Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:50, 15 February 2008

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Basic standards of civility will be strictly enforced. Editors who are uncivil or who are deliberately provocative (i.e. trolling) will be warned, then banned from editing the case pages for escalating periods of time, enforceable by brief blocks. For the duration of the ban, banned editors may leave comments on the talk page of any non-recused clerk, provided this privilege is not abused. Rlevse 23:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Thatcher

Summary of checkuser findings

1. For the period of time encompassed by the available checkuser logs, Samiharris (talk · contribs) has edited exclusively from open proxies used by proxify.com.
2. According to user agent information recorded in the checkuser logs, Mantanmoreland (talk · contribs) and SamiHarris use very different computer setups. The value of this observation as evidence of anything is limited by the fact that user agents can be spoofed, and that proxify.com offers paid subscribers the option of substituting their own user agent with a different valid user agent.
3. The checkusers have investigated a suspicion that the SamiHarris account was set up by Wordbomb to falsely implicate Mantanmoreland in additional (post-Lastexit) sockpuppetry. The basis for this suspicion is that Wordbomb has also occasionally used proxify.com proxies . Due to the nature of proxy editing, it is unlikely that this suspicion can ever be proved or disproved.

Evidence presented by Jimbo Wales

I have personally seen no persuasive evidence

Because there has been unseemly and false speculation in some quarters that I know this (or related claims) to be true, and that I have admitted as such in private forums, it is important for me to state what I know and what I don't know.

Claims about Mantanmoreland being author Gary Weiss have been floating around for a long time. Various claims of "proof" have been made, none of which I have found convincing. At times I have believed one way, at times I have believed another way. I have investigated the claims to the best of my ability and I have been unable to find proof one way or the other.

An email I sent to Mantanmoreland and others has been widely quoted as evidence that I supposedly "know" this claim to be true. Such interpretations are malarky, and most of the people making the claims appear to me to be acting in bad faith. What I said, at a point in time, was that I believed it to be true that Mantanmoreland == Gary Weiss. This was specifically in the context of a conversation in which I was trying to get more evidence... a proof, one way or the other. Me believing at a point in time in an investigation that something was true, is not the same thing as an assertion that it is true, nor of an "admission" or anything else.

Mantanmoreland steadfastly denies being Gary Weiss. Ask him yourself if you want to know.

Related allegations that I am protecting a "friend" are nonsense. Mantanmoreland and I do not get along well at all.

Related allegations that I have some vested interest in the underlying content dispute are even worse nonsense. I have no opinion about "naked short selling". I have never sold a stock short in my life. I have no financial interests of any kind in this case. If you read anything otherwise, or hints to that effect, on the overstock.com blog or elsewhere, well, I don't know was else to say but: nonsense. I think such allegations tell more about the people who are making them than anything else.

Regarding the specific claim at issue here, whether Sami Harris and Mantanmoreland are the same user, I can say quite firmly that I do not believe it to be true. I have interacted (argued!) with both users over an extended period of time by private email, and I have not seen any reason to think it true. The offsite "evidence" relating to this comes from a highly questionable source, and furthermore strikes me as completely unpersuasive. For all we know, these are faked screenshots from someone who has engaged in a campaign of harassment and bad behavior (on-wiki and off-wiki) that has been really astounding to witness.

I have reviewed my email archives to look for similarities between the users. I have examined email headers. I have looked for textual similarities, time patterns, etc. I see nothing to lead me to a conclusion that Sami Harris and Mantanmoreland are the same user.

For these reasons, I do not believe it to be true that Mantanmoreland == Samiharris. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Cool Hand Luke

Sockpuppetry

This is a slight update to evidence presented at the RfC.

It's important to remember that Mantanmoreland has abusively used at least two sockpuppet accounts in the past: Lastexit and Tomstoner. He never admitted to this, nor did he apologize, but the accounts fell into disuse after User:Fred Bauder warned him. With that in mind, consider these facts:

• Samiharris always used a proxy.
• Mantanmoreland and Samiharris shared a POV, and were especially prolific on articles related to Naked short selling, Overstock.com, and Gary Weiss.
• They edited dozens of the same articles at similar times and to similar ends, and !voted on several issues together.
• Mantanmoreland and Samiharris edit at precisely the same times of day. (see chart, details)
  • These accounts have better correlation coefficients with each other's editing patterns than any pair of 21 other accounts studied.
• In spite of this fact, they have only interleaved edits within 30 minutes of each other five times over the last year (details), which is much much less overlap than with two randomly-selected accounts that made a comparable number of edits.
  • The closest edit was within 3 minutes. MM SH copying text (MM wrote this text the previous hour)
  • If their edits were randomly distributed over the year, there would be less than 1.5% chance that not one pair of edits would occur during the same minute. Considering the non-uniform and similar time distribution for both accounts, the true chance that this would occur randomly is much less.
  • Their contributions dovetail. That is: there are long strings of one user editing, followed by another editing, with no intersection.
• Both accounts have used uncommon expressions such as "asked and answered many times," and "lipstick on a pig"—in fact it appears the latter expression has only occurred 20 times by 14 users in talk space, and two of those instances were from Mantanmoreland and Samiharris.
• A lengthy catalog has been compiled of editing traits which these two accounts share. Of particular note are edit summaries using the strings " -- ", "rply", "duplicative", "Talk" (capitalized referring to talk page), and "as per" (instead of simply "per"). These traits are seen in several edit summaries by both of these accounts. Mantanmoreland's previous socks also shared many of these traits. However, these traits are uncommon among editors at large, based on a sample of Misplaced Pages editors.
  • " -- " is particularly notable because it was also often used by both of Mantanmoraland's previous socks, and because there are many viable alternatives, and it seems less likely that the style would be "learned" like "rply" or "lipstick on a pig. Moreover, it's a A comparison with 14 other established editors showed that few other accounts ever used it in their edit summary, and out of all 18, the four most prolific users of this precise string were Samiharris, Mantanmoreland, and his two socks (see summary table).

Given Mantanmoreland's history of abuse, and given that these accounts shared interests, ideologies, "phraseologies," editing traits, and hours of operation, this is an easy case.

These are sockpuppets.

Some users complain that there's no statistical analysis, but that's never been required in a duck test as far as I'm aware. The comparisons I've made to other user are only to increase confidence that the traits and patterns highlighted really are uncommon, and that their simultaneous reincarnation in a single user is unlikely given (1) the user's history of sockpuppet abuse, (2) both account's shared POV, and (3) Mantanmoreland's motive to shunt edits with the "appearance of COI" off to another account.

I'm willing to do anything to provide more analysis, and I've continued to elaborate on my findings. It seems, however, that no amount of circumstantial evidence will convince some users. If that's this Committee's opinion, then I'll quit wasting my time.

If, however, someone could be persuaded by a test of their choosing, I'll do anything within my means to conduct that test.

Lastly, Jimbo and others claim that the users are stylistically quite different. They refer to prolific email conversations with both users. I think the evidence in this case should be confined to the site and its official appendages, but if Jimbo or others could articulate any specific stylistic differences at all, I'll look into it with all my might, as I've already offered. Cool Hand Luke 05:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Cla68

Sockpuppetry

To show that we're setting the bar for proof of sockpuppetry here much higher than we usually do, I was going to present some diffs from the Suspected Sock Puppet noticeboard. A quick look, however, showed that almost every single incident reported there was accepted and blocks were handed out with much less scrutiny and analysis than is going on here with Mantanmoreland and Samiharris. The question has to be asked, why does Mantanmoreland get such different treatment than others? The fact is, Mantanmoreland has received preferential and troubling treatment throughout the two years of this episode and I'll give some examples below.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by Relata Refero

Naked Short Selling has seen long-term tendentious editing

As I stated here, i had not previously been involved in this issue, under this or any previous username, nor have I to my recollection ever been involved in discussion with either Mantanmoreland, Samiharris, or indeed anyone from this dispute. Nor do I have a view on the real-world dispute this reflects. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful if I had a look at this article and the related talkpage.

• My first impression was that the article had major problems, which I summarised in the linked diff, although there were no tags to indicate that. I did not at that time consider carefully what had happened on the talkpage, merely analysing the general approach.
• I then considered, purely on the basis of the current version of the talkpage, what the mechanism was by which this unfortunate state was arrived at in a fairly high-traffic article. In each of the below cases I link to my summary of the talkpage section immediately above it.
  • Here I summarise a section of the talkpage in which User:Samiharris argues with an anonymous IP about the wording of a section on legal action by companies that believe themselves defrauded by manipulative short selling of their stock. He says "Not one has succeeded. I have added this information to the encyclopedia. Please do not remove." However, as the IP correctly points out, "not succeeding" is a mischaracterisation of the then status of those and related lawsuits. Either way, relevant legal studies were available; instead a DTCC press release was aggressively defended as the sole useful source of information.
  • This is damning as far as I'm concerned. A completely impartial observer from the good people at the Business and Economics Wikiproject drops by the page as part of their regular assessment patrol. He says the style is too journalistic and over-dependent on such quotes; that there is too much focus on the media controversy and on specific cases within that controversy; and there is absolutely no discussion of the economics behind it. User:Samiharris replies (hilarious, if these allegations are true) that "this article was written by committee" and that there is only a smattering of news articles to cite, as no independent reliable sources exist. As demonstrated at the end of the talkpage, and as anyone with ten seconds to spare can determine at SSRN and EconWeb, multiple surveys exist. Why then this emphasis on journalism, quotes and controversy, in the face of impartial external input, to the point of making what on WP we can call at most an inexplicable exaggeration?
  • User:Mantanmoreland and User:Samiharris agree with each other, with no other participants in the conversation, that an article on Regulation SHO, set up by the SEC to curb naked short selling, should be replaced with a redirect to Naked Short Selling. It is called a 'blatant POVfork' in spite of the fact that an article about regulation X set up to regulate Y might more than conceivably have considerably different scope and content than an article on Y. The examples I provide in the above diff are of the obvious parallel, insider trading and the various regulations adopted to deal with that issue. I see no discernible reason why this should be different, especially since the regulation itself was highly notable in terms of dedicated coverage.
  • Samiharris removes a tag placed by another uninvolved user. The tag's removal is completely uncalled-for and again involves some creative overlooking of fairly obvious sources.
  • Finally, on the matter of a particular financial journalist's views. These come up again and again on just that section of the talkpage I see. The particular theory he espouses has received little or no attention from reliable sources, and seems to be the province of a particular kind of online bulletin board, and a few opinion columns in the financial press. My summary of a survey relevant literature is in this diff; I end with the statement "I'd like to point out this appears to be a relatively fringe-y theory, or at best something that is considerably less important than a dozen points that are not in here, and any sort of frequent pushing of it should have set off some alarm bells."

• To sum up, I have looked at a snapshot of one particular article among many involved in this dispute.
  • That article shows all the signs to me of long-term tendentious editing, something I am tragically familiar with identifying.
  • Judging by talkpage discussion, that recent tendentiousness seems to originate from User:Samiharris and User:Mantanmoreland.
  • That tendentiousness takes a particular side in what appears to be a real-world dispute over regulation policy.
  • This is not the first, nor the worst article in which real-world disputes and fringe POVs have spilled over into a Misplaced Pages article. This is, in my memory, however, the first where a long-term effort by the article's owners has succeeding in creating the impression of an article that is stable and non-disputed even though it appears to have received considerable attention. (This is particularly pernicious, in my opinion. When an article is problematic, that state should be telegraphed to the reader.)
  • Whether this is caused by false consensus, or by the fact that they received no opposition, or the possibility that all opposition was blocked as a presumed proxy for a particular editor who disagrees with this views in RL, is something on which I shall not express a view.

• Given this, I additionally submit that all evidence or proposals that begin with the assumption that "nowhere has it been demonstrated these accounts have not injured the encyclopaedia" is flawed to start off with, and should be viewed with concern.

Have a nice Arbitration,

Relata refero (talk) 14:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by JzG

For the avoidance of doubt, and at the risk of lapsing into A-O-Hell, my interactions with Mantanmoreland have been similar to Jimbo's, in similar circumstances and in some of the same groups, as with Jimbo I can't say I get along especially well or especially badly with Mantanmoreland, I too have investigated the supposed evidence and found it wanting, I too have compared emails (I have hundreds each from both Mantanmoreland and Samiharris). I can believe that Samiharris might be Weiss, I accept Mantanmoreland's often repeated statement that he is not Gary Weiss, I do not believe that Samiharris is Gary Weiss.

As an aside, it is my personal belief that most of the problem here is caused by one individual whose perspective is simply wrong. We know from copious external evidence that Judd Bagley has a vendetta against Gary Weiss. It is clear that Weiss and the issue of naked short selling amount to an obsession for Bagley, but I've seen no suggestion from anyone worth listening to that the reciprocal is true. This seems simply to be one of a number of issues that interest Weiss, a financial journalist of some reputation.

It is also clear that in as much as a problem exists, the problem is caused by Bagley's frustration (by the looks of it rage would be a better word) at being rebuffed from his attempts to abuse Misplaced Pages to promote his agenda.

By this I do not mean that sockpuppetry by Mantanmoreland or Samiharris would not be a problem, and use of open proxies is definitely a no-no, what I mean is that nobody has presented evidence of edits by Mantanmoreland which in and of themselves represent a problem per Misplaced Pages core policies. His edits, or such of them as I have reviewed, have been verifiable, neutrally stated and reasonable. His comments in debate, again per a sample review, are I think unproblematic: he has been civil and has usually focused on policy and content, avoiding ad-hominem despite acute provocation.

I think that SirFozzie did the right thing by digging through this. I think the result is inconclusive. In Scottish law, we would probably have a verdict of "Not proven", which in Misplaced Pages terms amounts to not guilty.

Assertions have been made by several people that the Misplaced Pages community has tried to bury this or protect Mantanmoreland, due to supposedly influential friends. These influential friends have not been identified. I don't know who they might be. I do know that the issue has been discussed well beyond what even the most jaded onlooker might consider suppression, given that each new round of discussion amounted to exactly the same thing: unproven assertions. In short: the community has investigated this, the community has found no compelling evidence to support the claims, the community cannot therefore take action, and hopefully the arbitration committee will, in its capacity of arbiter of community action, endorse this finding.

Cla68 asserts that the bar is set much higher here than for other cases of suspected sockpuppetry. I have never seen another case of suspected sockpuppetry where the purported puppeteer has such a long history of edits, has asserted so strongly that the accounts are unrelated, and where checkuser evidence has completely failed to support the assertion. It is possible (I don't do the SSP board so I don't know) that the bar is set lower where the purported puppeteer is a banned user with a long history of puppetry, but that is not the case here.

If the arbitrators want to wade through about six hundred emails for purposes of textual analysis, I will be happy to forward them. Guy (Help!) 15:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

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