Brutal Warrior of the Week: Borock

Yesterday Borock nominated the article about the Hawaii Free Press for deletion. At first he was a little crude at his canvassing efforts, but now he's gotten more sophisticated, targetting users who will likely vote the way he wants them to without appearing to suggest how they should vote. I believe that at this time Borock has no sockpuppets. But he sure has the makings of one of Wikipedia's top ten most brutal warriors in the future.

Can't give the specifics of the first Wikipedia-related murder

When the first Wikipedia-related murder happens, the police better not look to me for clues. I only deal in what is publically visible from the website. Given that most of Wikipedia's logs are falsified on a daily basis, I could easily be wrong when I say such and such user is a sockpuppet of another. Indeed, most CheckUser requests yield laughably wrong information. But what is the real information? That is lost due to so much falsification. So when the first Wikipedia-related murder happens, I won't know anything more about it than can be seen on the user pages of the involved users.

Brutal Warrior of the Week: Savidan

Sorry I'm late this week. This week's brutal warrior is Savidan. The violent nature of his wikiwar is quite apparent from his userpage, which features a violent painting. Potential socks include Sky Attacker (notice the motif of violence), TexasAndroid, Niteshift36, ChildofMidnight, etc. I seriously doubt Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (I think I typed that right) is a sock of Savidan, but I could be wrong.

Someone suggested I nominate Jimbo Wales as a brutal warrior of the week. The idea is so ridiculous I had to mention it. That would be like giving a gladiator's trophy to the owner of a gladiatorial arena.

How do you deal with Wikipedia's most vicious bastards?

I was recently asked: "How do you deal with Wikipedia's most vicious bastards?" My answer is that I don't. After just a few edits, I quit trying. But I do have respect and admiration for those who continue to try to get facts into Wikipedia despite the most vicious bastards of the ruling class, composed almost entirely of brutal wikiwarriors and their sockpuppets. It is thanks to those people who add facts regardless of what Wikipedia's ruling class thinks that Wikipedia is not completely made up of lies and inane half-truths.

Warrior of the Week: Xymmax

Xymmax latest victory occurred last month, and it pertained to the topic of contraception. He couldn't have achieved it without the help of his many sockpuppets, some of which include Phil Sandifer, Drawn Some, Llewdor, Colonel Warden, Bearian and Eusebeus. Eusebeus in particular stands out as a definite sockpuppet: he edits with such blind ignorance and stupidity that he's surely one of Xymmax's socks. Eusebeus has been blocked twice, each time for a few minutes, while Xymmax has been blocked only once. Quite suspiciously, the block lasted barely a minute.

Arrogantly signing as "Xymmax let it be written let it be done," he proudly points people to his main account's talk page and his contributions listing. But he hardly contributes anything. Most of his contributions involve page protection and deletion. He himself admits on his talk page: "I've gotten involved pretty deeply in AfD work." How noble. Please.

Brutal Warrior of the Month: Ctjf83

This month's brutal warrior of the month is Ctjf83. Why not Charles Matthews, who after all, managed to get on ArbCom? Well, that would have been the easy choice. Besides, how can you know Ctjf83 doesn't have sockpuppets on ArbCom, even if not as many as Charles Matthews? In any case, Ctjf83's reprehensible tactic of pretending to be gay online puts him far above Charles Matthews in brutality and viciousness. Simply disgusting. I have family and friends who are gay. It is an insult to them when others pretend.

Wikipedia-related murder still on the horizon

Someday, a brutal warrior will find out the true location of one of his enemies and show up in person to kill him. The brutal warriors take Wikipedia that seriously. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is actually a positive side effect of the ridiculously idiotic sockpuppet witch-hunt: Warrior A wants to kill warrior B. However, warrior C has falsified the IP address and edit time stamps of warrior B in order to have warrior B declared a sockpuppet of one of warrior C's sockpuppets, so now warrior A doesn't have reliable information from which to figure out the location of warrior B. Hopefully warrior A won't kill anyone if he arrives at the wrong location and fails to find warrior B. Either way, warrior B's life is saved because he's been declared a sockpuppet of warrior C's sockpuppet (which was created specifically for the purpose of being a sockmaster of real users).

Wikipedia Brutal Warrior of the Week: Charles Matthews

Charles Matthews was on ArbCom for a year and he was eager for a second year. Why? Most likely because he didn't have enough sockpuppets on ArbCom to maintain his authority. Probably now only half the members of ArbCom are Charles Matthews sockpuppets, which means that not even a simple majority is guaranteed for Charles' way of thinking. Still, ArbCom makes decisions suspiciously fast. The Supreme Court takes weeks and it's just nine people. Often a brutal warrior will say to an alleged vandal: "I'll talk it over with ArbCom." Seconds later: "ArbCom has decided you're permanently blocked." Of course Charles Matthews will have to start working on making new sockpuppets eligible to be elevated to ArbCom at the next election cycle, because his current socks won't be able to 'serve' again. Does that sound like a lot of work to devote to an online encyclopedia that pays nothing in money or prestige? You bet it does. But as the author of How Wikipedia Works, Charles Matthews has shown an intense dedication to Wikipedia. He has amassed great power and will stop at nothing to become even more powerful. However, his veneer of goodness is quite thick, I must admit.

Sockpuppetry: the most worn out weapon in the arsenal of the brutal wikiwarrior

Accusing other Wikipedia users of sockpuppetry has become such a cliche that its effectiveness as a weapon should be greatly diminished by now. But some brutal wikiwarriors are still using it. Just as McCarthy saw communists at every turn, brutal warriors see sockpuppets everywhere. The irony is obviously that they have many sockpuppets themselves. To evade being caught with sockpuppets, some brutal warriors maintain computers in houses all over the country or even all over the world, and remotely control them. Do you have any idea how easy it is to set up a computer program to operate a Web browser from far away? Thus the Wikipedia server logs the IP address of the computer being remotely controlled, and not the IP address where the brutal warrior is actually making the edits from. Furthermore, the warrior can arrange it so that he makes edits from his own account at the same time as some of his sockpuppets. The only difficulty then is getting the house and setting up the computer for remote control.

But of course they must realize that going to all that trouble is somewhat pointless because any brutal warrior with administrator privileges can falsify Wikipedia's server logs. When "Recent changes" shows a "database lag" due to maintenance, you can bet that log falsification is going on in order to support sockpuppetry claims. Depending on how often you edit Wikipedia, it might be enough to falsify your IP address. But if you edit a lot more often than that, they might have to falsify your edit times so that you don't overlap with whoever they're trying to peg you as a sockpuppet of. Because I barely edited Wikipedia and didn't have a username, this is not something I can talk about from personal experience. But it's happened to so many people: they log in to Wikipedia and find themselves blocked because someone decided to hang a sockpuppet jacket on them. And why was that jacket hung on them? Because they dared to disagree with a brutal warrior.

Being labelled a sockpuppet when you're not must be unpleasant. It's not something I've experienced firsthand, but if you read those serious-sounding "sockpuppet investigations," you'll see the sort of discourtesy people so labelled experience. A brutal warrior hangs a sockpuppet jacket on you and suddenly you become subhuman in the eyes of everyone in the "community." They snicker and refer to you as "it." After being treated like that, would you ever want to edit Wikipedia again? I know I wouldn't, I left for a lot less, and so do some of the other "missing Wikipedians."

Eventually there won't be any real persons editing Wikipedia except the brutal warriors. Every other account will be a sockpuppet of one or more warriors. Not all warriors will agree with each other, and their sockpuppets will do battle like so many robotized foot soldiers. If you thought wikibattles are intense now, you haven't seen nothing yet!

Brutal Warrior of the Week: Wiki alf

This specimen has mastered the veneer of the brutal Wikipedia warrior, a veneer of the utmost civility. But call it a hunch, I have a very bad feeling about that one. He sometimes reverts his own edits! Not that it's good to be mule-headed and never change your mind, but that sort of practice can almost only point to something very dark and very shady. Oh, and he's an administrator, and quite likely has something up his sleeve.