $6.00 in Quebec. It is heart-breaking to see a father with his kids having to remove items from his basket, so he can purchase 1 litre of milk for his two children. I have given children cash at the grocery store, when their parent is not looking, to buy themselves something when I see how little their parent is able to purchase to feed two kids at a cheap store like Super C. The amount they charge for milk in Quebec is criminal. Most of the children here are living in low income homes, so you have to be okay with seeing kids and single parents that look like they would be living in a third world country.

Lycoming College    Modern Language Studies

(Spring 2019 phone interview) -- The search committee was rude and unprofessional. It was obvious that a particular candidate was favored and everyone else were warm bodies for HR. Aside from rushing the interview without having introduced themselves or having asked me about my background, etc., the search chair was rude and dismissive from the very beginning. None of them seemed to know who I was, i.e., name, institution, experience, nor did they seem to care. Moreover, there were equally snippy exchanges between the search committee members; one of the junior professors let it slip that they lied in the original announcement about both the teaching load and the opportunities for teaching upper-division courses.

Murray State    English

Strange MLA Interview. Interviewers did not seem to like the school, the town, or their students. They began the interview by asking me to read a one-page write up by the search chair detailing that Murray is in a dry county and that there's an Applebee's in town, etc. I appreciated the effort to be real, but really, on the first date you don't tell people about the wart on your ass.

• Murray is a very strange place, and drinking -- including drinking with students -- is a major part of the faculty culture. There are many good people on campus, but also many highly dysfunctional ones.

Murray State    Art History

Murray is def. in the middle of nowhere. The SC showed a positively unhealthy obsession with alcohol, which appears to be their only solace. The dept. chair only refunded (most of) my travel expenses when, after waiting weeks for a reply my inquiries, I began writing to other dept chairs politely asking if he'd met with some sort of nasty accident, or something.

Guerrilla skeptics as seen by the Wikipedia_POV wiki

 More of that raw Wikipedia_POV data goodness:

Guerrilla skeptics

From The Wikipedia POV

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The self-assigned name for a group of pro-science skeptics who are openly editing Wikipedia in a coordinated way. They attack psychics, quack medical practitioners, pseudoscience pushers, and related issues by editing Wikipedia articles using undeclared socks. For whatever reason, Rupert Sheldrake is a favored target. His BLP has become absurdly long and abusive for a semi-obscure figure.

Contents 1 past explosions 2 members 3 Tim Farley 4 External items 5 See also

[edit] past explosions

Mentioned in the following Wikipediocracy threads:

• "Guerrilla skeptics" once again, December 2013.
• "Rupert Sheldrake's BLP conspiracy", November 2013. Sheldrake is a favorite "target" for the Guerrilla Skeptics due to his aggressive promotion of his rather odd scientific views.
• "Phil Klass", June 2013.
• The Stollznow/Radford stink, March 2014. An extremely embarrassing public dispute between two prominent scientific skeptics, with consequences on Wikipedia. The Guerrilla Skeptics are involved in all the related articles.

[edit] members

The principal member is Susan Gerbic, Sgerbic (T-C-F-R-B). Socks which appear to be directly involved include Barney_the_barney_barney (T-C-F-R-B), MrBill3 (T-C-F-R-B), Alfonzo Green (T-C-F-R-B), Joshuafilmer (T-C-F-R-B), Valis55 (T-C-F-R-B) and others. Many are members of Wikiproject Skepticism, a project with some rather questionable members. (See Joshua Schroeder, Tyciol, Noleander, Ellen Smith, Frank Bednarz, Sage Ross, William M. Connolley. Plus longtime players Aaron "VoiceOfAll" Schulz (currently a WMF software developer), "Loremaster" (see Transhumanism), "IRWolfie", Doug Weller, and WMUK pest Martin Poulter, many of whom are savage anti-Scientologists.)

Occasional rare spluttering about their activities has appeared on noticeboards.[1][2][3][4][5]

There was a 2011 Signpost article about Gerbic and company. "Despite assurances from Gerbic that "it's not vandalism, which it kinds of sounds like, because we are totally following the rules", concern has already been expressed that editors may attempt to give otherwise neutral articles a pro-skeptic slant. Although in the past there have been crackdowns on religious POV-pushing (most notably the Scientology arbitration case), Gerbic was clear that what has been left behind is not sufficiently pro-skeptic, describing the "skeptical content" on Wikipedia as "not very good". "

As mentioned on Wikipediocracy[6], it appears that "Barney the barney barney" has extremely close connections to retired British archaeologist, Francis Pryor, and has done almost obsessive glorification of Pryor, his family, his friends -- but has also participated heavily in the attacks on Sheldrake.

[edit] Tim Farley

One of the worst sock operators, and the principal attacker of Sheldrake, is Vzaak. He appeared on Wikipedia in July 2013 and did almost nothing but fight over the Sheldrake bio and that of Terence McKenna. Vzaak is suspected of being Tim Farley, a fire-breathing skeptic blogger whose Wikipedia bio was created by Susan Gerbic. Farley also operates Krelnik (T-C-F-R-B), his primary account. Another account dating from July 2013 and having a similar profile (fighting over the Sheldrake article and arguing on talkpages) is Manul (T-C-F-R-B).

Yes, he is openly using sockpuppets to editwar. And he has never been called to account for these sock accounts on any Wikipedia noticeboard. Although he is allowed to fight with administrators on noticeboards, there is no evidence of resulting restrictions. Vzaak made a terror of himself on arbitration enforcement areas. [7][8][9][10] And Vzaak is allowed to heap assorted evidence onto his enemies on Sockpuppet Investigations. He is a remarkably determined "Wikilawyer". [11][12]

Some time in 2015, all of Vzaak's contributions and logs mysteriously vanished. There is no visible evidence of an oversighter destroying his history -- most likely it was merged to the Manul account. It was obviously done to cover up Farley's years of abuses (however incompetently). This explanation seems likely, as Manul then replaced Vzaak on noticeboards and arbitration enforcement complaints. [13][14][15]

[edit] External items

The Skeptics group operate openly on blogs:

• Guerrilla Skepticism On Wikipedia, their major blog, operating since 2011
• occasional mentions on the Bad UFOs blog
• and occasional mentions on Skepticblog
• "Fix Wikipedia", "marching orders" on the website operated by noted skeptic and Wikipedia fan Michael Shermer. His WP biography is carefully manicured by the Guerrilla Skeptics.
• Many are believed to also hang out on RationalWiki, where they behave like insane adolescents.
• 2015 podcast interview with Gerbic in which she admits creating sockpuppets on Facebook to fight with people she dislikes.
• Rome Viharo's endless war with Gerbic and Farley.

                     What Susan Gerbic looks like, doing her book jacket photo stance.

                         The living horror of Tim Farley/ Vzaak's visage.

Adam Hyland ("Proton-k", allegedly.)

 Below is an example of what the Wikipedia_POV wiki looks like, at least in .pdf form.

Adam Hyland

From The Wikipedia POV

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents 1 background 2 WP history 3 Identity 4 Gets blocked 5 Twitter escapades 6 other

[edit] background

AKA Protonk (T-C-F-R-B) (supposedly pronounced proton - K). Evil edit-warrior, banned many people in disputes, seems to enjoy protecting their userpages. Lives in Chicago, former US Navy, recently graduated from economics school at University of Chicago. A regular Slashdot user. Basically a complete nobody--except on Wikipedia.

[edit] WP history

"One of the things you learn in anthropology is that if you see a seemingly bizarre cultural phenomenon then you really should be asking why that exists"

Oldest diff April 2008. Most of his article-writing has been about Navy subjects. He has been accused of plagiarizing an article, it may not be his only one. Although he started out as a gnome/contributor, he eventually became an extremely incivil and foul-mouthed deletionist and talkpage troll. Seems to enjoy the defamatory possibilities of WP BLPs.

RFA October 2008. Adam revealed that he had installed and used MediaWiki before coming to Wikipedia, thus explaining (to their satisfaction) why he showed up and promptly started voting on AFDs. This is likely to be a smokescreen, to cover up previous accounts.

There are few complaints in AN/I about him, this one is typical. He occasionally participates on SPI. Uses other admins for "cover" and is otherwise "sneaky", when he isn't directly abusing someone for a minor transgression. Tends to avoid Arbcom pages.

WR thread: [1]

Protonk was one of the administrators involved in the harassment of Clayton Olney, albeit unknowingly.

In 2014, after years of declining interest, Adam returned to "editing", which in his case consists mostly of deletions and voting. In August he was the administrator who killed off one of Wikipedia's most asinine "lists of" articles, "List of notable Ice Bucket Challenge participants". [2][3] As usual for current events, the primary article Ice Bucket Challenge was subjected to ugly editwars for weeks. It was created on 13 August by none other than Jinkinson (T-C-F-R-B) (see David Gorski).

In the midst of the Zoe Quinn/Gamergate argument on AN/I, Adam the "fucking loser" felt compelled to attack Gorski.

"It's an interesting moral quandary, isn't it? On the one hand, WP:OUTING is strongly forbidden by site policy, and it causes people significant distress. Some "outings" appear to have served no greater purpose than satisfying the sadism or vindictiveness of some obsessive grudge-bearer. On the other hand, Wikipediocracy contributors have also successfully identified several cases of serious abuse of Wikipedia, where repellent behavior would have continued indefinitely if not for Wikipediocracy's "outing" (the cases I have in mind are those of Qworty (talk · contribs) and Little green rosetta (talk · contribs), although the latter seems to be active again now with an alternate account). We actually owe Wikipediocracy a debt of gratitude for calling attention to those cases, because these "outings" served a constructive purpose and likely reduced the real-life harm these individuals had caused. So... like most real-life ethical questions, it's not as black-and-white as one would like to believe. MastCell Talk 17:17, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"As someone who got doxxed for "behaving badly" by having opinions about BLPs, you can fuck right off with that. The real world is the real world, but doxxing isn't some proportionate punishment meted out for sins, real or imagined. It's cowardly bullshit designed to chill speech and heap scorn on people from afar. Protonk (talk) 19:16, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"I'm not sure whether this is a response to me (based on the indenting, I'm guessing it's not), but in any case I'd put your "outing" firmly in the category of "served no greater purpose than satisfying the sadism or vindictiveness of some obsessive grudge-bearer." I'm sorry if I implied otherwise. MastCell Talk 19:42, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"It was not directed at you. I was torn between just indenting for threading or pinging, but I figured it was less justifiable to "ping" someone and tell them to fuck off than it would be to just say it. Protonk (talk) 19:49, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"To respond to your comments that it isn't always black and white, that is true but in a really unpelasant way. To the person doing the doxxing, it's often completely black and white. Back in the day BLP apostasy was exactly that in the eyes of folks at WR and other places. BLPs were a struggle for the heart of the project and represented a real potential damage to humans based on anonymous work. We can look at them and say that this manichean view was unfounded, but they don't feel that way. The folks at Wikipediocracy are likewise concerned over sexism and harassment getting "justified" in the encyclopedia. Their concern "looks" better to us (after all, the gamer gate stuff is disgusting, but that's a story for another time), so we might be more inclined to view the outing as a necessary journalistic evil. But I don't think we need to dig too far into the piece to see that characterization as strained. The run down on TD from that article is basically "look at this fucking loser", which is par for the course with outing articles. Protonk (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2014 (UTC) "

[edit] Identity

• This page is linked from, and links to his Wikipedia page. He introduces himself at a boring Wikimedia conference here.

[edit] Gets blocked

He was blocked in January 2015 for some weird violation of Arbitration Enforcement - by none other than Harry Mitchell. For those with the appetite, the ANI discussion is here. It stemmed from some of Hyland's activities in the Zoe Quinn/Gamergate battle.

"I have a newfound appreciation for how byzantine our processes are for getting unblocked and how helpless a blocked editor can feel. That is all. Protonk (talk) 03:26, 30 January 2015 (UTC)"

[edit] Twitter escapades

In July 2016 he defends his friend Robert Fernandez by forcing Slate writer David Auerback off Twitter. [4] "Auerbach sent his media inquiries on Friday (and received no answer), and Fernandez went after him on Saturday, tweeting (and possibly calling and/or emailing) Slate and New America, two publications Auerbach has worked for."

By this time, Adam had successfully found himself a job -- with the Wiki Education Foundation. [5] Working for Frank Schulenburg, next to Sage Ross and Ian Ramjohn.

[edit] other

• Slashdot account
• Huffington Post account
• Flickr account
• Daily Show account

Categories: 

• Wikipedians
• Administration
• Edit wars
• Trolls

What's Been Going on With Patriots.Win, aka "The_Donald Without Reddit"

 For those that follow Reddit (and why the Hell are you wasting your time doing that?) a couple of years ago they banned a wad of forums ("subreddits") that Reddit (and I know it's stylized "reddit", but screw Steve Huffman) found objection for a number of reasons, and this was a site that hosted r/nazi, r/coontown, and r/picsofdeadkids (all real and banned subreddits). The Chapo Trap House subreddit (which was not loved by the hosts of the podcast it was an alleged fansite of) vanished the same day as r/The_Donald, except the the Trumpist website had already fled to TheDonald.win, a freestanding subreddit built off the "top level domain" .win, which is for gambling websites and off-track betting. Because of the January 6th Capitol riot, they changed URLs to Patriots.win and they are operating there still. TheDonald.win became America.win, and it has the following message:

The author of that  was Jody Williams, an ex-US Army guy with a buzzcut who has been called a "traitor" by The_Donald faithful. He was co-ordinating with the redditors as far back as 2019; they knew they had been on thin ice since 2017, and they were looking for an escape route. Patriots.win is that escape.

Above: What the front page looked like on the morning of 11-27-21. Notice that the "top stories" are all designed to rile the intended audience.

Below: Trump "snark dancing" photo, screenshot taken March 5, 2022.

There are now sub-sites to the Patriots.Win main page. Here is their alleged comedy page (03-09-22):

There is a question as to how many of the old moderators of The_Donald are still involved with this "new" website. Below is a list of the moderator of Patriots.win from March 5, 2022.

And here is a copypaste of a list from 2018 made by the writer of The_Donald's moderators. All of the names in bold match the above list:

Mods as of 10-23-18:

shadowman3001 (523828) 1 year ago full permissions

US2A (336062) 1 year ago full permissions

sublimeinslime (312268) 1 year ago full permissions

zettapede (43723) 1 year ago access, config, flair, mail, posts, wiki

thunderbert80 (1883442) 1 year ago access, config, flair, mail, posts, wiki

Ivaginaryfriend (1655523) 1 year ago full permissions

mivvan (416777) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

Katfish29 (106304) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

lalicat (86252) 1 year ago access, config, flair, mail, posts, wiki

SportzStar (22529) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

D4rkd3str0yer (125461) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

Sanotsuto (7356) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

bh506407 (47785) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

pm_me_yo_doggos (63683) 1 year ago access, config, flair, mail, posts, wiki

CovfefeBucks (37436) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

DrWeeGee (1755095) 1 year ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

DanWofSoc (438616) 1 year ago access, config, flair, mail, posts, wiki

BotForceOne (1) 1 year ago access, flair, posts, wiki

AutoModerator (1778) 1 year ago posts, wiki

joshhawley2018 (56243) 7 months ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

-F-B-I- (29664) 7 months ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

nimblecalifornian (18239) 7 months ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

pray_for_kekistan (129334) 7 months ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

Foss_is_Boss (155674) 4 months ago access, flair, mail, posts, wiki

That's four out of twenty-four that are a direct match from four years ago. Doggos and pm_me_yo_doggos are probably the same person, and I'm sure that a lot of the others are there as well. Two of the people on our 2018 list (joshhawley2018 and shadowman3001) were mentioned in a 2019 DailyDot article trying to replace the banned The_Donald subreddit with a formerly-private subreddit called Mr_Trump which had gone dormant. That subreddit was later banned, which meant that the users in question just joined TheDonald.win team if they weren't running it already.

Why should we care?

Well, a part of social media website became the public interface for a political campaign, and then the administration that followed it, a portion that because a hangout for the most radicalized members of a political party. The media claims that this portion of the social media website became the target for a Russian troll farm ahead of the election in 2016. Mother Jones ran an article in 2020 how the moderators of that portion gamed Reddit's rules and were able to stave off being banned for years. The story of The_Donald and Patriots.Win shows the power of the Internet, at least the propaganda/disinformation uses of it, which are frankly terrifying.