Skeptic from Britain

Subpage of anglo-pyramidologist/darryl-l-smith/

Subpages of this page:

Collecting evidence on the “Skeptic from Britain” obvious Darryl L. Smith Wikipedia sock.

They will claim “there is no evidence,” and then they will claim that I will write “endless words.” In fact, what I write becomes long because I show evidence. I do not always provide links, but if anyone has a question about any assertion (anywhere on this blog) ask. If comments are not enabled on a page, link to the page in a comment on any page with comments enabled, which could include all posts (i.e, what can be seen from the main page, http://coldfusioncommunity.net).

If any page is confusing because too long, comment and ask for a summary. I read all comments. The first comment from a user (which may refer to the email address provided by the user, I’m not sure) must be approved, as an anti-spam measure, but subsequent comments, after one is approved, are automatically approved unless I actually ban the user, which I have never done. Trolls are skewered and served for lunch, not banned. Welcome! Come on over for lunch!

Baseless allegations against [XXX, name redacted]

There were accusations that SfB was [XXX], or [XXX]. (This libel was created by highly suspicious anonymous accounts in the middle of widespread outrage over the activities of SfB. This kind of diversionary tactic was used in the first AP incident I investigated. It is used to stir up enmity toward an enemy, in some cases, or in this case, to make their targets (which would be anyone considered “fringe” by them) look foolish.

(If [XXX] wants these mentions removed, he may comment here, giving a real email address (which will not be published) and I will contact him. The purpose here is to protect him from these false claims, not to increase harassment. But it will be his choice, I would anonymize the references where possible. We should discuss it. Note: he did so request, see comments on this page and on the subpage.)

I do not know [XXX] and have had no connection with him [as this was first written].  My purpose is, as it has long been, to expose deception and impersonation and the creation of conflict through lies.

This is general, not about [XXX]: when someone lies about another whose politics may be questionable, it’s still a lie, and we do not transform the world for the better by lying about anything, nor do we create “hope not hate” by hating anyone; in fact, hating racism, while understandable, is also not going to heal the wounds. Hatred itself is the enemy, and not to be hated, but understood . . . and transformed.

The trolling (or perhaps clueless in some cases) blog comments:

(some of these, since I pointed out the problems, have been deleted by the blog owners):

James 

skeptic from Britain has an Instagram [redacted]

his name is [XXX] . he is a vegetarian SJW, but oddly claims to eat red meat twice a week.

This comment is typical for AP socks (could be Darryl or his brother). They will attempt to create an appearance of hypocrisy. The claims are not evidenced, at all. The instagram page shows no evidence supporting the claim. This is all attempting create an attack on [XXX]. This then is picked up by others, some might be innocent, some are obviously Skeptic from Britain or his brother.

Stephen Rhodes 

Not sure whether this helps but over at fatheadthemovie someone has posted;

skeptic from Britain has an Instagram [redacted]

his name is [XXX] . he is a vegetarian SJW, but oddly claims to eat red meat twice a week.

[SJW == Social Justice Warrior]

That was very fast. However, Stephen Rhodes looks legitimate, simply naive, repeating a story without noting the lack of verification. Isn’t social media wonderful?

Alex Davis 
Skeptic from Britain is clearly the [XXX] guy. The age range and diet matches. Now he has been outed he quickly changed his username as a false flag to detract attention and confuse. Note that Skeptic from Britain submitted Fat Head for deletion yesterday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Head. He is clearly angry at Tom Naughton for being outed and wants revenge. I doubt he lives in Manchester, looks like another false flag to me. His editing history matches a US timezone.
It is not clear to me where Darryl currently lives, but he did live in Radlett. He would create, however, many diversions. Naughton had not outed him, rather the trolls had “outed” someone certainly innocent.
It can be tricky to infer location from editing pattern. Notice that non-Wikipedians will not know how to confirm the claim about time zone. This is, again, typical. (Claims without easily verifiable evidence. and anonymous, with nobody to contact to check.)
The current Skeptic from Britain account name is Vanisheduser3334743743i43i434 (the link is to archived contributions, there are currently 4622 live edits. (That’s a high rate for the time period involved, though not unusual for someone who has become very involved.) (There are more edits on Commons.)
This is a histogram of edit times (GMT), converted to fractions of an hour:
The minimum edit time is from 3:54 AM to 6:30 AM. Peak activity starts increasing at 1 PM, rising steadily to 10:06, and then falling off after midnight. This is quite consistent with a UK location. For the US mainland, that would be, East Coast, 10:54 PM to 1:30 AM. West Coast, 7:54 PM to 10:30 AM. Far from a typical Wikipedia editing pattern. While it remains possible (someone may have odd work hours and habits), it is quite incorrect to say that edit timing indicates U.S. location.
SfB showed up 12 February, 2018, making classic Darryl edits, obviously an experienced user already. This is not [XXX], at all, but an editor showing a very familiar pattern (Wikipedians should check “Goblin Face,” checkuser-identified. I will do a study of the edit timings, it will take some time (the SfB histogram was easy, but there is a lot more that can be done. I have edit timing for at least one known and active Darryl Smith sock in this period.  At this point, it looks like “Alex Davis” was lying. However, he might simply be mistaken and a bit careless. There is an Alex Davis with an interest in low-carb diets, but, as well, the Smith brothers pick real names for impersonations, it’s not uncommon, and there are no other comments from Alex Davis on that blog. Will the real Alex Davis stand up?
Goblin Face had over 7600 edits in 2014. This chart shows his last 5000 edits, times are again GMT, converted to fractions of an hour:
The match is strong. These two people are likely in the same time zone, with matching edits. Goblin Face was in England, matching the timing of Skeptic from Britain . There could be more found, much more, and again it will take time.
Low-Carb Man 

Because Skeptic from Britain got outed as [XXX] he changed his Wikipedia username and claims to be leaving the website because he was doxed, but he has submitted your Fat Head movie on Wikipedia to deletion, so you must have touched a nerve of his!

You should check Malcolm Kendrick’s blog comments various vegans have turned up to defend [XXX]. This was no doubt an attack from vegan SJW’s and they claim this is only round 1. You were right.

If a vegan is attacked, and vegans show up to defend him, would this be surprising? However, at least some of those who showed up are clearly socks, pretending to be vegan in order to stir up animosity. While there are some vegans who are fanatics about meat-eaters, it’s not normal. To SfB, all fringe believers are to be debunked and attacked, and if he can get them fighting with each other, so much the better! He creates false flag accounts, I’ve seen many of them.

Jacob 

[XXX]– vegetarian fanatic who claims to live in Manchester as of 2018, but there is virtually nothing about him on the internet apart from some old photographs on Instagram. Let’s hope he goes public about all this! If he studies biology like he claims, then he is editing at a university… I wonder what the university is he at thinks about this (!) Editing Wikipedia on their servers?

No evidence of any of the claims.  There is another post by “Jacob” on the blog. Different avatar. What I notice is the assumption that [XXX] is Skeptic from Britain, and “claims to live in Manchester.” Where? The account was named for a few days MatthewManchester1994. I found no claim to be “from Manchester,” either from Skeptic from Britain or [XXX]. So Jacob is either a troll who happens to use a name used before (which can be easy to do in blog comments) or is very incautious. The claims being made would be common for Darryl L. Smith, though relatively mild.

 Low-Carb guy
I think [XXX] is about the give up the game. Check the latest edits on his account MatthewManchester1994 . He says he has been outed by the low-carb community so he is closing his Wikipedia account and never returning.

This is a Smith brother. Skeptic from Britain was a highly experienced Wikipedia editor, with almost 5000 edits and obviously not new when that started. He would know that this announcement would create a red flag for anyone who wants to find his identity. When researching accounts, one of the first places to look would be the last edit. Here it is. No, this was a red herring. However, long-term, the SfB account has created a great deal of recent evidence, grist for the mill.

The twins are the most effectively disruptive users I have ever encountered, in over twenty years of on-line activity. Their behavior will perplex even highly-experienced users. However, they have, over time, been identified and outed, which they richly deserve for behavior such as impersonations (clearly proven) and attack libels against many, and creating harassment for innocent persons, such as [XXX], as far as I can see. Zero evidence to back up the claims. Not even reasonable circumstantial evidence. None. Zilch. Why did they pick him? They might live near him, might know him. They are in their late twenties, but still incredibly juvenile. Or they picked him at random as a “vegan.” [I found another reason, but do not wish to disclose it because it would create breadcrumbs to the real name of this person, but he is not vegan. He was for a time. He is not a fanatic.)]

I will be researching this further. Darryl has, here, created a body of evidence larger than I have seen for some time. He may now be very careful about editing Wikipedia for a time, because it is possible that checkuser would nail him. But there is more, much more. It will take time to review the evidence. Until after his twin, Oliver D. Smith, started trolling intensely on Encyclopedia Dramatica at the end of last month, I had stopped watching Smith activities.

When Oliver accused Rome Viharo of being Skeptic from Britain, I didn’t notice. But when he went to my talk page, where I get email notifications, and effectively accused me of the same, I looked. Wow! It was immediately obvious who Skeptic from Britain was. He obviously wanted me to see that (or he is really stupid in addition to being insane). Why?

Well, maybe he’s angry with his brother, maybe his brother has been angry with him. It happens in families. Or maybe there is some other reason, or no reason at all, maybe he was drunk or actually schizophrenic, as he once claimed.

Conclusive evidence

I have conclusive verifiable evidence that Skeptic from Britain is the same user as Debunking spiritualism on Rational Wiki, which would be Darryl L. Smith. ( a few people think that the “brother” story is just another deception. I consider it unlikely, but I could investigate this if anyone thinks it really matters.) I will share the evidence with anyone with a need to know. (Including WMF sysops or checkusers). Contact me by requesting an email through any comment on this blog (the comment need not use your real name, but, obviously, the email must be yours!) The contact will remain confidential.

(Anyone could find this, one merely needs to know where and how to look.)

Comments continued.

Low-Carb man

Abd Lomax is probably behind the “Skeptic from Britain” account himself.

https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Abd_Ul-Rahman_Lomax

The above website says he is Skeptic from Britain, it also has a photograph of Kendrick.

Another website claims Abd Lomax has a history of impersonating people

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abd_ul-Rahman_Lomax

I would say this is a scam. Why are you targeting LCHF writers Lomax?

This looks like a Smith brother, but … “Low-Carb man” was just blocked by a Wikipedia checkuser as a sock of Amandazz100. See the suspected sock puppet page. This is a huge mess. Checkusers do sometimes make mistakes. Amandazz100 is definitely not a Smith brother. There is a real person involved: Angela A Stanton. If Ms. Stanton sees this, please contact me. (Leave a comment on this page with a request for email, and be sure to include a real email address. The comment itself may be anonymous.)

(The comment below appears to have been taken down. I replied to it, and that comment also does not appear, which is more or less what I would expect.)

 Wikipedia Astronomer 

I am a Wikipedia user that has been following this discussion as it was posted on the ScienceProject. Readers here should be aware that Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a 74 year old was globally banned from Wikipedia for impersonating people and doxxing them. Over 40 people complained to Wikipedia about this person including the known astronomer, my friend Joshua P. Schroeder.

Did Joshua P. Schroeder complain? How does “Wikipedia Astronomer” know what he claims? I was not banned from Wikipedia for impersonation and doxing. I was never accused of impersonation, and there were no serious charges of doxxing except from … Smith socks and a few friends. What I had done (of “documentation”) was actually approved by a WMF steward, etc. So the ban claim is  a straightforward lie, and this person would know it if he actually knows JPS and how WMF wikis work. (I was previously banned, years ago, from “Wikipedia,” the only WMF wiki with such a ban. The “impersonations” were checkuser-confirmed as a single person, and this affair embarrassed some admins who had made incorrect conclusions about identity. Some may have been more upset with me for exposing the impersonations rather than with the impersonator … who is almost certainly already de-facto banned from Wikipedia, and who is globally locked, an effective ban from all WMF wikis. But they simply create more socks, most successfully using mobile IP.

What is the “Science Project”?  There is a Wikiproject Science, but I don’t think he is referring to it. Rather it would be Wikiproject Skepticism. And there were discussions. This user doesn’t want to call it the real name because he knows how that will look in this context. So he twists the name a little. Here are the relevant discussions:

These edits to the Fat Head AfD repeated the accusation against XXX as if fact. Quackwatch was a red herring planted by a troll account, this is not completely clear I have not researched connections with Quackwatch, but I did see that Quackwatch was cited on Wikipedia as if a reliable source, which it certainly is not, and that would be expected from Darryl Smith. This discussion indicates the alignment of Literaturegeek with the XXX story and other deceptive information. LG is a long-term editor. Darryl claimed to have many Wikipedia accounts “in good standing.”  I have not seen enough yet to do more than raise some suspicion on this point. If Darryl has “good hand accounts” he would likely partition the interests, but, then, might slip and dive into a discussion like this. I will be looking at what will be massive evidence, now. If he is not Darryl, I should be able to confirm it and likewise identity if he is.]

LG shows high familiarity with the arguments being presented on the blogs, and repeats them. This is remarkable:

British sceptics spell sceptic with a letter ‘c’ whereas in the USA it is spelt with a K so even his username is a red flag.–Literaturegeek | T@1k? 04:41, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

That is a bogus argument, but LG obviously is British! I covered this here.

This is still not enough to accuse LG, but LG being British, does he know how “British sceptics” spell the word? (Hint, they use “Skeptic.”) Perhaps he doesn’t and he’s just making an ignorant comment. Or he does, and he is making a red herring argument that he thinks will fly with the audience, which is Smith brother behavior. It seems plausible until one actually checks. Sources were easy to find, and experienced Wikipedia editors become quite good at that. I definitely see enough to look more closely at his history, and if this is an Anglo Pyramidologist sock, it would be the biggest one ever caught (almost 27,000 live edits, started in 2007(!), was largely inactive for some years, but edited as another account starting in 2014, an “interesting year.” Loose lips sink ships. (There are doubtless other users who support the AP agenda from time to time, so the coincidences here are not enough to establish anything more than mild suspicion.)

Wikiproject Skepticism is one method the skeptical faction uses to canvass, it is how editors who identify as “skeptics” will know to show up for an AfD or other discussion that might impact the factional interests of “skeptics.” Another method is the use of the Fringe theories noticeboard, which the pseudoskeptical faction uses like a chat line. I’ve seen it used to create biased participation on another wiki, which would be totally irrelevant to Wikipedia. That faction is emboldened by years of being able to violate policies with relative impunity.

The Kendrick article would be a Biography of a Living Person. It is not a science topic, not really in the scope of the Wikiproject, as stated. But the skeptical faction wants to make sure that everyone knows that so-and-so is a quack, etc. The deletion issue for a BLP would solely be the existence of independent reliable sources, and that can be a bit complex to a noob. It does not mean “true sources.” It’s complicated and arcane. For science articles, there may be a weight on peer-reviewed and academic publications, but for biographies, coverage by a newspaper, for example, is adequate. Most blogs are not adequate, etc., but some might be, if they have serious editorial review.

So they canvas, but if someone not part of the “in crowd” on Wikipedia discusses a deletion, that’s “snails and worms.” To be sure, outsiders coming in will often be clueless about what the issues really are….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Abd

When a user is office banned, that notice will often be put on the user page.  It says that questions should be referred to “trust and safety.” The only notice to the user is a single email, if the user has email enabled. It gives no reason for the ban, and it states that it is not appealable. There is no warning that a ban is being considered and no opportunity or process for correcting errors. So why was I banned? This user says it. “Over 40 people complained.” That is a larger number than I have heard before. Oliver Smith bragged that he was one, and showed his response from the Foundation. He has long been banned on Wikipedia. I assume that his brother also complained, and he is actually globally banned under many accounts. Did they know all this.

Email access for the user is shut down, because a global lock is simply preventing log-in. But when it was realized that other Wikipedia users could still email the user, they eventually prevented that. In other words, the Office (or locking steward) is also preventing any discussion with the banned user. The community is being censored, not just the user. And hardly anyone notices or cares. This happens in nonprofits, the central authority does not actually trust the membership, because they “know better.” And they might, sometimes, but humans being humans  . . .

Joshua P. Schroeder almost certainly complained. He has often been banned but has nine lives, because the skeptical faction loves him. The page here on his accounts. He came off a self-requested three month block in July 2018. There is story about the history on that page.

JzG would have complained, and the bureaucrat Mu301 (Michael Umbricht) on Wikiversity probably did (he is the one who claimed I was using Wikiversity for a vendetta, though I had moved all activity relating to the sock puppetry of Anglo Pyramidologist off of Wikiversity.) (AP, originally an Oliver account, refers to Oliver and Darryl Smith, though I did not use those names on-wiki, and didn’t publish them until later, after becoming convinced of the identification).

There was a discussion of my Office ban on Wikipediasucks.co.  Two single purpose accounts show up there Catapult and Max. Catapult was banned as a troll. Max was not banned, but only made four posts. Max wrote:

I received an email from the Wikimedia Foundation that they had received “six” complaints of this nature about Abd. Joshua was not the only person to complain. Regards.

The Wikimedia Foundation, by policy, does not discuss global bans. They don’t explain them. We do have a response mail put up by Oliver on RationalWiki. I’ll see if I can find it.

There are more comments from Max there. He is confronted by the obvious variation from policy that I mention above. I had discussed the situation with a former member of the WMF board. I actually thought he was still a member, but he’d left the board not long before. He told me that what I had actually done would not be considered harassment within the meaning of the Terms of Service. He was wrong, except … the complainers probably lied about what I had done. For example, Joshua Schroeder claimed email harassment, which would have been using the WMF interface originally (but not in later emails). In fact, the communication was voluntary and he never requested it stop. But the WMF could see there had been an email, thus they might consider the “harassment” claim plausible. In fact, I published those emails when Schroeder complained about harassment. Did they look at those? They showed I was attempting to cooperate with him, it was a Smith brother (probably Darryl)  who had really made it difficult to delete the information (which was much more harmless than the Smiths make out), by archiving it in case I took it down. His purpose was not to protect Schroeder, but to attack me. And he announced the “outing” and linked to it on Wikipedia, and he also thereby revealed to me JPS’s most recent name, which I had not known. (I was tracking this IP’s posts. These are Anglo Pyramidologist socks. There is a small chance that there was a third user, geographically located close to the Smith brothers, using the same mobile access.)

The discussion on JPS’s talk page:  You can see there how the plan to complain to the WMF was hatched. None of this would protect JPS in any way. I was not using my WMF account to harass JPS at all. The Smith brothers could complain that I was “outing” them, except, at that point, I wasn’t. The alleged publication of family members was transient, immediately taken down so that only the two brothers showed, and nobody would be able to find the house by what was published of the address. And that information is up elsewhere and basically can’t be deleted. I’ve redacted my copies to even remove the town. Still, what was a single incident becomes “doxes addresses and family members.” These people do much, much more than that. As I said above, I discussed this with a WMF board member, and he did not think I had violated policy.

But these people will use any excuse they can find.

Max went on with more details:

The list of people who sent complaints about Abd:

1. Myself (Public IP 74.175.117.2 on Wikiversity)
2. IP 82.21.88.44 (privately confirmed his identity to the Wikimedia Foundation)
3. Joshua P. Shroeder (claims Abd sent him harassing emails)
4. Guy Chapman (Wikipedia admin JzG)
5. Oliver Smith (actually leaked one of the emails)

No proof of this one, but it is obvious (I have emailed him): 
6. Michael Umbrecht – (Username Mu301 – Bureaucrat on Wikiversity)

Indeed. Now, which one is Darryl? Oliver is not the person who had created all the impersonation socks on Wikiversity and Wikipedia. It is that person whom I first documented. Most of the socks I listed as suspected were not Oliver. Oliver was accidentally named in my original study, because the name was in a URL. That was immediately redacted and actually revision-deleted. Michael Umbricht suddenly appeared after long inactivity, attacked me and “fringe science” on Wikiversity, blocked me for an action that the other active bureaucrat thought was within discretion, threatened the administrator who also had made checkuser requests on meta over the socking, and went on a deletion spree. And then he disappeared, he has not edited since February, 2018.

Wikiversity was the place in the WMF wikis where science either fringe or alleged to be fringe, could be *studied.* Contrary to the claims of the pseudoskeptical faction, Wikiversity does not have “articles” in mainspace. It has educational resources, which can include student projects. I developed traditions on Wikiversity (I maintained the site for quite some time) that a mainspace page must be rigorously neutral (even more so than on Wikipedia, it must be neutral by high consensus), but subpages could be attributed and, again by tradition, “owned.” I demonstrated with high success how what would have been major edit warring on other projects turned into collaboration and cooperation on Wikiversity. And Umbricht unilaterally declared that “fringe science” must be first subject to approval by a Review Board that did not exist. And, based on requests from … guess who? … he deleted two projects, Cold fusion (which I had not started, but which I had expanded for a time, and which was not active at this point, I had effectively abandoned Wikiversity, realizing it was unsafe, which subsequent events proved) and Parapsychology. I started that resource as a place where Parapsychology could be studied. I am not a “believer” in psychic phenomena, but the Parapsychological Assocation is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The definition of parapsychology establishes it as a science, it is the *study* of paranormal phenomena. It is not a “belief” in such phenomena, except to this extent. Here, read the resource, I rescued it when it was deleted.

Cold fusion was possibly more problematic. I simply wrote most of what was in that resource. It’s huge, many pages. Skeptics participated on occasion. There were debates that resulted in at least one scientific paper being written (by a skeptical electrochemist, by the way). If the mainspace page was not neutral, no skeptic had attempted to make it so. I previously showed how major and deep disputes could be resolved, but I actually abandoned that resource, leaving it for others, and had not made more than trivial edits for some years.

This was obviously not an “article.” But Wikiversity was “neutral by inclusion,” not by exclusion, like Wikipedia. (This is much closer to academic neutrality.) That has been demolished by Michael Umbricht, whereas other attempts to attack the inclusive neutrality of Wikiversity had long failed. There was a documentation project in my user space that had been proposed for deletion. Community consensus was to keep it. Umbricht unilaterally deleted it. After he’d done all this damage, he then disappeared again. This would be the most “reputable” administrator to complain, probably. The other would be JzG, who was highly involved in dispute with me on Wikipedia, and who blamed me for the poor condition of the WP cold fusion article, though I had been a very conservative editor on it (and that was before I actually studied the field and published in a scientific journal on it). JzG was still grumbling years later, because I had taken him to the Arbitration Committee and prevailed. That’s wiki-suicide for most non-admins. Long story, again.

The cold fusion resource had this at the top:

Welcome to the Cold Fusion learning project. The Wikipedia article on cold fusion is here (link).

These resources and seminars may present personal opinions of the writer(s). As the resources mature, controversial statements should be clarified and sourced, and any contrary opinions presented. Opinions expressed as original research, and not as a general consensus, should be attributed. Please help make this top-level resource neutral.

It was claimed that the resource was such a mess that it would be too difficult to clean up. That would be a claim that would show no understanding of how consensus would be reached on Wikiversity. If a good-faith editor showed up and blanked everything in the resource that didn’t look neutral, there would have been no edit warring. Rather, “neutrality by inclusion” does not require agreement on an unattributed page, rather, the page will be stripped to what there is agreement on, and it could have been as little as that introduction at the top. And then the resource would have links to subpages. As one option that was tried (and it worked spectacularly), “sections” would be created. These have a named and responsible section leader, who would (by tradition) have the right to supervise content on his or her pages. Here is an example of where that was done with a highly controversial subject: Landmark Education. That is, in fact, the most important work I did on Wikiversity. Until now, not noticed by the Smith brothers. It will be interesting to see if they now go after it.

Continuing the comment by “Wikipedia astronomer”:

Abd Lomax has been running around the internet for a year claiming that a group of “brothers” were responsible for his ban. It’s all nonsense. His account was banned by the WMF Office, not anyone else. The Wikimedia Foundation have globally banned less than 50 people out of millions and millions of users. Yes they ban many but rarely ever globally ban.

This is deliberately deceptive. First of all, the “brothers” claim was not mine, originally. I had only come to the conclusion that it was correct shortly before this time. Yes, the account was “Office-banned,” but these bans are not explained, and they have banned, for example, critics of the Foundation, or a journalist who had no account (Jake Christie). Office bans are relatively new. I was familiar with them before being banned, pointed out the hazard, and saw them as a slippery slope, that would, for the first time, expose the WMF to legal jeopardy. They attempt to run them in a way to avoid that, but … this has never been tested. Perhaps it will be. There would have been other ways to protect the project without those risks. But oligarchs (often considering themselves simply public servants) almost always opt for the most direct power and freedom from oversight.

This means Lomax did something very very wrong.

What did Jake Christie do wrong?

The WMF office is not allowed to give any details but to those who were online the day he was banned, we all know what he did.

And then he straight-out lied. He was “online the day [Abd] was banned.” Who is he? I think it’s obvious. He’s Darryl.

He created fake accounts of people on Wikipedia then “framed” certain users of this on his personal website, including posting personal information about where these people live.

I created no “fake accounts” on Wikipedia, but someone did. What I actually did was to identify the fake accounts and request steward checkuser, which confirmed the suspicion, and who was behind those accounts? It’s again obvious: a long-time attacker of parapsychology and of any user who interferes with his agenda. One of the accounts with substantial edits would be Goblin face, discovered accidentally by Wikipedia checkuser. The “brother” story originated with one of the early Anglo Pyramidologist accounts. Oliver confirmed it in many places, then claimed he’d been lying, then retracted that. However, there are clearly two personalities involved. There are claims that Oliver is schizophrenic, and so there might be a multiple personality. I doubt it.

Any time someone edits by IP, information about where they live can be created, and the Smith brothers often failed to take steps to prevent this (less and less, recently. If I receive a harassing comment here, it’s normally coming from a Tor node.) In theory, WMF checkusers are not supposed to connect IPs with accounts, but it happens all the time. Yes, I published information available on the internet with the family composition, but I also redacted this quickly. It’s still up in other places. Quickly, it was just the names of the two brothers and their ages and the town they live in. Everything else was redacted. I did ask a former WMF board member about this.

There are two aspects to this: one is that Wikipedia criticism sites often out Wikipedia users, it’s almost routine. I have always taken down extremely personal information, if I ever post it. These brothers have done far more, actually, with the families of their targets, the mother of one critic was actually fired from her job based on harassing email, and the mother of another was doxxed, even though he wasn’t living with her, in a clear attempt to harass through family. Simply showing a listing with names isn’t harassment, unless presented in such a way as to invite attacks (which was precisely the case in the second doxxing mentioned.)

As of 22/12/2018 he is still doing this. He has faced several libel suits, he has been forced to remove things from his website, but he still continues to go after these “brothers”. He says he “100%” knows it is them, but when you look at his evidence it is non-existent.

I have never been sued for libel. It has never been threatened. I have never been “forced” to remove things from my web site, except for one copy of copyrighted material, subject of a DMCA claim. That’s routine.

There is a contradiction here: there is “evidence” to look at, but it is “non-existent.” Which is it? Evidence can be misleading, the Smith brothers are experts at finding it, but “non-existent” is the common argument of pseudoskeptics: “There is no evidence for X,” they will say, when It is totally obvious that there is evidence. They commonly confuse “evidence” with “proof,” and then deny evidence that is even strong enough to hold up in court. “100% knows” is a reference to what I just found. Nobody, as far as I know, ever looked that this evidence before. What is the “non-existent” evidence? I haven’t stated the evidence that created certainty for me, so how would he “look at” it?

When users are blocked on Wikipedia for sock puppetry, the common remark is “See contributions for evidence.” Okay, I claim that Skeptic from Britain (and see Commons and Wikidata.) is Debunking spiritualism (Rationalwiki), see contributions for evidence. DS (notice the initials) is not ODS, who was rather openly Oliver D. Smith. ODS and other ODS socks, often self-acknowledged, have outed DLS socks. DS is Darryl Smith, behaviorally (as is SFB). Behavior is called the “duck test” on Wikipedia.

It’s a lot of work to document the duck test. They usually don’t bother on Wikipedia. Any admin who disagrees can unblock, and then it might be discussed. But the “100% certainty” is not the duck test. It does not depend on, say, point-of-view or other content issues. I’m not revealing how the data is studied, not yet, but he might figure it out, and his first reaction is going to be “Oh, shit!” because he cannot go back and hide. And it would be very difficult to hide for the future, without seriously cramping his style.

His account on meta-wiki that shows it is globally locked.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Abd

Which is obvious.

WMFOffice banned and locked his account on every wiki on the internet, this is exremely rare and only happens in serious situations of abuse.

This is far from “every wiki on the internet, and the lock is only of the global account, that’s one account, and we know that the WMF bans even when there is no account to lock, they just declare it, and in the Jake Christie case, J. Alexander then personally attempted to eject Mr. Christie from a WMF-sponsored event held in a public place where Christie lives, based on the declared ban. He invited them to call the police…. they didn’t. And he was not being disruptive there, nor is there any evidence as far as I have seen that he was ever disruptive. He was investigating, as a journalist. That’s it. They do what they can to silence criticism, and the claim that the global locks are only used to prevent policy violations is completely bogus.

This is interesting: Jalexander-WMF is globally locked. What was the serious offense?  This WMF account lock was unnecessary, unless it was abused. The abuse would be prevented by removing the tools that could be abused, which had been done. The global lock, however, not only prevents the user’s access to email through the system, it also prevents anyone from emailing them through the system. The global lock tool has long been known as a primitive hack. It simply disallows log-in, so the user then cannot see, for example, their own watchlist. The global lock tool has been abused on occasion by stewards. In fact, I documented that at one point, simply studying the previous 5000 global locks (a little over three months). The study was neutral and made no accusations. What do you think the stewards did?

If you know how stewards operate, lucky guess. Oversighted, by the other Italian steward, a friend of the only steward who had made possibly abusive locks (as many as 5 out of 5000, most locks were routine, for spammers, and often with no edits, which revealed that stewards look at login.wiki). Not even admins could see that list and study, only stewards. There was no explanation that made any sense. It was simply a list sorting information in the public global lock log. It did not out anyone nor accuse anyone of misbehavior. It simple looked at what stewards were actually doing.

Wiki theory is that the community can watch and act to correct abusive administration. That was an idea that was never given teeth on WMF wikis.

I was told that if I appealed the action, I’d be blocked. I pointed to it on the meta community discussion page. Nobody cared. And that’s how the wikis go south. Nobody cares enough to look at how they are being administered. And if someone pointed out a problem in the steward re-election process, I saw them threatened with blocks. The system is corrupt, and it’s obvious, and this could be expected to happen, given the structures that were set up. The system could be fixed, but only if the community wakes up, and it would much rather sleep, usually. Unless someone attacks their porn.

(That’s a hilarious story, where Jimbo Wales used his Founder tools to start deleting porn from Commons. Using Founder tools to interfere with Wikiversity academic freedom had caused a meta Request for Comment to be opened, but it had little participation and the vote was running something like “Stop Wales”:”Close Wikiversity”, 1:2.

When Wales then used his tools on Commons, to delete porn, the vote reversed dramatically, with high participation, and Wales caved and surrendered the most intrusive tools, and kept only oversight, because the tool is primitive and the abilities to see oversighted edits (he considered essential, and I agree), and to hide edits, could not be separated.)

There is a substantial segment of the WMF community, and even more the administrative community, that hates academic freedom. It’s long-term obvious.

Meanwhile, Office bans are generally implemented with WMFOffice and what is linked there is the global account log, showing almost 3800 actions. Now, many of those actions are on socks. There is one action for Abd. No socks. (But I had a few declared socks, and a few more undeclared that would be very difficult to find now, I never socked abusively.) I see 26 actions with the tag “WMF global ban.” I see 2923 changes with “banned user” in the summary, which would be sock locks. For example, there was a long-term Wikipedia critic, Thekohser, Jimbo had attempted to ban him and failed, and he was eventually office-banned. I know Greg Kohs, and his offense was being a paid editor, as well as pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. While paid editing does violate the TOS, if not disclosed, it certainly did not require an office action, because “paid editing” is a neutrality and content issue, not a safety issue. I see 9 actions for names including “kohs”.  When office-banned, he clearly created some socks, they are obvious from the names. (Socks named like that, if actually the person named, are not truly disruptive, and not a safety issue. Unless they are impersonations.)

It is possible that the global ban was based on his off-wiki activities, but this is remarkable: if someone is actually harassing users off-wiki, will globally banning the person actually protect the alleged victim? No, it would only prevent on-wiki harassment. More likely, it could sufficiently piss off the banned user enough to cause them to increase the harassment.

It is possible that the threat of a global ban could cause a user to refrain from “off-wiki harassment,” but (1) there is no warning and no definition of what is allowed and what is not (2) there is no appeal procedure, global ban decisions are “final,” and email and even legal notices sent registered are ignored. So there is no possibility of a negotiated settlement that could include removal of alleged off-wiki harassment, or correction of it.

This is done, as it is done, because it seems easy, not because it is effective. Greg Kohs easily could continue his work as a paid editor. I have been a paid Wikipedia editor, at $50 per hour, after I was banned there. This did not violate any policy, because I did not edit anything related to what I was paid to do. (or much of anything at all, I documented what I did on Wikiversity, it was deleted by the admin who blocked me there. But here it is.

I created wikitext for sourcing an article for a business, as one example. As another, I advised a blocked notable person how they could be unblocked, and provided wikitext to the person, who put it on their user talk page and was very predictably unblocked.

Greg Kohs, globally banned, has no incentive at all to refrain from actual paid editing, which is more efficient from the customer point of view. He will simply create hidden accounts. With the first issued global ban (decided by the community), I argued that applying a global ban would actually make the wikis less safe from the user, not more safe, because he was only editing one wiki at that point (Wikiversity), doing good work there, and this would provide a steady flow of IP information for checkusers to look at in case he tried to edit other WMF wikis. The practical argument was ignored in favor of punishment, which was the obvious real purpose. This guy had embarrassed some bureaucrats and others.

So, the predictable result: He did create a sock account, and became a Wikiversity administrator (this is easy to do on the wikis if one has a little patience and knows how the wikis operate), and was nominated for bureaucrat, and was about to be approved, when someone, somehow, figured out who he was and outed him. This, by the way, was real-life outing, and he’d been harassed at work by wiki enemies, who were not sanctioned at all for it. For all I know, he might have done it again. Ham-handed administration fails, easily, it can create endless work that creates no improvement of the projects.

Russavia was office-banned, and that was very unpopular on Commons. I don’t know if he is still doing it, but he might as well have been following “a sock a day keeps the blues away.” He continued his very popular work, only now the Office was spending paid time watching for socks. A Wikiversity checkuser took it on as a personal task to enforce the ban, and ran into massive disapproval and the ultimate followup from that was that he lost his tools, and was, in fact, eventually Office-banned himself. (INeverCry).

The WMF is not terribly sophisticated. The original idea (content and user behavior issues left to the community) was far better than what they eventually fell into. Instead of working to support more efficient and effective community consensus process, including procedures for privacy protection, and continuing to leave content and user decisions to the community, they went in the direction of direct control, which, they will find, I predict, opens up many legal cans of worms. Direct control with no appeal is toxic, but because it only affects a few users, there is little protest. After all, “I didn’t like that editor anyway.” And that is how societies devolve into tyrannies. “They came for the Jews and I wasn’t a Jew ….” is famous. 

As Lomax has a history of doxxing people and libel suits, you should probably remove mention of the real life names that he mentions without proof of owning the SKB account.

That’s up to the blog owner. However, I have no history of libel suits. I have never sued for libel or been sued for it. I have called a spade a spade on the blog. The argument would apply even more to mention of XXX, who was completely innocent, there are no credible assertions as to his identity except for obvious trolls (or someone repeating what a troll has written elsewhere, same problem, really.) However, I’m a real person, widely known, and the comments were attributed to me. If the blog owner allows open comment, then I would be responsible, not him. There is a procedure for takedown notices. It does not involve trusting anonymous users.

What the Smith brothers do is to attack others, real persons, generally by real name, while hiding behind their own anonymity. In this case, I have definitive evidence, strong enough to place before a jury if needed, that SFB was Darryl L. Smith, which then completely exonerates XXX. I have an obligation to communicate that knowledge. If I’m wrong, well, correction is always possible in comments here or there, but correction from anonymous users, replete with lies and claims of lying is not adequate. I will look at any evidence presented. What I have seen, instead, is actual and real-life harassment, obvious, and some of it legally actionable.

He has a vendetta to spread misinformation.

No actual misinformation has been pointed to, only conclusions that they claim are unproven. The cries of “lies” started when I first started simply listing AP socks, based on clear evidence and checkuser findings and Wikipedia decisions (which can certainly be in error, but they are still evidence). It was called “lies,” but when I asked for specific corrections, the requests were ignored.

I’m a journalist. My job is collecting and organizing and presenting information. If any of it is misinformation, that’s a career disaster! But everyone makes mistakes, so what a journalist will do is to invite and allow correction (or even alleged correction.) So they imagine that I hate them and that’s why I’m doing this. No, I’m simply telling the truth about what I have seen, and, in addition, what I have concluded. What I have seen is evidence, and my testimony regarding it is also evidence. My conclusions are not evidence, except if I am accepted as an expert by whomever is making decisions.

(Common law principle, and often statutory as well: Testimony is presumed true unless controverted. Testimony in that case is never anonymous, nor could controversion be anonymous. There must be a real person behind it. Anonymous testimony can be presented in court only with the consent of a judge, who will know who is behind it, and, generally, counsel for the parties will know. It is disliked and there would need to be a strong reason. Juries and judges want to see the person when they testify.)

There is not a shred of proof a group of brothers own the SKB account. He will no doubt turn up here and write thousands and thousands of words about it and try and mislead readers with false flags. He has been banned from practically every blog, forum and wiki on the internet in relation to these matters. Don’t fall for it.

They repeat that over and over. I have participated in hundreds of forums and wikis, and have been banned from few, and as to recent bans, mostly connected with the Smith brothers or the faction that one of them works for. Notice that “every” is a very strong claim. The evidence is? I am most active, in recent years, besides on my own blog, on Quora. Not banned there. Over four million page views and 1900 followers. Oliver D. Smith has a Quora account (they require real names and are totally intolerant of incivility). He’s behaved himself there, so far, and he has  9600 page views and 14 followers. I knew that his email address was authentic when he wrote me because he has published that address in a number of places, and the photo on Quora matches others.

I had activity on over a hundred WMF wikis, significant activity on 10. I had, when banned, over 36,000 global edits. I was not shy about getting involved with controversial topics. I confronted abuse, especially administrative abuse, and often successfully. I resolved and prevented disputes from boiling over, at leaswt

Anyone who is a whistle-blower will see blowback, it goes with the territory. I was banned only on one wiki, the English Wikipedia, and that’s a long story by itself. I’m proud of what I accomplished there, but abandoned the project (I was no longer editing at all when actually banned). I was not banned on any other wiki. I was, at the end, blocked only on Wikiversity, by the unilateral action of a single administrator (Umbrecht) and there was no community consensus for ban (and Wikiversity policy required such a consensus even to maintain a block, though what I saw was that, increasingly, the policy was dead and admins could do whatever they pleased. So I had also almost entirely abandoned Wikiversity editing and only became involved to protect a user who had been impersonated and attacked, and to defend the academic freedom of Wikiversity. I knew it was dangerous, and also that the effort could fail, precisely because of what happened. I can provide links as evidence for all the factual assertions here, but this is already getting way too long.

The faction that has supported the Smith brothers (possibly not realizing what they are doing) hates academic freedom, and also neutrality policy. They are occasionally explicit about this. They had long attacked Wikiversity, and, previously, were unsuccessful, often due to my intervention. However, where I really failed was in not inspiring the community to create protective processes and to build in watchdog roles. The software actually allows it, but the user functions are generally not enabled. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

There are something like 800 WMF wikis. I am not banned on those wikis, except for one, enwiki. Rather, my account is globally locked and a ban was declared by the WMF. At one time, local wikis had discretion to ignore global bans, any local bureaucrat could detach an account. That changed, the ability of local admins to bypass a global ban was taken away with the establishment of Single User Log-in, and I pointed that out. Basically, nobody cared. What was a reality, though difficult to maintain, was destroyed with hardly a notice. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. If we don’t protect it, it walks away — or is stolen.

There is a Wikipedia list of 100 notable wikis. As wikis define bans, I am banned on only one: the English Wikipedia. I am blocked on two more: Wikiversity and Rationalwiki. That’s it. In addition to those wikis, I have accounts on about 12 of those notable wikis, not blocked. (|This includes a few WMF wikis where there was no block).

Wikiindex lists something over 2,100 wikis. I’m only banned through normal process on one (many years ago) blocked on two more, (Wikiversity and RationalWiki) and then globally locked by the WikiMedia Foundation Office. That’s definitely not the same as being banned on many wikis,which would require, one would think, misbehavior on many wikis. Or at least wiki administration that thinks so.

In addition, I have participated in many fora over the years, going back to the W.E.L.L. in the 1980s,where I was a moderator. I am banned on lenr-forum.com, that’s the only one. This latter is a bit ironic. I am not banned on e-catworld.com, where I am very well known as a critic of the claims of Andrea Rossi, “inventor” of the “e-cat,” allegedly a “cold fusion” device, but am banned on lenr-forum, where I was, at the time of the ban, probably the most popular user. How did that happen? It’s the same old same old, I pointed out that a moderator was deleting posts with no notice or warning and without providing any way to recover the content, and declared that I was not going to post there unless this was addressed, because unexpected deletion is a problem for a serious writer. So I was banned. With no explanation, and protests from the community were ignored. This happens all over. My position is that the site owner has the right to do whatever the F he or she pleases, though there can be some moral issues.

The Smith brothers lie about me as they have lied about many people. One difference is that I use the lies to expose them, to fight lying, not with yelling and blame, but simply with the truth. They clearly hate that.

Their support has been evaporating, that can be seen in the Skeptic from Britain sequence, if one knows where to look, and on RationalWiki, where users have been getting tired of being used as a platform for personal vendettas, weaponizing Google (i.e., what they accuse me of, but what they have been doing for many years, long before I was involved.)

Update

Darryl L. Smith had been, as far as I could see, inactive on RationalWiki since May. (Though his brother was active). In hindsight, I can see that he turned his focus to Wikipedia, as Skeptic from Britain. Now that Skeptic from Britain is out of the picture, I was watching to see signs of him on RationalWiki. Today, I found them (I only check periodically, it is like inspecting a sewer. Tough job, but someone has to do it.)

John66. Registered 19:52, 22 November 2018. Apparently, Skeptic from Britain was preparing to shut down Wikipedia activity. Articles edited or created (N): (updated 11/10/2019)

Warning: the common RationalWiki user is a so-called “rational skeptic,” and may edit with a showing of views similar to Darryl L. Smith. That, in itself, is not evidence of being this highly disruptive troll/sock master. I do not recommend that people not familiar with RationalWiki attempt to attack the articles or users, on-wiki or even off. AP socks use this and will even create sock puppets that will repeat the arguments. If a critic allows their real identity to be revealed, they will up the game with real-world harassment, I have seen all this reviewing history, but particularly in the last year, when I became involved. If anyone wants to consider action, please create an email connection with me. Leaving an anonymous comment here with a real email address, requesting an email, will do that. Trolls will be sprinkled with parmesan cheese and broiled.

I am careful about identifying socks, and maintain a distinction between mere suspicion (usually based on point of view and interest in specific topics) and stronger evidence. When I was merely pointing to obvious suspicion, from WikiMedia Foundation checkuser reports about impersonation socking to defame, I was warned and threatened, which was a clue to me that I was touching a nerve, that this was bigger than some transient tomfoolery. This was amply confirmed!

I have already seen enough to be quite sure that “John66” is “Skeptic from Britain” and that they are both Darryl L. Smith. I will be looking at further evidence that takes some time to examine. I have already used this kind of evidence to clarify the original identification of SfB, and to confirm my opinion that Bongolian (the RW sysop who has no given John66 sysop privileges) is not the same user.

Something like 1% of registered RationalWiki users may be Smith brothers. That’s quite a large number, but it is normally only a very few at a time, but continued over the years. Most of the socks, as with most AP socks on Wikipedia, only show a few edits. Here is an example that turned up from looking at John66, from history for Courtney_Brown:

Brian_Gene_Kelley, only three edits in 2013, two on that article, one on Rome Viharo, a red flag.

I have edit timing studies of other DLS socks in 2013, I will see how this fits. The behavioral pattern is quite common and not usual, ordinary new user behavior: the user appears immediately creating entire articles, on a narrow range of topics. That is very popular on RationalWiki, and someone who does this in line with the site point-of-view will quickly be given sysop privileges, I’ve seen it over and over again for Smith socks. They know how to do it.

These are anonymous trolls who hide their identity in order to attack real people. I did not get involved because I agreed with their targets, but because they used lies, deception, and impersonations to attack others, which harms everyone. For blowing the whistle, I was threatened and attacked, in many ways. It’s just history.

In my training, “If they are not shooting at you, you are not doing anything worth wasting bullets on.”

The focus of Darryl on “diet woo” is recent, but reasonably consistent. After spending the day looking at the data, my confidence has increased.

  • This is not a vegan plot, nor is it funded by big pharma. This is Darryl L. Smith pandering to where his bread is buttered, the “skeptical” movement, debunkers, aligned with the Amazing Randi and friends. A much milder incarnation of this movement is Tim Farley., whose connection with Darryl Smith has been claimed but is not clear, and if there has been a connection, that Farley knows what Darryl does is even more unclear. Tim Farley’s web site is a collection of anecdotes where people believed in or were deluded by or defrauded by this or that “woo,” and died or suffered losses of some kind. No comparison is made with following “conventional wisdom,” or the “standard of practice” which can also be fatal. The skeptical movement, unfortunately, does not actually educate in critical thinking, the real thing, but rather the site is utterly unscientific, even though many of the ideas covered are often thoroughly wiggy. It is obvious that defective ideas and thinking can kill us, including the ideas that if I do whatever a doctor tells me, I’m safe, and if my doctor follows the standard of practice uncritically, he’s a skilled physician and I should trust him. The standard of practice is not necessarily and truly “evidence-based.” There is science behind much of it, but  not all of it, and the exceptions can be killers.
  • The Malcolm Kendrick article was not deleted because of Skeptic from Britain’s arguments. His claims of “quackery” and the like were irrelevant. The issue was the normal one for biographies that are deleted: a lack of reliable secondary sources. This has almost nothing to do with how well known Kendrick is in certain circles. His popularity has not yet resulted in adequate secondary sources about him. It will, I predict, and then the article could be re-created. That process will be faster if it is not recreated out-of-process, and if unskilled attempts are not made.
  • There are certain people allied with the skeptical movement and Wikipedia faction who use impersonation and other highly unethical (and sometimes illegal) tactics to promote the movement. These do not use critical thinking, they use and promote knee-jerk response to dog whistles. “Critical thinking”, properly understood, looks at balance and does not uncritically accept the mainstream, it only uses reactive thinking to identify what is “wrong” with fringe ideas.
  • Skeptic from Britain is the same user as Debunking spiritualism, Goblin Face and many identified socks, and most recently John66. (The objective evidence on the last account is weaker, because there are not yet as many edits overlapping in time, but there are enough to show consistency, and the duck test — which could be documented — is strong. Skeptic from Britain lied about his intentions, and lied in order to use his alleged departure from Wikipedia to attack an innocent user who had criticized him. That is a classic Darryl Smith behavior. Research is continuing on the set of socks, but overlap of DS and SfB is clear. It takes time to do edit correlation studies. I’m learning, so it gets easier.
  • Wikipedia is vulnerable to factional manipulation. This is not a simple problem, given the Wikipedia systems and structures that developed and became highly resistant to reform. The problem is not the policies (which can seem counter-intuitive to those who don’t understand them). The problem is enforcement of the policies, and this problem is as old as Wikipedia. Solutions are possible but the will to implement them has never existed.

One final point.

Historically, Darryl Smith and his twin brother Oliver were confused on Wikipedia, and defacto-banned under the user name Anglo Pyramidologist. The identification of Oliver D. Smith is definitive. The real Oliver Smith has many times admitted his identity. He has a known public email account, and I and others have received email from that account, responded, and he responded back. This rises to the level of proof. However, he also lied in those mails, changing his story radically as conditions changed. On Wikipedia, they did not care which brother was which account, and the accounts were linked because (according to one of them) they were both visiting their parents when editing Wikipedia. That story was consider the usual “evil twin” excuse and was ignored, but behaviorally, there was always the appearance of two users, with distinct interests and habits.

The existence of a twin brother (probably) was established from a public record for the family, showing the two brothers the same age. Oliver D. Smith has shown a strong interest in Atlantis, and wrote a paper on the topic accepted at a peer-reviewed journal. This interest has all contributed to his positive identification. However, positive identification for Darryl L. Smith, the twin, is not so easily available. Most of my opinion on this is from comments made by Oliver, who, when Darryl was outed, defended his “brother” or his “family.” (And in the emails, he, attempting to deflect blame from himself, he claimed that most of the socking had been his brother. From what I’m seeing, that was a gross exaggeration, as to certain kinds of socking.) It is Darryl, with his interest in debunking the paranormal or fringe, who created impersonation accounts and later, when I documented this, organized a quite visible campaign to privately arrange my global ban on Wikipedia.

There is another brother, older. I have seen no trace of this brother. However, in the cloud of confusion that has been created, it is possible that individual accounts might be incorrectly identified with one of the AP brothers. This is implausible with accounts where long-term behavior is visible.

Darryl claimed that he had other accounts in good standing on Wikipedia. That could be true, and it would simply indicate that he learned to use evasive techniques, to avoid checkuser identification, and partitioned his interests to avoid suspicion. I found one account that I suspected might be such a “good hand” account. When I did an edit timing study, my conclusion was, no, this was not Darryl. If anyone suspects other accounts that are or were active on Wikipedia, that have not already been identified, please let me know by establishing email connection. (which can be done by any comment here, and anonymity will be protected; however, don’t lie. All protections disappear for those who lie. Don’t worry, I know the difference between error and lying.)

(If someone names a plausible sock in a comment here, I will also investigate, at least briefly. I will respond as the situation warrants. Too many people have already been wrongly accused, such as the user attacked as being SfB based on the knee-jerk assumption that SfB would be telling the truth! (And then, that this user was allegedly vegan — it was false — led to claims that Malcolm Kendrick had been attacked by fanatic vegans! That’s a common Wikipedia error, when an impersonation sock says, “I’m BannedUser,” they believe him. That’s not an immediate problem because the response is to block that user, but when, then, there is retaliatory action on another wiki, based on this, harm has been done. That is what happened, and that is how I got involved. These tactics are repeated because they work, and so much for “critical thinking.”)

I have also done one major control study, Bongolian. This is an established RW user with advanced privileges . One look at his contribution history shows immediately, this is not Oliver or Darryl!!! (I have never suspected him of being anything more than an “enabler.”) The level of sophistication that would be required to create the appearance of being distinct would be phenomenal! It would be far, far too much work to be practical.

The comparison between Bongolian and Skeptic from Britain shows that these users are independent, with a very high level of certainty, and it anecdotally confirms the methods I am using.

List of comment socks and timeline

(and possible “meat puppets — if one carelessly repeats as if fact what is from a puppet master, one risks being called a “meat puppet,” one of those charming Wikipedian terms.) (MK is Kendrick’s blog, FH, Naughton’s)

    • MK Stephen Rhodes December 4, 2018 at 5:12 pm provided misleading information, not “first post by [SfB]”, but an essay by JzG, a factional admin. There is a post here about the source of that phrase, “Lunatic Charlatans.”
    • MK Stephen Rhodes  December 4, 2018 at 5:17 pm points to User page for SfB, edit of March 7, 2018. SfB added a userbox created by JzG. This was a notice of factional affiliation, nothing more (or less). That is linked from 59 pages. 
    • FH james    (deleted) Fathead blog appearance of false claim of identity for SfB. No evidence was given.
    • FH Wikipedia editor December 14, 2018 at 9:59 pm
    • MK Stephen Rhodes December 15, 2018 at 7:52 pm repeats the false claim from james.
    • MK Alex Davis  December 18, 2018 at 2:52 pm
    • December 14, 2018 MrStrong (Oliver Smith) hints, to Michaeldsuarez, that Skeptic from Britain is his brother (Darryl), then effectively admits it.
    • December 15, 2018, Skeptic from Britain has his name changed to MatthewManchester1994. He had previously claimed to be from Manchester. This was very likely a lie. He also claimed an interest in biology, and one of his former sock names was Skeptical biologist.
    • December 17, 2018 MrStrong claims Rome Viharo is Skeptic from Britain .
    • December 19, 2019 MrStrong claims I (Abd) am Skeptic from Britain (MatthewManchester1994) (and a host of other accounts well-known to be him or his brother.)
    • (Setting aside Michaeldsuarez — to whom Oliver admitted SfB identity — Rome Viharo and I would be the most likely people on the planet to recognize the work of Darryl Smith.)
    • FH Low-Carb Man  December 19, 2018 at 4:57 pm (that name blocked on Wikipedia as sock of Amanda ZZ, all very suspicious. Repeats the story of “XXX” being Skeptic from Britain, ascribing cause to “outing”. In fact, that alleged outing was almost certainly Skeptic from Britain planting a red herring to cause disruption. Darryl does that. Oliver might do it too.
    • December 20, 2018 MrStrong threatens to expose me to the people upset with Skeptic from Britain, on my user talk page, guaranteeing it would get my attention. So I investigated and published this page, December 21, 2018. I did not know about the conversation with Michaeldsuarez until more recently. All is not well between the brothers, if Oliver was not simply lying again. His story about RationalWiki , told to Suarez, checks out, and he predicted the articles appearing there (under John66).
    • December 20, 2018, MatthewManchester1994 puts up “farewell,” claims real-name outing (which would validate it, if it had happened, SfB was obviously an experienced user and would realize that announcing that you have been outed is inviting everyone to look for it and believe it), and then changes his name again.
    • MK Wikipedia Astronomer  repeats standard Smith story about me.

Jimbo Wales commented on Skeptic from Britain in a !vote on a deletion request SfB had submitted. My emphasis:

Strong keep – As others have noted, WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a valid reason for deletion. It is worth noting that the proposer is a serial namechanger and POV pusher who has now apparently left the project. A quick research of the film reveals that in addition to the sources that User:Strikerforce rightly says are enough to ‘barely’ pass notability, I found an article at Motley Fool and this one at Vulture. It is not a major film to be sure, but there seems to be no reason for deletion other than the POV pushing of the proposer. In the original deletion way back in 2009, the proposer wrote, correctly “This movie may eventually garner enough coverage to warrant an article here, but as wikipedia is not a crystal ball, it’s a too early for an article now.” I would suggest that it is no longer too early. [Addendum: this review is now beyind a paywall. It is from BoxOffice (magazine), a clearly reliable source.]–Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:54, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Wales probably is not aware that this “POV pusher” has long been blocked, he is a sock of Goblin Face, who is one of the Anglo Pyramidologist brothers, most sock investigations are under the latter name. When he “retired” from Wikipedia, he took up on RationalWiki with the same agenda.

Wales also is unlikely to realize that this activist is affiliated with a faction, and claimed to have been paid to edit Wikipedia by a “major skeptical organization.” If Skeptic from Britain was such a major POV-pusher, why had he escaped notice? In fact, his POV fits in with that of a faction I confronted long ago. They are “debunkers,” and have strong opinions, they have explicitly rejected Neutral Point of View, but advocate what they have called “Scientific Point of View,” but that is an oxymoron.

6 thoughts on “Skeptic from Britain”

  1. I received a comment from someone calling himself Gavin with a free email account address, giving me the user name of an account purported to be Skeptic from Britain. I thank him for the lead, even though this might be trolling. I look at accounts and compare edits with known socks. This one I would, at this point, say is “possible,” but not clear enough to publish. It also could easily be a troll attempting to divert attention from real socks.

    Reports of Smith socks are welcome. Unless confirmed by my research, they will not be published. As is well-known to journalists and police, anonymous tips are unreliable and should be checked carefully before being used for more than investigation, and investigation should be careful, because a troll may find a piece of evidence that looks like a smoking gun . . . but is not, or the gun had a lawful use, etc.

    The claims of anonymous users on various blogs and sites that “XXX” was Skeptic from Britain were trolling, planting red herrings, and confirmed by SfB in his last edit, to create confusion and upset toward “vegan activists.” SfB was not a vegan activist at all, and was also (probably) not an agent for Big Pharma. The goal of SfB and his family is confusion, and if he is paid (which is possible), it would be by debunkers and “skeptical” organizations. Both Smith brothers are currently active on RationalWiki. If anyone wants to help with identifying and documenting these, volunteer, leaving a usable email. (Gavin did not respond to an email.)

    (you may use any name you choose, but a real email, and ask for email contact. The email will not be published (unless it is clearly trolling and impersonation, in which case it might. Impersonators have no right to privacy.)

  2. WARNING: this comment is blatant trolling, probably an impersonation. I have approved it to show what happens when the Smith brothers are involved. Every statement here is likely deceptive. If this were actually Jytdog, he would be, with it, declaring that he lied to the Wikipedia community. This kind of bragging is old behavior for Darryl Smith. I have already been considering looking at Alexbrn and Jytdog, because of various signs I have noticed, but I don’t know where it will take me. Actual study takes time. Skeptic from Britain is definitely Darryl (or at least Debunking spiritualism, that evidence is clear. Amandazz100 is complicated, there is a real person involved, blocked with Amandazz100, I have asked her to contact me, because something is off.

    Alexbrn has just edited this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbohydrate_diet and the Gary Taubes one getting rid of woo-woo. You LCHF quacks have been DEBUNKED by us scientists.

    If any of you low-carb cranks try and get on Wikipedia. I will have you BANNED like Amandazz100 and her socks and meat-puppet friends were.

    Skeptic from Britain and myself were heroes on Wikipedia refuting medical quackery. We will both be back.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alexbrn is also a hero.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jytdog#That's_all_folks Even I will be back under a secret username that you will never find.

    Us scientists and skeptics own Wikipedia. High-fat eaters lost. =)

  3. Hi Abd Lomax,

    I appreciate you removing my name. Please also remove links to my personal instagram account.

    I am amazed by how deep this rabbit hole goes. I believe the same person smearing you on encyclopediadramatica and “rational”wiki, ect. is the same person behind the attacks on the low-carb diet pages.

    It is a shame so many are attacking you, referring to dramatic, biased pages written to smear you name by the very individual attacking low-carb diets.

    Quote from this page, from “rational”wiki “User:Marky” https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Abd_ul-Rahman_Lomax&oldid=1878895:

    “Lomax is an advocate of the Atkins Diet, a low-carb fad diet that most of the medical community have rejected as quackery.” – This is exactly how Skeptic from Britain describes the diet. “Quackery” is one of his most used words in discussion with me and others. It seems obvious he has a very long history of editing Wikipedia and other Wikis for malicious intent, and has a very long standing feud with you. I believe most comments attacking you are written by him in various pseudonyms. The man is a pathological liar, as I have discovered from his smear campaign against me.

    I am led to believe you are correct in your investigations, very good work. Its clear this individual has deep seated, unhealthy hatred against you, and I worry you somehow set him off on this very coordinated against low-carb diets. I hope he disappears, but his pathological history of impersonation and fake accounts seems to suggest otherwise.

  4. I have not yet verified that this mail is actually by the user who was attacked, but I will do that. (added: This has been done.)

    Meanwhile, what I can quickly check is verified, so I have redacted the name and other clear identity information.

    I was not merely skeptical that SFB was this person, but, before I saw the false claims, already had a strong opinion about who this would be. I have seen many thousands of edits by this person, because once he attacked others on Wikiversity and Wikipedia, through impersonation socks and then follow-up socks that complained about the impersonation socks, I looked at the entire history. And then, because of this incident, I now had almost 4000 fresh edits to study. I have no doubt, SFB is Darryl L. Smith.

    The appearance of many socks attacking you and me and others is just another sign. Darryl has done this many times, with many people. This time, however, I pulled out more powerful tools. I already had IP and checkuser evidence (any blogger with admin access to the raw domain logs can see what checkusers will see), admissions and testimony from the brother Oliver D. Smith, and the shared experience of many others. A great deal has accumulated over the years. I now have even clearer evidence that anyone could fairly quickly verify.

    Thanks for writing. I’m sorry for any distress you have suffered over this, but I’m exposing the Smiths so that others don’t have to go through this. I’m also on an LCHF diet (for almost 15 years) but that’s irrelevant, actually. This is about simple honesty and testimony. People like the Smiths do their best to destroy communication and cooperation, and the formation of genuine consensus. They are, in that, enemies of humanity, not just of this or that point of view.

    If I have uncommon factual knowledge, it’s my obligation to humanity to disclose it. On request, I will advise about Wikipedia process, with which I have high experience. Yes, I was banned, but I’ve actually been paid to advise others (within policy!). Nobody has been banned for following my advice. I know what to do and what not to do.

    Wikipedia is also a mess, and a dangerous place to invest much work. But that is up to each individual.

  5. Hi, this is [name redacted], I have been falsely accused of being Skeptic from Britain, by none other than SFB himself. My Wikipedia Username is User:[redacted], previously [redacted]. As you’ll see from my Contributions, I tried to defend Wikipedia from Skeptic from Britain, and engaged in dialog with him on his talk page, explaining that a low-carb diet can be high in fiber, and can be a plant-based diet like my own.

    I am a former vegetarian, I live in the USA, in the state of Maryland. I am a big advocate of Ketogenic diet, which I started 9 months ago, and lost 40 pounds. I now occasionally eat chicken and venison, which I now know are healthier than the high-carbohydrate vegetarian-american diet I ate for a decade. I also work on my Omega 3s, avoid eating out, avoid processed junk food, and focus only on eating nutrient-rich foods. I truly believe spreading knowledge will save lives, most people in my family and at work struggle with their weight and their own health. The keto diet for me has alleviated nearly all my health problems, including GERD, fatigue, mental fog, depression, anxiety, carb cravings, sugar crashes. I could not be a bigger supporter of this way of living.

    I appreciate your skepticism regarding the identity of the truly harmful Wikipedia editor named Skeptic from Britain. My identity is being falsely framed me as being him, so that he can hide in darkness. But I have nothing to hide. I did have mention of me removed from the fathead movie website, by Tom Naughton, a great guy, who makes great movies and very informative talks. Please remove mention of my name and my old instagram account.

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