Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 11:27, 19 September 2007

Evidence or essay?

SlimVirgin's contribution appears to be an essay rather than evidence, and probably does not belong on the evidence page. It strictly gives her opinion and line of argument on the issue, without citing any actual events or diffs. Daniel Brandt's contribution is similarly mostly in the nature of a statement of opinion, though it does at least make some references to actual events. These statements would be better placed on a talk page, or as proposed principles or remedies on the Workshop page, than on the evidence page. *Dan T.* 04:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I note that, since I wrote the above, several other additions, coming from "both sides" of the issue, also seem to be more essays and opinion pieces than presentations of evidence. Perhaps I'm wrong about the intended purpose of the evidence page? *Dan T.* 15:09, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

RE: Evidence presented by MONGO

Mongo quotes a conversation he and I had back in 2006 as evidence that I was a "harasser" and a "troll". Says Mongo:

Even after the Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/MONGO case was settled and the remedy that links to ED "may" be removed, I was harassed about it when I removed only a few links so, many, times, it, could, only, be, because they thought it was funny...to troll my talkpage about something that I was obviously not interested in chatting about.

I would just like to point out that the conversation I had with him was a good faith discussion, and I sincerely apologized to MONGO for upsetting him by discussing an unpleasant subject with him. . I did not find his distress at all funny-- the "funny" is a 2007 quote from a completely different context that had nothing to do with MONGO.

Ironically MONGO's mischaracterization of my 2006 interaction with him probably violates NPA and CIVILITY, but I think repoting it to one of the notice boards would probably just inflame the situation, not resolve it. I know MONGO has had trouble with this in the past, and I sincerely am open to any suggestions as to how I can help MONGO understand that I am not trying to harass him/troll him. --Alecmconroy 05:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

submit this as evidence. Viridae 05:55, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Ya think? his allegations are sufficently far removed from the issue at hand that it seems a waste of space to trouble the arbs with it. I'm not a party, nobody's suggesting any remedies involving me. There's a certain "Don't Feed The Distractions" principle that makes me think this is best left to talk. --Alecmconroy 06:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Alecmconroy was warned about his harassment, he was but one of many people who harassed me after I was merely doing as the MONGO ruling permitted and endorsed. The facts of the case are, that partisans for ED and other websites of similar manner will wikilaywer to death any arbitration remedy that results in banning links to websites that post personally revealing information about our editors.--MONGO 06:03, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Mongo-- ad hominem doesn't help anyone. Please do not call me a "troll", a "harasser", or a ED partisan. We all know you've been warned on multiple occasions that this is a "problem behavior" for you. Everyone in this Arbitration has been working well together, acting under the mutual assumption of good faiths. Don't spoil that now. You and I have a philosophical difference of opinion about what Misplaced Pages should be, but that's no reason for us to just start name-calling. --Alecmconroy 06:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Is that what I called you? My "philosophical difference" in opinion about what this website is all about is well detailed on my userpage...I'm here to write an encyclopedia and to work with others who have suffered harassment to try and find a way to ensure they don't have to deal with the same badgering and wikilawyering nonsense that I did.--MONGO 06:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The goal of saving others from harassment is a virtue indeed, Mongo, but it is not the only virtue. Consider-- as of this moment, you are presenting evidence to the Arbitration Committee that that I "trolled" your page and "found it funny". You are testifying not that we had a difference of opinion, but that I intentionally harrassed you for my own amusement. That is a very serious charge, and you should take some time to seriously consider whether you really believe that is true.

If, upon reflection, you find that you truly do know that I'm just a good-faith editor here to do my best to improve wikipedia-- that's fine no harm done. Everyone gets hot under the collar and makes hyperbolic posts. I'm thick skinned, and it doesn't distress me that somebody in an intense debate can sometimes get a little angry.

Or on the other hand, maybe you weren't overwhelmed by anger, but instead you just care so deeply about your principles that you think falsly disparaging my character is the only way to salvage what you see as an essential Misplaced Pages policy. That also wouldn't concern me-- we have an entry on "ad hominen" for a reason, and it is often an effective debating tactic.

What does truly concern me, however, is the prospect that you might truly, in your heart of hearts, genuinely believe I'm a "harasser" and "troll". That you might automatically equate disagreement with bad faith, that you may be unable to distinguish one from the other. I genuinely hope you're just angry, or that you're just resorting to namecalling in the absence of better arguments. But if you, having had over a year to look over my actions, having received my multiple apologies, and having gotten to know me-- if you still really believe what you say in your evidence section.... then it is probably only a matter of time before you are indefinitely banned from participation in the project for contributing more to discord than you do to harmony.

A year ago, after our conversation, I apologized, and I called on the larger community to reach out to help you, because I realized from your actions you were a good person who was having a problem. I didn't ask them to block you, I didn't ask them to desysop you-- I just asked them to help you understand, so that you would be able to stop future occurances of that behavior. In the end, we failed and you failed, and the behavior continued, and now Misplaced Pages has one less admin to help with important tasks.

I face a similar quandary now. The Evidence you present is unconscienable, and I'm a bit at a loss as to how to help you in the situation. Proposing some sort of warning be administered to you is unlikely to help you-- you've already received several such warnings. Propose a block or a ban would just be admitting defeat-- giving up any hope of solving your behavior problems. I thought time might resolve the situation, buti over a year, I believe I've been nothing but polite and respectful towards you-- yet still you accuse me of harassment and trolling. I'm a little unsure what to do to help you.

All I can think of is to say is this: Seriously look at the evidence you presented and ask yourself if that evidence is what you truly want your contribution to this very important discussion to be.

I hope my words help. I truly do. --Alecmconroy 08:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The evidence is in the diffs...your continued badgering led to increasingly less polite comments by me, and many commentators on AN/I responded to your complaint that indeed, you were badgering and wikilaywering. My point is, by bringing your badgering up, that this is what I faced when dealing with those who want to link to websites, even after the arbcom has said not to. An arbitrator eventually adjusted all the links in accordance with the remedy anonymously voted on in the MONGO case. You badgered me about my removal of about 20 of them...if arbcom passes a remedy that states that links to other websites "may" be removed...surely, the badgering wikilawyers will harass those who do such removals. I'm a little unsure what to do to help you. I hope my words help. I truly do.--MONGO 20:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

A few people did say I handled the conversation poorly by failing to pick up on your Wikistress. I'm one of them-- I've apologized several times for upsetting you. By throwing it back in my face now, a year later, is a continuation of the problem behavior you've exhibited in the past. --Alecmconroy 11:19, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the problem is that you saw an extremely inappropriate post, trivialising the fact that people have had their jobs threatened and their families harassed, and mocking those who have suffered in that way as well as those who want to treat them with consideration, and instead of being disgusted, you said that it made you chuckle. That indicates that you don't really care very much about the distress that was caused to MONGO and others. ElinorD (talk) 11:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The noble goal of protecting people from harrassment is hardly served by cheapening the very concept of "harrassment" by labeling legitimate commentary with that name. *Dan T.* 12:06, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the one who cheapened the concept of harassment, Dan, is yourself, in that extremely inappropriate Rutabaga post. ElinorD (talk) 11:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Spyware

Regarding Mantanmoreland's evidence link (to an attack site attacking the attacker who made an attack site! how neat!) where it alleges "spyware" on WordBomb's part: I'm a techie geek myself, so I'll comment that, while the technique used by WordBomb to pretend to be somebody else and do a sneaky technique to gain information about others was not very kosher, it wasn't as all-powerful as the critics would like to scare everybody into thinking. He didn't embed viruses, trojan-horses, or spyware on Slim's computer, in the sense that those things are generally regarded by computer professionals. What he did was send an HTML file that included an embedded image on his server, which, if opened in a web browser on the end user's computer, will cause the graphic to be requested and thus a log entry made at the server's computer giving the IP address of the requester, and possibly some other information such as a referrer URL where the image was embedded. This could reveal some personal information, but it won't scan the user's hard drive and transmit information from it to the sender, as implied by the comments. Probably the writer is referring to how, if a referrer URL is given to the file on the recipient's local hard drive, that would reveal facts about their directory structure, but at least the browser I use has the good sense not to send private files like that in its referer data; perhaps this might vary for other browsers. Anyway, good sense in safe computing, in this time of widespread viruses, spambots, and the like, is to be highly wary about opening any files that come to you in ZIP archives from people you don't know well. *Dan T.* 16:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

This is part of a general pattern of using loaded terminology, like "stalking", "harrassing", and "spyware", in a manner that is highly stretched and contorted to cover things that are not quite what you say they are, in order to convince people that there's a uniquely evil thing to get into a moral panic about. *Dan T.* 16:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

So what's your IP address? I'm sure you'll be happy to share since its no big deal. Thatcher131 21:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

It really isn't. Mine is 65.102.1.93 Zurishaddai 23:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Any time I go to any website, I'm revealing my IP to its system administrator, if they choose to look at the logs. If it's a blog, forum, or wiki, and I make any sort of post there leaving my name, I'm letting the admin connect my name to the IP. Since I'm not a privacy freak (I use my real name anyway), it is no big deal to me. *Dan T.* 00:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you believe in forcing your attitude on others involuntarily? Are you in favor of discarding the privacy policy and granting checkuser access to every admin? Thatcher131 10:44, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say that the use of this technique was a good, nice, friendly, desirable thing to do... just that it wasn't "installing spyware on her system" or any sort of absolutely unspeakably evil thing worthy of a horrendous arch-villain. *Dan T.* 11:14, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Web bug. All good email clients should automatically block them. And this is my ip -> 166.166.224.24 00:32, 19 September 2007 (UTC) :)

Also, your ip address is normally included in the email headers, so if you don't want your ip known, make sure that your email client isn't sending out your ip. 166.166.224.24 00:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The biggest deal for most users about revealing an IP address is the possibility of a DDOS attack, which means you can't edit wikipedia for a while due to clogged tubes. That may be a good thing? If you have a dynamic IP it's even less of a big deal. 61.99.151.93 04:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Pseudonymity

Durova's list of famous authors who used pseudonyms brings up the question "And your point is?" It's apparently intended to argue against the straw man that "Pseudonymity is crooked and evil" or something to that effect. Maybe some on the "attack sites" are actually arguing that (though on some of those sites the authors use pseudonymity or anonymity themselves). However, it is not something that seems to be a common line of argument here. Rather, some have been suggesting that preserving the secret identities involved is not as intense a moral imperative as proponents of pseudonymity argue, and "outing" is not necessarily as much of an act of pure evil as is regularly suggested, though doing it against the outed person's wishes is certainly not a nice, polite thing. The famous-persons list actually bears this out, since the real names of those people are actually known and are included in the opening paragraphs of their biographies. One might add the case of James Tiptree, Jr., actually Alice Sheldon, a notable science fiction author of the '60s through '80s who was a woman writing under a male pseudonym, and was in fact outed against her will by a fan who stalked her to the post office box where she received her correspondence. That's just the sort of behavior that's treated as the apex of evil when done to Wikipedians, but her "outing" was in fact reported in the science fiction press, and I don't know of any publications being declared "attack publications" and banned from being referenced in the more respectable SF magazines as a result of mentioning the author's real name once she had been outed. *Dan T.* 11:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)