Oliver review of Mikemikev list of OS socks on RWW

Copied from archive of RationalWikiWiki page created by “Oliver D Smith” known to be the real Oliver D. Smith. Probable deceptions are in pink.

Oliver D. Smith sockpuppets

Oliver D. Smith sockpuppets is a conspiracy-theory-esque article about RationalWiki filled with misinformation, written by the troll Mikemikev on the wiki Rightpedia.[1] The article lists 38 RationalWiki accounts and falsely states they are owned by Oliver D. Smith, furthermore that this is only 1% of the total… the absurd allegation is Smith owns 3800 accounts. In reality, Smith owns only a tiny fraction of the accounts; Mikemikev is known to impersonate Smith on sockpuppets and so some, or even many of these listed accounts are Mikemikev himself.

    • Misinformation. While there may be errors on that page, most of the “information” — reported fact — is correct.
    • Owned by Oliver D. Smith. It does not state that, though one might think so from the title. These are “Smith” accounts and could be either brother.
    • 1%, absurd allegation was not intended to be accurate, obviously. It is in the title of a section, as “about 1%,” obviously informal. Any study of possible Smith socks runs into masses of trollsocks, pursuing Smith agenda by attacking Smith enemies. Mikemikev is assuming these were Smith brother socks, as have I, most of them. Not all, and some level of impersonation is possible, but not what Oliver claims, and generally not from the source that Oliver claims.
    • Tiny fraction. Smith acknowledges 8/38 accounts, or  21%. That is not a “tiny fraction.”
    • Mikemikev himself. None of these accounts appear to be Mikemikev.

In May 2018 Smith contacted Mikemikev on Gab requesting him to remove the ridiculous article; Mikemikev said he isn’t interested in fact-checking who owns all these accounts and admitted to mistakes and lying; he also didn’t deny impersonating Smith, but that he will still blame them all on Smith to abuse Google searches of his name.

Notes (Abd): This list from Rightpedia was a list of “Smith” socks, edited from an earlier page on Oliver Smith socks, but the name not corrected to generalize it. Oliver knows many of his brother’s accounts, but does not disclose this here, thus amplifying his message of massive impersonation. This all has other implications.

Code: light green, Abd confirmed suspect Oliver
Code: light blue, Abd confirmed suspect Darryl

Account list

† = Smith. ₪ = Not Smith.

Notice how no evidence is presented Smith owns any of these accounts, but in numerous cases it is easy to prove accounts aren’t his, for example Georgie Enkoom is a practising Muslim from Canada and obviously isn’t Smith.[2] Mikemikev’s has a history of creating accounts impersonating ANTIFAs, or so-called SJWs; the accounts with ANTIFA/anti-fascist/Hope Not Hate in their usernames above are easy to identify as his for his sockpuppet history,[3] while others appear to be impersonating Smith more directly. With very few exceptions, Smith’s real accounts (†) usually have names related to classics (Aeschylus, Callimachus, Nemean) or video games he plays (Agent 47, i.e. Hitman), but at least one account (not listed above) is an impersonation based on this.[4]
There’s unfortunately no check-user tool on RationalWiki, like on Wikipedia; this means the only way to identify someone’s account is by behaviour (e.g. editing habits[5]) and not by technical evidence such as IP checks.
      • No evidence was blatantly false if we look at the original page. There was evidence, plus a contributions link is evidence, often cited as such on Wikipedia. (“X is a sock of Y, see contributions for evidence.”)
      • Easy to prove is deceptive. It is far easier to show conclusive evidence that an account is someone than to show evidence it is not that person, because people can present differing behaviors. 
      • “is a practicing Muslim” is a good example. How do we know that user is a practicing Muslim? Well, he said he was. Therefore . . . therefore what? Numerous trollsocks appeared attacking me, claiming to be Muslim. Unlikely that they were. I reviewed this user’s edits and he might be a Muslim. I was inclined to accept the claim, but I’d need to be more thorough to be sure and there might not be enough evidence. 
      • History of creating accounts impersonating, absent evidence, is assuming the conclusion. It’s also irrelevant. True impersonation socks, distinct from parody socks, show certain characteristics and function in certain ways (or they are harmless).
      • appear to be impersonating Smith more directly. None of the accounts here resemble any impersonation socks I have seen. Two are trollsocks, JonDonis which I’ve tagged as Darryl because of resemblance to many such Darryl trollsocks in the past, and RaiderFan. see below. Could those be someone else? Of course, but context, man!
      • impersonation based on this. Raider Fan was trolling Oliver by using an old account name of his. Not impersonation.
      • No check-user. The checkuser extension allows easy reading of IP and user agent, but there is even more information in raw access logs.

BenSteigmans

Smith once atypically created a throwaway account with a name unlike all his others; he edited on this account for only a single day in February 2016. Rightpedia and Abd‘s blog claim this account name BenStiegmans was an impersonation of an individual named Benjamin Steigmann, however it clearly wasn’t as the names are visibly different, Smith never claimed to be anyone else and even had no prior communication with the person he was supposed to have impersonated; Rightpedia/Abd are either lying or have a reading comprehension problem.

  • Clearly wasn’t.  No, it is not “clear” that it wasn’t impersonation. It obviously resembles an impersonation. A difference in a name like that can exist in an impersonation. To take this to an extreme, Oliver has claimed that the RatWiki account Some random Smith was an impersonation of him. It’s preposterous, but it shows that he realizes that a name need not be identical to be an impersonation. 
  • Never claimed to be anyone else. Ah, see this page: anglo-pyramidologist/impersonation-books/ Some books appeared with impersonated authors. A photoshop of a very obese man with my face pasted on it, created by Oliver, was used for the book. So maybe that was Darryl. But Oliver was involved. And who was Bill Connors? The focus and interest was Oliver.  
  • No prior communication. Deceptive, as if prior communication with the person is necessary for an impersonation. The real issue would be prior knowledge, and he does not claim lack of that, but if he did claim that, could he be lying?
  • Lying or … comprehension problem. Oliver often claims that, because he wrote something, and they don’t believe him, they have a comprehension problem. Yet Oliver has lied and has admitted it, and then never committed to clearing up his lies. He just admits lying to create more confusion. He does not say why he chose that name. My opinion:
  • He chose the name because he wanted Emil Kirkegaard to blame Steigmann. This is a common Smith tactic. It’s worked often enough that the Smiths keep doing it. If that was the motive, this was a true impersonation.

Notes & References

  1. ↑ http://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_D._Smith_sockpuppets [edited link to point to changed name of page]
  2. ↑ See user page.
  3. ↑ List of Mikemikev (banned) socks
  4. ↑ Raider Fan, see also the information about the impersonation on Wrongpedia.
  5. ↑ However this is clearly a problem when someone is impersonated!
  • List of socks. The link was defective, he meant this, a list complied by Krom (Oliver), trolling Mikemikev, totally inappropriate. It does not show impersonation, and no actual evidence was shown this was Mike. For example, Social Justice Warrior was not shown to be Mike, because there could be dozens of people who might do the like of it. The account was trolling, like Social Justice Internet Scientist.  An impersonation account is intended to be seen as the target. Who was being impersonated?
  • Raider Fan. This was also a trolling account. The name is taken from Oliver, but this account was not impersonating Oliver at all, it was attacking Oliver. Again, no showing this was Mikemikev except weak circumstantial evidence, and this account does not demonstrate “impersonation,” as such, merely parody and trolling.
  • Wrongpedia. The link was defective. Wrongpedia was designed to defeat archive.is. Oliver obviously did not check the link. However, I anticipated that Wrongpedia might vanish as it did, and archived it. This is a copy of that page, obviously written by Oliver. Remarkably, Oliver accuses Raider Fan of being Wyatt, not Mikemikev.
  • Problem. Behavior can be imitated, text can be copied. Socks impersonating me on RatWiki often have copied text from me, then added threats or the like, or simply spammed the text to irritate the Rats. However, if context is considered, IP evidence is certainly not the only strong evidence. I’m not going to reveal all the techniques, but some of the evidence I have would be strong enough to show fact beyond any reasonable doubt. Some is circumstantial, adequate still to claim fact absent contradiction.

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