Analysis

Subpage of anglo-pyramidologist/the-threat/

This is not what began the AP affair, but what moved it to a new level and stage. A trollsock, From a tower, left this message on my meta talk page:

No further engagement

You can delete this message if you like. Just to let you know I will not be further engaging you. It seems you live for this drama, I will not longer be involved.

Perhaps he lied, or was impersonated. Notice, however, that the next sentence contradicts “not longer be involved.”

I will do my best behind the scenes via email to get admins to delete all your material.

He did, and he sort-of-succeeded. That is, the SPA study material was deleted on Wikiversity (with my consent, moved to meta) and later on meta (because by that time it was moved to this blog). He got two educational resources on Wikiversity deleted, the one on cold fusion (which I did not start, but I had heavily added to it, and the resource on Parapsychology, both of which were rescued and moved to the CFC wiki, kept for historical reasons, along with user pages that had been cited, for example, on Wikipedia.

It turned out that filing private complaints, sometimes from multiple accounts — and he recruits others to complain, was his long-term MO — can work.

The Smiths have bragged about getting web sites taken down that dared to criticize them. They learned how to do this over the years. Administrators are human, often over-worked and certainly, on wikis, underpaid. If they get complaints from what appear to be multiple users (and sometimes they are more than one!), they do not investigate deeply, it is too much work. They just push buttons.

If you want to spend the rest of your life stalking someone that is up to you, but it is not healthy. I object to such a thing. I am done with this.

Again, a lie. He was certainly not finished, and this claim was contradicted by “doing his best.” As it happened, the Wikiversity and meta disruption largely disappeared, but then an article was created on me on RationalWiki by a new user who had obviously done an incredible amount of research. I was a sysop on RatWiki at that time. That ended very quickly without abuse of tools. And, again, that was, it turned out, an old pattern.

I would like to add though that AngloPyramidologist is innocent.

“Anglo Pyramidologist” was the Wikipedia account of Oliver D. Smith, the namesake of the Sock Puppet Investigation Archive.

If you want the debunker of parapsychology/or pseudoscience it is me. I have debated Ben in the past, he knows who I am, I have talked to him on Wikipedia in 2014.

And at other times. Here is a screenshot of a Facebook conversation, which I found on Wikiversity, having been posted by Ben long ago. The claims there are remarkable, partially confirming what is below. But the Smiths routinely lie, so none of it can be trusted. It is clear, though, that these were not Mikemikev impersonations, as later claimed. Mikemikev was in conflict with Oliver Smith (since 2012), not Darryl, and would have had no motive for the verified disruption.

I have nothing against Ben personally, unfortunately he uses Wikipedia to promote his fringe beliefs, he promised in 2014 not to come back but his mistake was coming back in 2017.

I created the Wikiversity resource partly so that Ben had a place to do constructive work, and that plan worked. The edits in 2017 were mistakes, yes, but harmless. This was the account Darryl used to file the SPI. Notice “globally locked.” The original filing. It outs the RL identity for Blastikus. Nobody seems to have noticed. Blastikus had used his real name for the Wikiversity account.

It’s a bit confused but these accounts were suspected, my comments in all caps. Green account was or was probably Steigmann:

This was an outrageous filing. I have marked self-reverted edits (pink), and stale accounts (With a new SUL account, created for Wikiversity, it is easy to accidentally edit Wikipedia even though blocked there. Did he realize what he was doing? I’m not sure.) They used to deny checkuser requests like this, especially from an SPA who admits he has an account, but is socking. There was an account on Wikiversity that had attacked Steigmann and the resource there. He was socking to conceal his prior interaction, and nobody seems to have noticed.

In any case, nobody was exercised about trivial socking at worst, mostly stale, so he then “must” get attention, so he impersonated, on many accounts. And it worked! Nobody looked at the obvious source of disruption, but only at the blocked user, and why? Well, he’s interested in parapsychology, and aren’t all such people insane?

After that, the filings were amended to show more socks and many highly disruptive impersonation socks, and the troll was clearly pushing for action to ban Steigmann on Wikiversity. What was totally against tradition there, but . . . he and his friends did pull it off! Even after the impersonation had been exposed.

Btw I do object to the ‘troll’ allegations. I have written over 250 articles on Wikipedia. As to this very day 30/9/2017 I have four Wikipedia accounts and 12 others I occasionally use, the admins are only interested in banning vandals. If you are atheist, pro-skeptic like me and debunking fringe beliefs the admins love us. I can’t go wrong.

He has admitted creating socks that trolled for outraged response on Wikipedia. He was checkuser-identified with massive troll socking. So he is a troll. How many so-called “good hand” accounts he has is irrelevant.

He admitted massive socking on Wikipedia, with undiscovered socks. Was this an impersonator? It is implausible. He could easily be lying (and he uses lies to create useless hunts for non-existent accounts, and he will blow an actual account and set it up to blame it on someone else, another enemy, by creating accusations on various web sites that the account is His Enemy, and then “retiring” because he was allegedly outed on those web sites. That worked also, until I blew it up by identifying who really was that account.

If he partitions his access, he could survive checkuser. The stewards only came up with the many attackers of Ben Steigmann and me on Wikiversity and this particular troll, plus two Commons accounts, one of which I tracked to RationalWiki, not to Wikipedia. So if he was active on Wikipedia at that time, it was partitioned (i.e., using distinct access, it is not difficult to do, if one makes no mistakes.)

His comment about Wikipedia admin interests is unfortunately true to a degree. That Blastikus filing shows it.

He is POV-pushing, very obviously, but those who push that particular POV are often considered useful there, even though a later WP account was called a “POV pusher” by Jimbo Wales. Their POV is not a “scientific point of view,” as they claim. Science has no POV and is not pseudoskeptical, science is not a body of belief, but a method and an approach, as well as a body of evidence.

This troll is fascist, in the original sense, suppressing opinions different from his, and willing to use deception and disruption to do so. He was able to find several allies, among the Wikipedians.

I was even offered paid work from the owner of a skeptic group.

Later, when there is mention of the possibility of payment, they cry “Lies!” And they use arguments similar to what was argued (see below) with a steward. “No proof!”

I still create articles perhaps 12 or so a week. I have serious knowledge and I have improved the Wikipedia in skeptical related articles in relation to fringe beliefs. Your statement we are all vandals or doing illegal activity is false. Take care and Good bye. My advise for you would be to give up. You are fighting a war you cannot win. You will never work out who I am or get rid of me from Wikipedia. Leon. From a tower (talk) 01:24, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

I notice that the Facebook user who was taunting Ben (linked above) — similarly to this! — was Leon Kennedy. Not his name, I’m sure, but this is probably the same person.

Just before this edit to my talk page, Darryl wrote on a steward’s talk page:

Abd stalking wikipedia users

Abd has created a hit-piece here [6] that attacks AngloPyramidologist and other users. The hit-piece Abd has created contains libellous information, accusing users of ‘illegal practices’, he also accuses a Wikipedia user of ‘impersonation’ but has no technical evidence to prove that allegation, yet he presents his opinions as factual. The page is being used as a hit-piece as Abd has had a personal war with this the Wikipedia user. He also claims dangerous things that he knows the real life identities of Wikipedia editors. Abd was warned on Wikiversity for doxing several Wikipedia users [7].. This is not acceptable ‘study’. It is harassment and slander fuelled by Abd’s hatred. Can you delete it? Wikimedia should not be holding misinformation or personal grudges. From a tower (talk) 00:31, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Claiming that someone “has no technical evidence” when what the person has claimed is known to be true, he had impersonated, and the steward technical evidence was already filed and known, and he knew that. However, someone looking at that page (later deleted with my consent) could think it was imagined, and a vendetta. Mikeu from Wikiversity clearly thought so. Mikeu based his later actions on “private communications.” And that is how these trolls work. They lie to people they know might believe them.

This, by the way, was not Oliver D. Smith, i.e., not Anglo Pyramidologist, but the twin brother, mentioned early in the AP SPI archive. The warning mentioned was this. It referred to this request by Antifa activist, another SPA globally locked from this affair (thus steward-confirmed as the same LTA), containing numerous false statements, such as an attack on Manul, which did not exist. The page was almost totally lists of accounts with contributions links, taken from checkuser requests. However, as I was researching this, I came across a web page, and linked to it, and did not notice that the URL contained a name. oliver-smith-dark-entanglement/

So the admin deleted it. I was provided a copy — they certainly did not consider me a troll! — and removed that one link, and put the page up again, and that was accepted. I did not “out” the AP socks by name until much later, when it became obvious that this was already all over the internet, and as I found more evidence of illegal activity and definitely impersonation socking to defame, which they did with me, also.

That web site was incorrect, Rome Viharo had confused the two brothers. It is quite understandable. (And there remains a possibility that Oliver was both brothers and lied about the twin, as he claimed in an email to me. I consider that very unlikely. There are distinct patterns of behavior, as, in fact, partially described by Darryl in what is above. The interest in pseudoscience and debunking of psychics, etc., is Darryl, and the interest in alleged (or real) neo-Nazis and racists is Oliver. Darryl is currently focusing on what he believes is “medical or diet woo,” while Oliver is still obsessed with alleged racists, especially Michael Coombs and Emil Kirkegaard, and it is Kirkegaard who is suing Oliver for defamation.