I should also note that I found this experience to be a very positive one, and would welcome similar opportunities in the future. Please contact me via email at: antisocialmedia@gmail.com

A great example of this is his denial of so much as editing Wikipedia, in the face of evidence that not only has he been a very active Wikipedia editor, but that he’s also engaged in an concerted effort to inject misinformation into the Wikipedia articles on naked short selling, prominent opponent of naked short selling Patrick Byrne, and Overstock.com, which is the company Byrne heads as CEO.

To give a little background, here’s what Weiss originally wrote (and later deleted) in his blog in response to my repeated claims that he was the now-infamous Wikipedia editor “Mantanmoreland”.

Bagley didn’t even pretend to have contacted me, not that it would have prevented him from publishing his smears — just as Wikipedia’s denial, and mine, has never prevented him from repeating, again and again, his malicious lie that I have edited Wikipedia.

About that same time, Weiss added this comment to his blog:

I think that it is indicative of Judd’s (and his boss’s) malice — in every sense of the word — that he would publish an outright lie while knowing that it is a lie. Both I and the DTCC have denied the total rubbish that he posted on his website.

Similarly he continues to publish the lie that I am this “Mantanmoreland” long after it was, again, denied by both myself and Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia.

Since ASM is an extension of Overstock.com, operated with the blessing and open and enthusiastic support of its CEO, I think that what you have here goes clearly beyond ethical issues. Of course corporate ethics is clearly never a consideration for Patrick Byrne, in earning the merit badges required to gaint he sought-after title of “America’s worst CEO.”
Gary Weiss | Homepage | 02.09.07 – 11:07 am | #

Before proceeding, let’s make sure everybody agrees that Gary Weiss insists my claim that he has edited Wikipedia is a “malicious lie.”

Everybody clear on that?

Good. Now on to Gary’s email. (Read this to learn how I came to posses email between Gary Weiss and another individual).

On 1/28/2006 at 7:19 PM, Floyd Schneider became aware of the battle that was raging for control of the Wikipedia article on naked short selling, and sent a link to Gary Weiss.

The next morning, Weiss sent the following two replies:

From: garyrweiss@verizon.net
To: Floyd3491@aol.com
Subject: Re: (no subject)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 11:13:46 -0500
Received: from unknown (HELO maincomputer) (garyrweiss@verizon.net@70.23.85.112 with login) by smtp101.vzn.mail.dcn.yahoo.com with SMTP; 29 Jan 2006 16:13:43 -0000
—————
Note that they’re hijacking that page. However, anyone can unhijack. You just go into edit mode, select all and copy the page when it is in good shape, and save it as a text file. That makes it easier to replace the page when it has been baloneyfied. I may insert a reference to my book at some point…..

From: garyrweiss@verizon.net
To: Floyd3491@aol.com
Subject:
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 11:21:46 -0500
Received: from unknown (HELO maincomputer) (garyrweiss@verizon.net@70.23.85.112 with login) by smtp101.vzn.mail.dcn.yahoo.com with SMTP; 29 Jan 2006 16:21:43 -0000
—————
right now, for example, it is in pretty good shape. In fact….. well, here
is what one simply has to plug in… attached.

You can see the document Weiss attached here.

So, those are the emails.

Here’s what they tell us.

First, we now know that as early as 1/28/2006, Gary Weiss clearly had edited Wikipedia, which is not itself a big deal. Yet, Weiss calls the claim a “malicious lie.”

Indeed, it is Weiss who is lying.

Second, we now know (as if there were any doubt) that Weiss was “Mantanmoreland”. Here’s how:
Note Weiss’s IP address on January 28 and 29, 2006 as reflected by these two emails: 70.23.85.112. Now, look at the Wikipedia edit history of IP address 70.23.85.112.

As you can see, someone using the IP address 70.23.85.112 was eagerly editing the Wikipedia article on naked short selling on January 27 and 28, 2006 and then stops abruptly.

The final act of the editor at IP address 70.23.85.112 was to edit the article to appear precisely how it did in the file Weiss sent Schneider.

Wikipedia editor “Mantanmoreland” is created shortly thereafter and his first act is then to restore the naked shorting article to how it appeared where 70.23.85.112 left off (again, precisely mirroring the content of the attachment Weiss had sent to Schneider).

Weiss sent his second reply to Schneider before any edits were made to that version, noting “right now, for example, it is in pretty good shape.”

From this, we know that Gary Weiss = 70.23.85.112 = Mantanmoreland, and that Weiss’s MANY ongoing denials are among the more deeply disturbing lies I’ve witnessed another human concoct.

While hardly germane, given the gravity of the above, I’d like to make out two additional points (a little running up of the score, if you will).

First, the act of recruiting others to mimic one’s position when editing an article on Wikipedia is known as “meatpuppeting”, and is regarded as a serious offense in that silly culture. This is precisely what Weiss has done here, although there is no evidence that Schneider acted upon Weiss’s request.

Second, for all the times he has lied, Weiss certainly told the truth when he said, “I may insert a reference to my book at some point.”

Beginning one week after the publication of his second book on April 6, 2006, Weiss added (and very jealously guarded) dozens of references to his book, many of which persist to this day.

By all accounts, the resulting mass of evidence vastly exceeded any previous effort and produced a “case” supporting the claim that Gary Weiss has, in extreme violation of Wikipedia policy, deceitfully operated multiple accounts in an effort to skew the articles relating to naked short selling, Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, and Gary Weiss himself.

Those unfamiliar with Wikipedia policy might not appreciate just how big a deal this really is.

It’s very satisfying to see so much support for the claim that has, over the past year, created so much misery for the few who have believed it.

That misery was occasioned, in large part, by the inexplicable obstructionism of Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, who intervened on multiple occasions to halt efforts threatening to tie Weiss to his many wiki sockpuppet identities.

Initially, it seemed reasonable to assume that Wales’s unreasonable behavior was based on bad information, and that he was otherwise acting in good faith.

That changed, however, when several of Wales’s contributions to a very small and private email list were recently leaked to me.

Of these, the most interesting, dated September 15, 2007, reads as follows:

From: jwales@wikia.com (Jimbo Wales)
I just want to go on record as saying that I believe the reason for this is that Mantanmoreland is in fact Gary Weiss.

Before lauding Wales’s apparent enlightenment on this topic, note the comment he made one month later, in reference to his support of an effort to block model Wikipedia editor Cla68 from making the most reasonable changes to the Gary Weiss article autobiography:

“Cla68, I fear that you have been manipulated by lying stalkers and trolls…”

In case it’s not clear, this is one of Wales’s many references to me as “lying stalker” and “troll.”

Kindly re-read the previous few paragraphs in case the following point is not made crystal clear to you: in private, Wales admitted knowing that I was correct about Gary Weiss, and yet in public, continued protecting Weiss, defaming me and castigating those who recognized and acted upon the truth as reported here.

What could possibly motivate someone to be not only deceitful, but deeply, irresponsibly and libelously deceitful?

Before you answer, consider the insights we can glean from the examples of Rachel Marsden and Jeff Merkey.

Rachel Marsden
Marsden is a controversial Canadian media personality and political consultant whose Wikipedia article has consistently tended toward the disproportionately negative.

While the full extent of their relationship is unknown, the emergence of a series of IM chat transcripts between Marsden and Wales makes it clear that in early February of this year, the relationship was…shall we say…a physical one.

Confronted with an overwhelming body of evidence, Wales conceded to a single “meeting” with Marsden, which took place on February 9, 2008.

While other evidence would suggest Wales isn’t telling the truth here, let us none-the-less focus on the circumstances surrounding that meeting.

In the following excerpted IM chat exchange between Wales and Marsden leading up to the February 9 meeting (originally published in Valleywag.com), the two discuss a specific point of inaccuracy in her article.

Wales: I wrote an email to the internal editors list about your entry recommending some changes, etc. I said that I would run it by you for clarification/comment and email again if there were any updates I think we have two major problems right now first, the timeline is wrong about the recent cop case… that is the worst error and easy to fix

Wales: right so the way it is told now, hang on a second let’s actually do this right now because the last thing I want to do is take a break from f**king your brains out all night to work on your wikipedia entry

"In September 2007, on her blog Marsden wrote about and posted a picture of a counterterrorism officer for the Ontario Provincial Police with whom she had an affair. She claimed that he had leaked secret anti-terrorism documents to her, then posted email messages from him as evidence that he had been pursuing her, and sent to the National Post these along with sexually explicit pictures of him that she had received. She was investigated for criminal harassment for this behaviour, but was not charged. The OPP’s criminal investigations branch cleared the officer of any wrongdoing."

so our timeline is wrong we say
(1) wrote about him on your blog
(2) posted email messages from him
(3) as a result he files harassment charges

Marsden: exactly. it was a retaliatory complaint on his part that was launched 2 months after they initiated their investigation into his stuff.

Wales: but the correct timeline is
(1) wrote about him on the blog
(2) he files harassment charges
(3) you post email messages to show how his harassment charges are bullshit

Marsden: you’re a sh*tdisturber. right I only posted the emails after he went public trying to create trouble. NOT before that.

Wales: so we can get that sorted and then this makes the story clearer

Marsden: that’s good of you to do. really.

Comparing the substance of this chat session with the edit history of the Rachel Marsden article in the days leading up to February 9, 2008, we see something rather striking: On February 7, wikipedian Guy Chapman (aka “JzG”) commits two changes (1)(2) which have the net effect of making precisely the content alterations Marsden requested.

Jeff Merkey
Merkey is a computer scientist and entrepreneur whose Wikipedia article came under attack by several editors critical of his professional associations.

According to Merkey, in 2006, Wales told him that in exchange for a substantial donation, Wales could use his influence to make Merkey’s article more agreeable, and to place Merkey himself under Wales’s “special protection” as an editor.

Merkey made a $5,000 donation and hinted at the possibility of something much larger in the future.

Merkey claims, and the record confirms, that following his donation, Wales personally made several edits to the Merkey article, including a complete blanking of the article and destruction of its edit history (extreme steps to take under any circumstances, and doubly so considering it happened without any effort at reaching consensus, which is supposedly the coin of the Wikipedia realm).

When he announced his unilateral “start-over” on the article, Wales offered:

I have deleted the old discussion because of the unpleasantness of it. Please be extra careful here to be courteous and assume good faith. We are nearing a resolution of this longstanding conflict. Play nice, everyone.

A priceless response came 20 minutes later by wikipedian Aim Here, who asked:

“…Have you been making secret dealings behind everyone’s back? So much for Wikipedia’s openness.”

To which Wales nervously responded:

“Secret dealings? What on earth are you talking about?”

To which wikipedian Aim Here replied:

Whether or not the original article was a mess, you did use the phrase ‘nearing a restitution of this longstanding conflict’, which suggests, despite the complete lack of evidence available in public, that there is an actual conflict going on, as opposed to one which had been completely dormant for ages now. After all, suddenly and with no warning, wiping out an article and ordering everyone to start again over some sourcing problems is rather heavy-handed and drastic. The normal WP procedure is to stick some tags on it and telling everyone to change the bad bits. The ’secret deals’ phrase was of course total speculation, and sorry about that, but I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t something happening in private that sparked off this wholesale deletion of yours, either a deal or a threatened lawsuit. After all, pretty much the last thing Merkey said on this whole stupid subject was that he had been trying, in private, to throw $2 million at you and/or Wikipedia and threatening his usual bag of lawsuits. Well, whatever…

If this exchange seems familiar, it may be because it roughly resembles this one, which followed Jimbo Wales’ unilateral blanking of the debate over the proposed deletion of the article autobiography on Gary Weiss:

The page contained wildly inappropriate speculation that a notable author was sockpuppeting. As I am sure you are aware, many authors have had their careers badly damaged by being caught sockpuppeting at Amazon, etc., and it is deeply wrong for people to ask me to restore a page with such speculations in Wikipedia after the claims have already been investigated and dismissed. If there are further problems in the future, there will be no problem restoring the article at that time.

As an aside, based on Wales’s promise that “If there are further problems in the future, there will be no problem restoring the article at that time,” wikipedian Cool Hand Luke asked Jimbo for permission to un-delete the deletion debate in order to reference it during the present ArbCom case relating directly to the matter of Gary Weiss and his conflict of interest on Wikipedia.

Jimbo’s response: “I see no benefit in doing so.”

Conclusion
As the Rachel Marsden example demonstrates, when he’s “getting something” in return, Jimbo Wales is willing to use his position to influence Wikipedia article content.

As the Jeff Merkey example demonstrates, in addition to female companionship, that “something” can also come in the form of donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.

As the Gary Weiss example demonstrates, Jimbo Wales is willing to use Wikipedia as a tool of libel and disinformation when doing so suits him.

Only one question remains: what exactly is Jimbo Wales getting in return for continuing to publicly defame me and shield Gary Weiss from accountability for his two-year campaign of malice and disinformation, in support of illegal stock market manipulation?

But just as the Yin and the Yang are opposite ends of the same stick, when one acquires a new friend, one often acquires that friend’s enemies, too.

Over the past month, it has become evident that AntiSocialMedia.net, which rarely boasts enough traffic to register on any scale, has acquired the least likely set of enemies: the leadership of Wikipedia (the ninth most popular website on the earth).

I’ll admit, it’s not easy finding the Zen in being on my side of such a grossly unfair fight.

To understand how unfair, I offer some perspective:

• It takes AntiSocialMedia.net about one week to log as many unique visitors as Wikipedia logs in less than one minute.
• Googling “AntiSocialMedia.net” returns 2,327 results.
• Googling “Wikipedia.org” returns 43,100,000 results (7,000,000 more than you get by googling “Google.com”).
• Of the three most frequently-cited sources of Wikipedia criticism (AntiSocialMedia.net, Wikipedia Review and Encyclopedia Dramatica), AntiSocialMedia.net is the smallest, the most obscure, most infrequently updated, most understaffed, and the only one not focused exclusively on “Wikipedia criticism.”

Given these extreme imbalances, how strange that Wikipedia would make AntiSocialMedia.net, the focus of its epic “BADSITES” initiative.

What’s “BADSITES,” you ask?

“BADSITES” apparently beat out “UNGOODSITES” as the shorthand name assigned to the month old (and counting) effort by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) to officially forbid any reference to AntiSocialMeida.net on Wikipedia, under penalty of immediate banning.

To understand how extreme that move is, keep in mind the fact that Wikipedia currently endorses mentions of, and links to, websites that advocate pedophilia, racism, and related moral deprivation. Yet, the one website soon to be stricken as a matter of official Wikipedia, and which ArbCom member Fred Bauder claims “displays moral depravity,” is the one you’re reading now.

There have literally been scores, and likely more, of instances where the mere questioning of the validity of the claims against AntiSocialMedia.net results in immediate banning and removal of the comment.

If there is Zen to be found in these atrocities, it’s the de facto confirmation of the existence of “thoughtcrime” on Wikipedia.

Here’s a perfect example, engineered by me specifically to demonstrate this point.

For a month, a carefully managed discussion of the issues surrounding BADSITES has been taking place on a half-dozen sufficiently cloistered corners of Wikipedia. This is where naive and well-meaning editors go to die.

One week ago, User:Greenstick Break (previously created by me) jumped into the middle of one of these conversations to ask Fred Bauder what should have been the obvious question.

(Note: this is actually a two-fer, in that Fred’s comment nicely confirms one of the central theses of this site, as well as the searing dishonesty of Gary Weiss/Mantanmoreland.)

Fred Bauder: “…For example, one claim is that Matamoreland (sic) uses sockpuppets. Well, he did, when he first started editing two years ago. And he got caught, was warned, AND QUIT USING SOCKPUPPETS…”

Greenstick Break: “Now help me out here, Fred. You just confirmed that WordBomb was correct when he said Mantanmoreland was using socks. In another venue you confirmed that WordBomb was correct when he said Mantanmoreland had a [conflict of interest] problem. Whether or not you think the User:SlimVirgin/ User:Sweet Blue Water connection + User:jayjg oversight issue is a problem, I think it’s generally understood that WordBomb got those facts right, too.
Yet WordBomb is the one that’s banned and whose site cannot be named???
Will somebody PLEASE show me what WordBomb got so wrong as to justify all this?”

It took less than four minutes from the time that comment was posted until the time ArbCom member Jpgordon had removed it and banned Greenstick Break, claiming (impossibly), that he had managed to squeeze a completed CheckUser search in there, as well.

Greenstick Break mounted a tepid defense, partly for show and partly to force Jpgordon to actually consult CheckUser (as you’ll see, that was a necessary part of this plan).

About 45 minutes later, while Jpgordon remained actively editing, I created User:Fjse44 via precisely the same connection, IP address and browser (with all cookies intact) that I had used when editing as Greenstick Break just moments before.

I wanted it to be very easy for Jpgordon or any other CheckUser to know, if they cared at all, that Greenstick Break and Fjse44 belonged to the same banned user.

The only thing that made Fjse44 different from Greenstick Break was sentiment, as I used the account (for the greater good and while holding my nose) to respond dismissively to a perfectly logical comment by Dan Tobias on the same page as Greenstick Break’s.

*Dan T.*: “One should note that The New York Times linked to ASM when it was relevant to a controversy they were covering. But I guess we’re so much more mature, sophisticated, and tasteful in our editorial judgment than they are.”

Fjse44: “The New York Times gets to set its content policies as we do ours. Apples/oranges.”

Ten days later, the pro-BADSITES comment remains in place, and pro-BADSITES commenter Fjse44 remains a Wikipedian in good standing (though that will likely change soon, now that Fjse44 is tied to WordBomb).

The take home lesson here is that under otherwise identical circumstances, Jpgordon banned one user based entirely on his opinion.

That is thoughtcrime.

Normally, this lack of judgment would land even an ArbCom member in hot water. But by now, any sentient observer of the process has seen enough to know that when it comes to AntiSocialMedia.net, the rules have been officially suspended.

Here’s a beautiful example of Wikipedia’s new thoughtcrime paradigm.

It’s a portion of an exchange between the uncommonly gutsy User:G-Dett (whom I’m reticent to praise for fear of what might befall her) and User:Ryulong, shortly after the latter banned User:Onomato as a WordBomb sockpuppet, based on nothing more than his having made some minor changes to the Wikipedia article on Patrick Byrne.

G-Dett : “Would it be fair to say that Wikipedia’s current working definition of a WordBomb sockpuppet is anyone whose edits focus (either wholly or in part) on naked-short-selling -related articles, and who opposes User:Mantanmoreland and User:Samiharris?”

Ryūlóng: “They would be common traits as far as I know.”

G-Dett : “Of course they’re common traits; my question was whether they’re enough for a positive ID.”

Ryūlóng: “I would say so.”

Thoughtcrime. You may not like it, but at least it’s out in the open now.

Having laid that foundation, allow me to return to my initial point: that there’s an enormous disconnect between what’s been published on AntiSocialMedia.net so far, and the severity of Wikipedia leadership’s response to it.

I believe the reason these efforts are aimed against AntiSocialMedia.net, as opposed to the other, more obvious targets, is that I alone possess the past Wikipedia database dumps which, through analysis of what has since been covertly removed, provide unambiguous roadmaps of disturbing behavior at the highest levels of Wikipedia leadership.

I believe their primary concern – and the motive for such Orwellian behavior – is not for what I have published, but for what they know, based on the data in my possession, I potentially could publish.

Nobody aspires to have “enemies,” particularly when ambushed by a brass knuckle-wielding band of them. But if there is Zen to be found in the experience, it’s realizing that the subjects of my efforts – my self appointed “enemies” – appear to place a higher value upon my work than even I do.

Below, you can see a reproduction of the email I sent on the left, and the response, when applicable on the right. Albert Kidd (aka ScipioAfricanus) The most persistent critic of AntiSocialMedia.net is Albert Kidd, whose blog boasts roughly ten times more content than the site it purports to deconstruct. Kidd’s reply arrived quickly, but was only a “reply” in the technical sense, as you’ll read:

With that in mind, I sent the following to Gary.

“In preparation for another lie-a-gram, Bagley recently emailed myself and other critics (such as this one) to plead what oh what have I said that wasn’t true?”

“If, as I believe, Bagley was both TeachMeSomething and pbyrnepatriot, he has participated on this very board, has read my posts, and almost undoubtedly still has access. Given that, to mis-render my opinion of him as questioning the accuracy of his blog is disingenous to a fault. The unctuous nature of the e-mail, overflowing with kindness and the desire to do right, simply heightens its falsity…

“But I am willing to fire where obvious targets present themselves, and should I receive any further communication, intimidating or otherwise, from Judd “Anal-Cranial Inversion” Bagley, his profile will be raised.”

As I stated above, and reiterate now, I have never once posted on any fool.com message board, nor directed anybody else to do so. If that’s what’s keeping UR from replying, I hope he will reconsider. But wait, there’s more.Last week, Wikipedia took unprecedented steps to keep me (or any who might agree with me) from accessing the encyclopedia that “anyone can edit.”

Specifically, MediaWiki Foundation employee David Gerard blocked every computer on my employer’s network from accessing Wikipedia.

Because it’s impossible to justify such a sweeping and ostensibly permanent block for the sake of one non-vandal, Gerard instead claimed it was to thwart “commercial spamming.”

As if on cue, Hu12 jumped to attention, saying “They’ve been very naughty” and promising to rid Wikipedia of inappropriate links to Overstock.com.

Over the next five minutes, the hard-working Hu12 managed to eradicate a total of four links, added over the course of six months by four separate editors.

For those unfamiliar with the problem of Wikipedia spam, let’s just say four links falls so short of the threshold of “spam” as to not be worth mentioning.

To put a finer point on it, Gary Weiss added double that many references to his own book, each of which remains to this day.

Perplexed, I emailed Hu12 to learn more.

Curious, I emailed Gerard to learn more.

In response, I created and posted the following table, listing all Wikipedia editors named on these pages, the claim made about them, and any confirmation of that claim.

I also left a column for Sandifer to note any applicable unseemliness.

Of course that column remains unchanged.

Editor	Claim	Reality	Unseemliness
Mantanmoreland	has a COI problem	Fred Bauder confirms	(please insert unseemliness here)
Lastexit	Mantanmoreland sock	Fred Bauder confirms	(please insert unseemliness here)
Tomstoner	Mantanmoreland sock	Fred Bauder confirms	(please insert unseemliness here)
Fred Bauder	exists	Fred Bauder confirms	(please insert unseemliness here)
Sweet Blue Water	SlimVirgin sockpuppet	SlimVirgin confirms	(please insert unseemliness here)
Jayjg	oversighted embarrassing SlimVirgin edits	recovered diffs confirm	(please insert unseemliness here)
FloNight	exists	FloNight confirms	(please insert unseemliness here)
Cla68	Proposed the article on Gary Weiss for deletion	nobody denies	(please insert unseemliness here)
Jimbo Wales	Deleted the record of the Gary Weiss deletion debate	Jimbo admits	(please insert unseemliness here)
SlimVirgin	Has a name in real life	unconfirmed	(please insert unseemliness here)
WordBomb	is upset about most of these things	his blog confirms	(please insert unseemliness here)

David Gerard offered three responses.

• The first was to very publicly encourage me to “F*ck off.”
• The second, like the first, publicly suggested that I “F*ck off.”
• The third was to block, for six months, the IP address that my home shares with 1,000 other subscribers of the local ISP.

To justify yet another unprecedented move, Gerard noted:

“Favourite open proxy of Judd Bagley/overstock.com, actively (and almost exclusively) used by them.”

As this record of anon edits (of which none is mine) attests, it most certainly is an actively used IP, but hardly exclusive to me, and never by Overstock.com.

More to the point, the now blocked IP is the exact opposite of an open proxy, in that only paying subscribers may access it.

Wanting to help Gerard do the right thing, I sent him the following email:

Obviously, something is broken.

Is it my email, or those on the receiving end?

Because my email seems to be working for everybody else, I’m going to say the problem is limited to the above nine people and their inability to defend their shameful actions. ]]> http://antisocialmedia.net/my-email-must-be-broken/feed/ 0 http://antisocialmedia.net/wikipedia-it-pays-to-have-friends-in-high-places/ http://antisocialmedia.net/wikipedia-it-pays-to-have-friends-in-high-places/#comments Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:57:50 +0000 antisocialmedia http://antisocialmedia.net/?p=37 We like to think that based on the strength of some of the research on this site, a move to delete the Wikipedia article autobiography of Gary Weiss was undertaken recently.

A longshot from the beginning, that effort failed despite the principled efforts of Cla68, an exemplary contributor and a truly bright light in what can seem an otherwise dark place.

A couple of interesting things happened through the proposed article for deletion (AfD) process. One is that Gary Weiss himself basically came unglued. The other is the subsequent deletion of record of the AfD debate (and with it record of Weiss’s mental decomposition).

As it turns out, the deletion of that debate will be hard to undo, since it came from the top of the Wikipedia organization: Jimbo Wales himself. Wales claims the debate was filled with “discourteous commentary” and as such meriting elimination from the record.

Last week an anonynmous editor asked Jimbo about his decision. That conversation, at least for now, may be read here. Not surprisingly, that editor was soon banned as a WordBomb sockpuppet.

Thanks to an enterprising administrator with the requisite permissions, the deleted debate has been recovered and is reproduced here for your enlightenment. Please inspect it and then comment on what you see as commentary of so discourteous a nature as to require elimination.

Then Goofus arrived, leaving a string of comments, each more irresponsible and intellectually dishonest than the last.

I finally decided that one more Gary Weiss-focused post was needed in order to make the case so clear that even Goofus would struggle to swallow the pride necessary to counter it.

My main challenge in assembling these points of evidence was not finding them, but deciding what to leave out. This dilema reminded me of an anecdotal story told about Milton Berle and advice he was given when participating in a very specific competition (details of which are omitted): “Hey Miltie, be kind and only take out enough to win.”

What follows is calculated to be just “enough to win.”

Gary Weiss’s sockdrawer. Click image to enlarge

This image graphically represents the edits of Gary’s most obvious sockpuppets (Mantanmoreland, Lastexit and Tomstoner) on a per day basis, stacking them to reach a cumulative daily number.

A few regions immediately stand out as unique. Crossreferencing those regions with what we know about Gary Weiss proves instructive.

Why take exactly one month away from Wikipedia?

April 13 turns out to be significant, as it’s precisely one week after the publication of Gary Weiss’s book.

It was necessary to wait one week because Mantanmoreland — a supposed stranger to Weiss — used as his rationale for creating Gary’s page that he was a fan of his book (implying that he had actually read it), he had to wait a few days to make that claim plausible.

Why take exactly one month off?

It’s understood that Wikipedia purges its server logs monthly, thus requests to tie two accounts together as sockpuppets via an administrative process known as “Checkuser” cannot be considered if more than one month has passed since one of the two has edited.

Gary likely wanted to put some distance between Mantanmoreland and the edit warring that defined Mantanmoreland’s first two months of existence, not to mention the abuses of his sockmate Doright.

During the same period, a clear increase in “basher” posting on Yahoo’s OSTK message board is observed, much of it hyping Weiss’s book (more on that subject in a future post).

The first serious effort at publicly unmasking Gary Weiss as sockpuppetmaster was carried out by WordBomb and took place on July 23.

Sadly, all evidence of it have been eliminated by SlimVirgin, FloNight and JayJG.

However, enough people did get the message that Weiss immediately discontinued editing with all outed sockpuppets except for Mantanmoreland and Lastexit, whom he briefly claimed were nephew and uncle living together and using the same computer without realizing each was actively involved in editing articles on naked shorting and Patrick Byrne.

Seriously.

He said that.

However, by July 29, Lastexit had also been put into storage.

And then, as Agatha Christie would have written, there was one.

Weiss spent August 23rd failing to manage the debacle, and then wisely spent the following two days under his desk, as reflected by Mantanmoreland’s absence of edits on the 24th and 25th.

Mantanmoreland’s edit trends before Weiss trip to India: running average of about 20 edits per day.

Mantanmoreland’s edit trends while Weiss is in India dropped to under two per day

Since April 13, Mantanmoreland’s most significant reduction in Wikipedia editing activity started on September 25 and appears to have ended on October 18.

During that time, Mantanmoreland’s average daily edits dropped from over 20 to under two.

Interestingly, Gary Weiss’s most notable absence from his blog started on September 24 and ended on October 17. #5:Bonus point At the risk of being accused of poor sportsmanship for running up the score, allow me to end with this final point, dedicated to the ever-doubting Goofus:You’ll note that Gary Weiss’s honeymoon missive from India is datelined VARKALA, INDIA and includes the phrase:

In the seacoast town in Kerala where I am writing this, with its fishermen’s huts, coconut palms…

Interestingly, on May 17, 2006 Mantanmoreland made this edit to the Wikipedia article on Varkala, India:

Varkala is a coastal Town in Kerala state, India.

Given how few total edits to that article have been made, even Goofus will have a difficult time claiming that’s a coincidence. Clearly, Gary Weiss needs to apologize for treating us all like fools, and to his lone defender Goofus for making him play the part so well on his fool’s errand. ]]> http://antisocialmedia.net/final-word-on-weiss/feed/ 4