ODS

If you see this on an archive site, check the original URL to see if it has been updated, errors corrected, responses received, etc.

This page is under construction. Due to restoration from a crash, after starting to recreate it, it has redundant material. It’s a mess. Read it only if insanely interested in following this as it is edited. (This is not a blog post, it is an information page. Blog posts always have a date in the URL. Information pages may exist in information hierarchies, and multiply like bunnies as information is organized, which takes time.)

As the initials imply, this RationalWiki account is Oliver D. Smith, who apparently decided to register a new account at RatWiki, and he has openly acknowledged being the well-known troll and harasser. He is being protected by his brother, Darryl L. Smith, who is currently using Debunking spiritualism (DS), which would be a classic Darryl Smith user name. In a number of communications, Oliver has essentially outed his brother. But this page is about Oliver.

ODS contributions.

The following sequence took the cake, and shows what DS is faced with, attempting to handle his brother. It also shows a small piece of the cross-wiki behavior, with massive socking on Encyclopedia Dramatica (at the same time as ODS crows about small-scale socking by his enemies).

With his first edits he lied about the Emil Kirkegaard page on him. (Archive copy just in case). Contrary to his claims, and as can be seen by reading the Kirkegaard page linked, Kirkegaard did not claim that “every single editor on his article is Oliver Smith.” This is a classic AP straw man argument, both brothers do it. Oliver claims that “Like 90% of the accounts he lists are not mine and he provides no evidence I’m any of these users.” And then, “For example “igobymanynames”/”Skeptical”/”Antifa Ireland”/Dinocrisis etc I’ve never edited or posted on. Basically he’s looked at the history of the [[Emil Kirkegaard]] article, sees it has about 25 editors over past years, now says I’m all of them, when I;m not.”

Kirkegaard made no such claim. He quotes Oliver (in the archived copy): “Also, I created both their entries at Rationalwiki to warn the internet about these people.” (Referring to John Fuerst and Kirkegaard).  Both articles were created by Ben Steigmans, an impersonation account. [redacted, original name has two n’s at the end and no second s] was the user attacked on Wikipedia and Wikiversity by Darryl Smith; the interests are crossover, but Ben Steigmans’ focus was Oliver, and we have Oliver’s admission. Then, showing a screenshot of the edit history, Kirkegaard claims:

Skeptical is Oliver’s chosen sockpuppet in this case. He appears to have spent 2 days writing my page on this occasion. A list of suspected sockpuppets and IP’s is given later

When Kirkegaard wrote that, the extent of Darryl’s socking was not widely known. Skeptical was very likely Darryl, certainly Oliver claims that. Darryl was also definitely some accounts listed by Kirkegaard. AP socks have played on the confusion caused by the massive socking. Oliver claimed, in email to me, that “99.9% ” of the socks I had identified were his twin brother, based apparently on my Rational Wiki article list page. That was an obvious exaggeration, since he was some accounts and I had not claimed a thousand of them.

When I asked Oliver to identify his accounts, he wrote that it would be too much work.  The following identifications are based on the preponderance of the evidence. In many cases, there is not enough evidence to definitively conclude which brother it was, or even that it was an AP sock (and on Wikipedia, suspected socks will be listed based on thin evidence. Many of these end up being confirmed where checkuser is run.) My sense, however, is that few of the identifications listed on the List page are incorrect. The Smiths often claim this is all stupidity, but they don’t actually point out errors. Notice, the only error Oliver claims is that certain accounts were not him. But that allows them to be his brother, and the two have created massive confusion.

(The following has not yet been thoroughly researched. Links will be added as found)

1. Asgardian
2. Aza]
3. Skeptical probably Darryl
4. Welliver I suspected Oliver, from interest, but other evidence points to Darryl.
5. Antifa Ireland single edit to RW. Oliver interest, but Oliver denies.
6. BenSteigmans
7. OldSword
8. Krom As I recall, Oliver admitted this.
9. Kromscape Encyclopedia Dramatica, definitely Oliver
10. Krom1991 Reddit account, Oliver from interest
11. Atlantid well known.
12. BlackGoatCabal early Smith account
13. Scionic Evil old account, widely identified as Oliver
14. AngloSaxon
15. Hyperboreanar
16. pyramidologist old account
17. Truthseeker
18. cassiterides
19. Anglo_Pyramidologist
20. Boglin the name would indicate Darryl
21. Thule
22. DinoCrisis certainly Darryl
23. PS2  see the RW account contributions
24. Goosebumps the name would be Darryl
25. Arcticos
26. Atlantid
27. Onion_hotdog
28. Morpheus
29. Dale
30. HaraldBluetooth the name would indicate Oliver
31. BenSteigmann ( Reddit impersonation)
32. BenSteigmans (RatWiki impersonation)
33. EvilGremlin
34. Jean_Lusaz
35.  … and 100s more (list here, meta-Wiki investigation found ~190 sockpuppets) [most of these socks could be Darryl, though.]

This is a list of suspected Anglo Pyramidologist socks and I have seen many more not yet added to the above list. The socks claimed that the original AP account was not the same as the massive army of socks that have been blocked as AP. I consider this likely to be true. It was Darryl (as Oliver said in 2011 and repeated recently.) However, I have bolded accounts that I would consider Oliver, and have put in italics accounts where I don’t have an opinion. I have not yet researched some of the names, but out of a list of 31 specific names (as this was originally), 15 appear to be Oliver. That’s quite about more than “90% not me” would suggest.

That was not a list of editors of the Emik Kirkegaard article. See the list page for a non-yet-up-to-date list of suspected AP socks (which would include Oliver and Darryl).  (and the same for the talk page).

The use of straw man arguments has been common, for both Darryl and Oliver. They depend on most users not carefully checking sources, reading them with expectation bias.

(I will continue with this page, to add what Oliver Smith revealed as to his Encyclopedia Dramatica activity, and how his twin reacted to this.)

User talk:ODS history currently shows DS hiding edits, including mine (expected) but also very embarrassing edits by Oliver.

ODS had published the WikiMedia Foundation response to his emailed complaint about me. DS advised that this was unwise. Gee, I found it quite useful!

First of all, there was [ material added] to ODS talk that extensively explored the account history. It was reverted by Darryl as DS.

What this will come to is a trolling page added to the Encyclopedia Dramatica Forum, created by Oliver, with proof that this was him from the timing of his creation and archiving, and adding the archive link to his user talk page, in response to a comment that pointed to his very recent ED socks. He did not deny the socks (which were obvious), but attacked. The page he created may be seen here:  http://archive.is/oAiGe

He has not changed his behavior at all. His brother tries to hide it…. Meanwhile, in many places, Oliver outs Debunking spiritualism as his brother, and denies that the massive socking was him. He is lying, but behind that is a likely truth: much of the socking that has been blamed on “Anglo Pyramidologist” was actually his twin.

Right now, I only see two active socks (aside from socks impersonating me): ODS and DS.

A system reset — Windows Update Sucks! — caused the disappearance of this content from a previous version of this page. This is now a mess. But it does show what is mentioned above. I will clean this up later.
———————
If this page is seen through an archived copy, check the original URL for possible revisions or corrections. Errors may be noted in comments here, and replies from affected parties will be allowed, as long as they are not, themselves, illegal.

This page will document the RationalWiki user ODS, who is openly Oliver D. Smith. He is widely known to have a twin brother, Darryl L. Smith. First, a brief incident.

Because there was a section there discussing me, I had commented on User talk:ODS.  This was later collapsed by Debunking spiritualism which is DS, the twin brother, convenient as a name. DS, in his comment accompanying the collapse, lied about the content of my blog pages. That’s been typical.

Cheeseburger face had pointed out that the alleged doxxing above wasn’t. (That is one reason I reached out to him, but . . . too bad. So far, he is either actively enabling AP socks or he has his head firmly wedged in the sand. I had actually been careful, but AP socks call any identification of their accounts “doxxing.” Whereas they freely identify the accounts of others . . . and practically nothing is done about it.)

ODS commented on his talk page. It’s been revision-deleted. He wrote:

 I have to laugh at crazies like Lomax calling me an “internet harasser” for merely documenting and debunking pseudo-scientists. Also, the vast majority (90%+) of my articles creations for past 6 years are/were not on people e.g. [[Multiregional hypothesis]]. So he just cherry picks a few articles, disregarding my main contributions that have helped many people over the years. What a nutcase.[[User:ODS|ODS]] ([[User talk:ODS|talk]]) 07:46, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Of course, here ODS admits being Oliver D. Smith (as he has in many places, no biggie), but . . . Oliver D. Smith is widely known as a harasser, and little of it has to do with “documenting and debunking pseudoscientists.” This page will document some of that history. However, what has come up is that at least some of the most serious harassment, that got me involved in the first place, was not him, but his brother, DS. But that is not the point here, it’s coming up.

After a series of sock puppets were created on Encyclopedia Dramatica, and with discussion of me standing on User talk:ODS, I dropped a post there.

How is ED treating you?

Hey, Oliver, have you created enough socks on the Dramatica Encyclopedia? I don’t see any today. Are you sick, or what? Wait! Never mind! What am I thinking?

You are sick!

Temple OldKnight Oedipus Stesichorus Corinna Anoncreon Run Herodotus

By the way, “average male life expectancy” of, say, 76, doesn’t mean that if you are 66, you have an average of ten years to live. That’s from birth. Average male life expectancy at 66 is another 17 years. Your education is quite deficient. —159.65.88.110 (talk) 01:54, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Some comments about this post: RatWiki has an edit filter that prevents naming or linking to Encyclopedia Dramatica. I have, here, linked to the sock accounts, that was not done in the post. But, of course, Oliver knew full well that they were his. It’s not deniable. The comment about age was in reference to this edit of his.

Further, this was trolling. a form of harassment. It is normally reprehensible. There are exceptions. What I found, more or less by accident (including observing their interaction with others), is that when they are trolled, AP socks (Darryl and Oliver) often respond with actions that reveal more information, and information is the advantage I have, I have no “weapon” other than the collection of true evidence. Darryl Smith basically declared war on me on the WMF wikis, threatened what actually came to pass.

(Two wrongs don’t make a right, but sometimes they right wrongs, and this is ancient law, and the ancient law also limits such reactions. I have done nothing with the Smith brothers that they have not done with others, more extensively and without justice.)

I continue to trust the truth. What Oliver had written was also trolling, you can judge what was more reprehensible. In context, “harming back” can not only be allowable, but obligatory. These people have harmed many, over many years. He had written:

You will be dead old man, so why bother with this?

You’re 74 years old, and the average life-expectancy for a male in the US is 76.9 (77).

So why bother with this pointless internet feud and stalking my family? You will (hopefully) be dead in 3 years, and all the nonsense and lies you write on your blog will be deleted. You’re just wasting the final years of your life with this. Herodotus (talk) 11:09, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

To answer his question here, I “bother with this” because I care about the society that I will leave behind. Oliver is an anti-natalist, who believes that having children is immoral. So he only thinks about himself. Consistent with his beliefs, his parents were immoral to have children. There has been no “stalking” of his “family,” only documentation of the harassment managed by his brother and him. My blog has a backup administrator, it is not likely to disappear. While it is possible I won’t live long, Oliver’s understanding of life expectancy was deranged, like much of what he writes. Now, this comes to the real point.

Oliver responded to that comment. I can imagine his brother seeing it. “Idiot! Why don’t you keep your mouth shut!” Oliver’s response apparently kept him up late, photoshopping.

http://archiv e.is/oAiGe ODS (talk) 03:42, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

This was all revision-hid by Debunking spiritualism (i.e., Darryl Smith).

This was perfect. Oliver could not link to Encyclopedia Dramatica, the edit filter will prevent it. But they cannot filter out archive.is, they use it extensively. They could filter out an individual page, but anyone could re-archive a page and bypass that. In any case, the archive shows Oliver Smith in all his trolling glory. Really. It’s hilarious. The archive is timestamped 13 Mar 2018 03:39:01 UTC, and it shows the comment as being created “1 minute ago.” Then his RW edit linking to it was at 03:42, 13 March 2018 (UTC).

This definitively shows that ODS on RW wrote that attack thread, and archived it and then linked to it, and the context confirms what as already obvious: he was the ED editors named, and they connect with other editors there, eventually I may document them, but the ED socking has been so voluminous, I’m not sure I’ll get to it.

His brother, DS, didn’t see this, apparently, until 10:46, 13 March 2018 . DS removed not only my comments, but his brother’s, and revision-deleted, covering up for his brother. The comments were archived only a few minutes before DS removed them. I did not do that, then. I believed I had archived the material, but couldn’t find it….

ODS, meanwhile, was today given autoconfirmed status. Does RoninMachbeth know what he or she did? I don’t know. RM is generally sane, but RatWiki is a corrupted and corrupting environment.

Was RoninMacbeth aware that ODS triggered the edit filter 9 times as of today?

(Some of these were innocuous, to be sure, though they show the Oliver Smith obsessions.)

• 12:00, 13 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered filter 50, performing the action “edit” on Michael Coombs. Actions taken: Tag; Filter description: Section blanking (details | examine | diff)
• 11:59, 13 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered filter 50, performing the action “edit” on Michael Coombs. Actions taken: Warn; Filter description: Section blanking (details | examine)
• 11:56, 13 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered an edit filter, performing the action “edit” on Michael Coombs. Actions taken: Disallow; Filter description: Edit caught by spamfilter. If this is not spam, please go to RationalWiki:Technical support.
• 11:53, 13 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered an edit filter, performing the action “edit” on Michael Coombs. Actions taken: Warn; Filter description: Edit caught by spamfilter. If this is not spam, please go to RationalWiki:Technical support.
• 14:14, 10 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered an edit filter, performing the action “edit” on RationalWiki:Pissed at us. Actions taken: Warn; Filter description: Edit caught by spamfilter. If this is not spam, please go to RationalWiki:Technical support.
• 12:12, 7 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered an edit filter, performing the action “edit” on RationalWiki:Chicken coop. Actions taken: Warn; Filter description: Edit caught by spamfilter. If this is not spam, please go to RationalWiki:Technical support.
• 10:52, 4 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered an edit filter, performing the action “edit” on Wikipedia We Have A Problem. Actions taken: Warn; Filter description: Edit caught by spamfilter. If this is not spam, please go to RationalWiki:Technical support.
• 06:16, 4 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered an edit filter, performing the action “edit” on RationalWiki:Saloon bar. Actions taken: Disallow; Filter description: Edit caught by spamfilter. If this is not spam, please go to RationalWiki:Technical support.
• 06:02, 4 March 2018: ODS (talk | contribs) triggered an edit filter, performing the action “edit” on RationalWiki:Saloon bar. Actions taken: Warn; Filter description: Edit caught by spamfilter. If this is not spam, please go to RationalWiki:Technical support.

There are secret filters that are not documented in the log. March 4, ODS was attempting to edit the Saloon bar. His edits including that time are here. My guess is that he was attempting to mention the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on Oliver Keyes, or on Emil Kirkegaard — which links to it. Naughty. There is a lot more that could be said about Oliver Keyes, but not here and not now.

March 7, a minute later, Oliver edited the Chicken coop.

I don’t see how anyone could miss it, if they look. This is the infamous Oliver D. Smith. The possible problem is that ODS is a serious troll and will use the ability to edit protected pages. How much difference this will make, I don’t know. (None of my comments anywhere should be construed as defending Rightpedia, which is beyond racialist and deep into racism, unapologetically. They do have a copy of a public record showing the former home residence for Oliver and Darryl, and, in addition, the names and ages of other residents. Contrary to frequent claims, I did show the data from that briefly, but quickly redacted it, it now shows only the two names — as highly relevant to the socking — and the UK postal code. The street name has been removed, but AP socks continue to claim, long after it was removed, that I publish their home address, It is not on this blog. [January 27, 2019:, more has been published, actually, on Encyclopedia Dramatica. Plausible. By objecting to it, Oliver has confirmed it, as he did before.]

(Remember, I was accused of promoting the “paranoid RationalWiki Smith brothers conspiracy theory, and my RW article still calls me a “conspiracy theorist,” and still has:

He now uses his personal blog to spread a paranoid conspiracy theory and misinformation campaign that the two brothers described above created and edited his article, for which there exists no evidence.^[63]

This is a straw man argument. I identified a family of socks, using the Wikipedia name Anglo Pyramidologist. That family was originally, in 2011, self-identified as two brothers. I did not distinguish between them. Nor, in fact, did I emphasize the “brother theory.” I considered it likely, but did not publish it until I had far more direct evidence, much more recently. The two brothers did not create and edit my article. One of them did, and this would be Darryl Smith. So showing that there were two brothers, twins, that shared residence at some recent point, which could cause checkuser identification, was important. to the research. The actual address was not so important. The geolocation was, and the house location is still on the map, but not precisely, just good enough to show how the IP addresses locate with respect to the residence.

This was not an attempt at harassment. If harassment were my motive, this would not have been on an obscure page that hardly anyone would have noticed except for Darryl Smith obsessively following everything. They accuse others of stalking, but stalking (of me and others) became totally obvious very early on, and what was done to create my RW article was detailed and extensive searching of everything Darryl could find. And this was obvious, and, like many other article targets before, when I simply responded on RatWiki, I was desysopped and then blocked.

Oliver and Darry Smith were being protected, this became obvious, and the extent of this is still becoming visible.

March 10, 14:14. A minute later, this edit. 

Michael Coombs is an obsession of Oliver’s. This is “mikemikev,” and a checkusered Darryl Smith sock (that’s a long story) pointed to mikemikev as a suspect for the sock master. It tricked one sysop for a time. I never trusted it, don’t trust SPAs bearing gifts, unless they can be verified. (They may point to “evidence,” but evidence can be misleading if taken out of context. These sock masters are expert at setting that up.)

Obsession with Michael Coombs is an Oliver Smith characteristic. (There are many of these, as will be found by anyone who actually studies the history, and we now have the benefit of beyond-doubt Oliver Smith accounts, admitted openly to be him.) So this shows up in the next filter triggers:

March 13, Oliver was putting together this edit.

Update January 27, 2019

I will add recent accounts here and later will add other Oliver accounts to extend the list. Most accounts before were classified as “Anglo Pyramidologist,” which is not specific to Oliver, even though he was the original Wikipedia editor by that name. Oliver has claimed that most disruptive accounts were his brother, Darry L. Smith. As distinct from Darryl, Oliver, of late, has created short-term accounts. He “retires” then starts new ones. (Both Smith brothers do that, commonly.)

• Buxton Obvious. Buxton is allowed to claim that another account is “Wyatt,” but if an IP announces that Buxton is Oliver, it is to be immediately blocked and the page deleted. But the deletion log makes the point: 20:44, 18 November 2018 GrammarCommie(talk | contribs) deleted page User:Buxton(Harassment: content was: “Note to mods, Buxton is another Oliver D Smith sock account. 82.132.245.95(…”, and the only contributor was “82.132.245.95” ([[User talk:82.132… Wyatt was not banned, but blocked as Merkel by Debunking spiritualism (Darryl) in his last spree (before disappearing with the claim that I had hacked his account). Oliver had cooped Merkel as Wyatt and it failed. It appears that the average RW sysop is nearly brain dead, or they want this troll protected. Pick one. (The cooping comes very close to admitting that ODS and DS are brothers.)
• Punisher claims to be Oliver here.
• JosephGreen entirely focused on Oliver obsession.
• Nissan common pages with Oliver socks: Octo, M87, Buxton
• Aeschylus has come back after almost a year.

Aeschylus

This story has legs. See Oliver desperate and Oliver D. Smith/Smith on Smith (the latter page has a copy of a bio that Oliver wrote about himself on RationalWiki, then when it was deleted, blamed it on Mikemikev.) Aeschylus has clearly claimed to be Oliver, there is no doubt about it, not that it was in doubt anyway.

Because he is being sued, because he revealed that on RatWiki, the sysop who gave him sysop tools has not only desysopped him, but blocked him indefinitely.

Oliver created biographies as hit pieces, pursuing private vendettas, and used RationalWiki because it was open for that. He misrepresented sources, all with blatant defamatory intention. The RatWikians think the articles are missional, but in fact, that aspect to the RatWiki mission was largely created by Oliver and his brother Darryl. Before them (starting in roughly 2012)  it was not filled with hit pieces. Oliver convinced RatWiki that the targets were worthy of condemnation even if there was little or no connection with the RatWiki mission. He and his brother learned to weaponize the wiki.

And he’s back

Doesn’t take him long. Oliver is back, using an old account, Arcticos. These are so obvious. I spotted it as a redlinked user name in Recent Changes. Sure enough, contributions made it obvious. Oliver Smith, not a doubt. He’s ranting about Encyclopedia Dramatica, where I was blocked the other day, by the same admin who blocked a series of Oliver Smith socks. He never mentions that part!

The history of Arcticos:

logs. Registered 13 July 2015.

Immediately attacked Mikemikev, first edit.

At this point, that this was Oliver was already highly likely. In the next few edits, Arcticos continued the attack. Posts displayed strong Oliver traits, which I’m not going to list because WP:BEANS.

Then, two days later, Krom (clearly admitted and well-known Oliver sock) showed up on Talk:Racialism.

Arcticos was inactive until two days in November, 2016, when he made another series of Oliver Obvious edits. Atlantis. RomeViharo (which could indicate Darryl Smith, the twin brother, but attacking Viharo became routine for Oliver also. Talk:Racialism.

16:56, 2 November 2016 FuzzyCatPotato (talk | contribs) blocked Arcticos (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of 314159 seconds (about 3.6 days) (account creation disabled) (mikemikev or troll again)

Classic RatWiki idiocy. This was not at all like Mikemikev. “Troll,” yes, but Oliver is nothing if not a troll. He creates articles on RatWiki to annoy and irritate enemies, as revenge for this or that disagreement. Why did FuzzyCatPotato block? Well, Oliver made an intelligent argument on Talk:Racialism, and Mikemikev also makes intelligent arguments. So by making an intelligent argument, and Oliver knows far more about racism and racialism than FCP, FCP assumed it was Mikemikev. So many RatWiki users think in cartoons.

Usually Oliver just disappears when blocked. I think I have never seen him request unblock except many years ago. The block expired in a few days, and then Arcticos was silent for well over two years, showing up 17 February 2019  with even more Obvious Oliver. That first day back, having been blocked as Mikemikev or a troll, he edited Anatoloy Karlin, an article he had created as SkepticDave as part of his attack on anyone who pointed out how he had presented misleading evidence about Emil Kirkegaard, which he simply denies without evidence, emphasizing “child rape apologism,” and then two edits to my article, and a comment on the Talk page, he was granted autoconfirmed by Paleonictis, and, the next day, with more Oliver Obvious, sysop by Dysklyver, who had just a few days before blocked Oliver as Aeschylus “for his own good.” Oliver is still doing the same things. “Child rape apologist” is almost as defamatory as “child rapist.”

Oliver does this: if anyone points out that Emil Kirkegaard did not actually condone child rape, that to think so requires taking a quotation out of context, ignoring the rest of his post (where he suggests that the idea was a very bad one, and that perhaps the only ethical solution if one is a pedophile is castration), he then attacks them for “defending pedophilia” or “defending a child rape apologist.” He creates news by misleading reporters and then reports the news created as proof of his claims. In the Karlin article, we see pure guilt by association in what he added. He bragged about causing that media coverage on the London Conference on Intelligence to appear; he not only wrote the RationalWiki article but he also directly communicated with reporters. Why would they call him? He was still trying to maintain some anonymity then. No, he called them and he fed them the same garbage as he has long fed RationalWiki.

He actually hates RationalWiki, at least he has acknowledged that elsewhere. But he has found it very useful for attacking his “enemies.” And if they respond, then, of course, they “have a problem with RationalWiki,” and the RationalWikians all rush to defend the wiki from these trolls and banned users.

There are those who love the drama, and those who are using RationalWiki for their own purposes.

So with his brand new sysop tools (which he has held many, many times, and still has sysop accounts, we think), what does he do?

02:01, 19 February 2019 Arcticos (talk | contribs | block) blocked Street scoop (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of π×infinity! (account creation disabled, cannot edit own talk page) (Block evasion: abd lomax) (unblock | change block)

02:11, 19 February 2019 Arcticos (talk | contribs | block) protected Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [Edit=Allow only autoconfirmed users] (expires 00:00, 18 February 2020) [Move=Allow only autoconfirmed users] (expires 00:00, 18 February 2020) (Excessive vandalism) (hist | change)

What was the “vandalism” Street scoop had only two edits. In one, he followed up on a comment  on Talk:David Gerard where Street Guy had made a misleading comment about my activity. (Street Guy could be Darryl) Street scoop gave links to the posts that Street Guy had mentioned.

And then yesterday, Street scoop similarly added a link to verify what Arcticos had pointed to, the actual Arcticos edit not actually showing anything to substantiate the claim made, other than “blocked,”

What articles did I allegedly create? The one who has created many, many defamatory articles on Encyclopedia Dramatica is Oliver, and he has hundreds of blocked sock puppets there. I have, at this point, one blocked account, blocked without warning, for doing what had previously been done by long-time ED users.

I wrote about it here, and it is obvious that Street scoop, at least, reads some of my work. So he linked to an archive.is copy of that article. It’s an interesting article, because it shows Oliver describing himself how he wants to be seen, not as he would be described by Mikemikev, on whom he blamed the article when he wanted to distinguish his obvious sock from the one who had created one of the articles probably mentioned in the lawsuit filed against him. By claiming that Mikemikev was the author, he was then able to delete the article immediately.

Claiming that an article was created by Oliver D. Smith, even though Smith has in many places (including where his identity was validated independently, such as emails to me, from a public address) admitted to creating them, has been and remains grounds for immediately blocking the user and often hiding their edits. This kind of operational bias has been going on for a long time on RationalWiki, but it used to be that RW actually welcomed dissent. Dissenters were more likely to give up from being gratutiously and commonly insulted than from being blocked. That changed over the years, and a large part of that shift may be related to the ramping up of use of the wiki by the Smith brothers, who have created hundreds of socks, possibly thousands. I keep finding more; they are obvious once one knows what to look for. It is possible that there are socks designed to not be so visible, socks that avoid the obvious signals, and that, then, the accounts that do show such signs are throwaway. But what I find remarkable is that even the obvious socks are protected and specially privileged. Rapid assignment of ops is common, whereas other users, with no problems and good edits, may not be opped for a long, long time.

I suspect off-wiki communication, requests for ops. It happens a bit too often to be a coincidence.

And if it wasn’t clear what is going on, another sleeper appeared, Jean. From those contributions, even before the edit to my article, I’d suspect Jean as a sock of Oliver. The interests of Jean are identical with Oliver. Then, the edit to Rightpedia is diagnostic. Who would know about the “demise of Wrongpedia”? Very, very few. It all aligns. Two hours after the Street scoop edit to my article, Jean reverted that edit claiming “sock of Abd Lomax.” The edit itself appears harmless, adding a related link to substantiate what Oliver (Arcticos) had added.

1 minute after that edit by Jean, Arcticos blocked Street scoop. Log out, log in. That is not enough time to communicate, say by email. It was at 2 AM their time. To be sure, it is possible that they communicated first and that Jean then did the revert. But Street Guy was already sure that Street scoop was Abd.

Right, is that you Lomax? By the duck dest and log in times, Abd Lomax or an associate of his (maybe Rome Viharo) is “rationalwiki” guy, playing a false game to cause this drama, he is desperate to try and close down this website because of his own article. According to JzG a Wikipedia admin – Lomax has a history of impersonation. If you check Lomax’ blog he is requesting for Kendrick to sue Rationalwiki (Don’t link to the Lomax blog though, it contains apparent dox). [[User:Street Guy|Street Guy]] ([[User talk:Street Guy|talk]]) 21:35, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

(Who would have been in communication with JzG? Oliver and/or Darryl Smith, that’s who. I have never impersonated, and JzG, to my knowledge, has never claimed I have. JzG is such an implacable enemy, as revenge for my getting him reprimanded by ArbCom on Wikipedia, that when the impersonation sock issue was live on Wikipedia and Wikiversity, he might have suspected me of creating that whole mess — but for what purpose? — but . . . I never impersonated anyone. Yet there are many many socks created on RationalWiki that impersonated me. Naive RatWiki users lap it up. Clever technique they use. They vandalize RationalWiki with text copied from me, often adding a twist, like a threat of lawsuit, or claims that so-and-so is a sock — when I have made no such claim nor do I even suspect it.)

(and what was “false” about that post? It was verifiable. David Gerard did not object to it. Street Guy was making false claims with no evidence at all.)

(rationalwiki guy was probably Darryl Smith, following up on his rather novel impersonation tactic. Socks had claimed that Skeptic from Britain was a certain young man, name and links given, but, oddly, no links to his Wikipedia account — under his real name. And then the SfB account “retired” because of the “harassment.” In fact, Jimbo Wales, a few days later, called SfB an “abusive POV pusher” or something like that. So people were angry with the other young man — who was completely innocent –, and Darryl, who was obviously Skeptic from Britain, had not been mentioned. So I pointed that out, and discussed the implications, hence the attack on David Gerard talk. The Wikipedia account was not mentioned because it would then be obvious that this was a user who had disagreed strongly with Skeptic from Britain on his WP talk page. Oddly, though, I had been alerted to the whole mess by Oliver Smith, who trolled me on Encyclopedia Dramatica, where I had been paying no attention, which must have unfuriated him, so he “made a joke” that I was Skeptic from Britain, and claimed he was going to tell all those angry people. Meanwhile Michaeldsuarez, a long-time reliable ED user (yes, there was such a thing at one time), pointed out that Oliver knew it was his brother, Oliver had disclosed this on the ED Forum, and posted screenshots. So why did Oliver effectively out his brother. All is not well in Smithland, I suspect. Having a schizophrenic brother can wreak havoc on family unity and one’s nice little schemes for profit from “skeptical organizations,” which has been hinted at by both Darryl and Oliver. Probably JREF or something connected with Tim Farley (Oliver claimed he had lied to Farley in an email to me, pretending to be his brother, after the S had hit the F and it was all unravelling, one more desperate attempt to reduce harm, but they never do what would actually clean it up: simply tell the truth.

I’m not sure that Oliver even knows what the truth is. And that is not an attack, it’s a possibility. He’s on the dole, apparently. Young man, 29, apparently living with his parents. (or are they his parents?) Regardless, these trolls have done a lot of damage, wasted many people’s time, gotten people fired (the mother of the owner of Kiwi Farms), caused harassment and blocks based on lies and impersonations, and destroyed the academic independence of Wikiversity, something I always knew was possible, but it had not really happened until they arranged it. They did exactly what they threatened to do if I continued to gather the public information about their activities on WikiMedia Foundation wikis.

Anyone who interferes with their agenda can expect to be attacked, both on the related web sites and anywhere they can find some traction. I have a daughter who is somewhat notable, easy to find. She got an email warning her that he didn’t know if her father was a pedophile, but he was defending them. Many others have reported similar retaliations.

I have not seen signs of Darryl activity on RationalWiki since the last edits of John66, over a month since this writing.

Another 10 minutes later, Arcticos protected the article, “excessive vandalism.” What vandalism? The only users to edit the article since August, 2018, had been sysops and Jean, and one edit by Street scoop, which was certainly not vandalism, it merely substantiated the claim, but perhaps in a way that Oliver would not want, exposing his own activity.

That article was actually created by Darryl, Oliver’s twin brother, as “attack by Google,” which the brothers are fond of accusing others of. For what? Well, I had documented the socks of Anglo Pyramidologist. (The name on the Wikipedia Sock Puppet Investigations archive, known to be Oliver and Darryl Smith), and in particular the impersonation socks used to attack a user and resources on Wikiversity. I had not outed them, except once I used a URL that contained the name of Oliver Smith, which was immediately deleted, the revision hidden, then the rest of it restored. Those studies and the vigilance created had led to many successful checkuser requests and then, rather suddenly, the wind shifted. There were obviously off-wiki communications. A steward became openly hostile, for no known reason. There were private complaints to the WikiMedia Foundation (later admitted) that lied about events. And then the big news, that Abd was “office banned,” which is indeed very rare. Office bans are not explained, even to the banned user. (But, of course, the Smiths tell the world why the person was banned, even though there is no actual evidence that doesn’t come from the Smiths. As I have seen over and over, the Smiths create news that they then report. Rome Viharo was banned on Reddit. What is quite clear is that there were many complaints, from many socks, and the Smiths do know how to make it look like socks are not the same user. Administrators seeing many complaints, and especially if they seem to come from different people, will often block first and ask questions later, if, indeed, they ever ask questions.

It is obvious: anyone pointing out how RationalWiki is being abused is to be immediately exiled, and then, of course, if they object and use socks or IP, they are “block evaders” to be blocked with no further thought. But if a sock appears that is Oliver or Darryl Smith, no matter how obvious, they are welcomed with ops. There are policies which are totally ignored. Ban first, rigorously enforced, and then maybe a chicken cooping, occasionally with the person not allowed to defend themselves.

It is a system wide open for abuse. It didn’t matter so much when RW was a joke wiki, designed to annoy Conservapedia. No wiki is a reliable source, but the Smith brothers learned how to create “sourced” claims that are based on even gross misinterpretations of sources. If they can put up what the RatWikians will consider a “killer quote,” they do it. And then later the sometimes-scurrilous accusation are preserved because “sourced.”

Oliver is getting desperate as RatWiki gets wise. Well, some get wise. Some may need a pie in the face or something drastic.

Every so often I look at RatWiki for the lulz. Today I see my name being bandied about. With a little history, (described in detail above):

19 February 2019, Arcticos (Oliver Smith) edited the RatWiki article on me, adding news from ED, and labelling me “King of the Trolls.” Pot/Kettle/Black. If am a troll at all. I took out a Wikipedia sysop by dangling defiance in his face, and, yes, I knew how he would respond. Technically, that was trolling. But nothing else was working, the guy had too many friends. Blocking me in the middle of an ArbCom case over whether he had the right to unilaterally ban me and enforce his own ban, was a bridge too far for even his faction. Making it very obvious who he is, Arcticos wrote:

However, in Feburary [sic] 2019, Encyclopedia Dramatica permanently banned Lomax for attacking other editors by creating defamatory articles about them. http://archive.is/owjUS [(as common for Oliver, link shows nothing of the kind)]

19 February 2019, Dysklyver removed the King of the Trolls caption, “Title disputed.”

19 February 2019, Arcticos added more hyperbole and a different link: http://archive.is/WiyJi , which also does not confirm the claim.

23:38, 18 February 2019, Street scoop corrected the spelling and added a link to point to an allegedly defamatory article. (That article was easy to find, because I had pointed to the page. I was blocked because the article was “unfunny,” and because that admin had blocked a series of Oliver socks and I knew that he might block me if I edited anything about Oliver at all, or maybe just anything. A touchy kind of guy, very much Obay Ma Authorite. Anticipating the possibility, I had archived the page *immediately* and also pointed to it on Talk:Oliver D. Smith. So anyone could have found it by reviewing the contributions display Oliver put up and by suspecting an archiving and checking — or by reading my blog, since I mentioned it here.

02:00, 19 February 2019,  Jean, possibly Oliver or Darryl (interests cross over), reverted, with “sock of abd lomax”

02:01, 19 February 2019, Arcticos blocked Street scoop. From the timing, Arcticos is likely to be Jean.

02:11, 19 February 2019, Arcticos protected the page, “excessive vandalism.”

03:53, 19 February 2019, Arcticos fixed the spelling error Jean had reverted back in.

16:12, 21 February 2019, Dysklyver cleaned up the article, removing non-missional Smith rants (The whole article might be non-missional, though that may be about to change.)

18:08, 21 February 2019‎, Dysklyver  (Removed protection from “Abd ul-Rahman Lomax“: the vandals interested in this page are sysops already)

The next piece of business is classic Smith trolling. It works, at least on RatWiki, and sometimes elsewhere, which is why they keep doing it.

20:14, 21 February 2019‎ Lomax_is_back reverted: Undo revision 2044222 by Dysklyver

“Ah, that will not look like Lomax, it will look more like Oliver, so I better vandalize some.”

20:15, 21 February 2019  Lomax_is_back replaced lead with Abd ul-Rahman Lomax will close down rationalwiki

20:18, 21 February 2019‎ Ikanreed reverted Lomax is back with (I don’t even know who this person is or why your username references them, and frankly I don’t care. This edit sucks.) 

Gee, who could it be? Let me think … The article is about Lomax and the account is named “Lomax is back”. Probably Mikemikev, maybe Rome Viharo or one of the other trolls. Mikemikev, however is not hostile to Lomax, nor are the others, but there is someone who wants the article to be semiprotected, the person who protected it in the first place. And that person has a long history of impersonations, and uses them to great effect. Hint: the fast easy guess, when Smith brothers are involved, is usually wrong. They are not subtle. Real sock masters only rarely telegraph who they are. Impersonators do, that’s the point!

And by the way, I will not publicly answer questions about non-disruptive socks, socks that do not violate site policies (other than possibly “block evasion”), and I recommend the same to others. It used to be Wikipedia policy that checkusers would not investigate alleged socks unless they were disruptive, and accusing someone of socking was considered uncivil unless done through formal process with disruption. Gradually, in spite of an early understanding that content was more important than identity, obedience to authority took over.

20:24, 21 February 2019 DuceMoosolini  blocked Lomax is back  with an expiration time of π×infinity! (account creation disabled, cannot edit own talk page) (Ban evasion:: I breathlessly await the day when you manage to close down Rationalwiki)

This idiot is a moderator. The quality of moderators has gone way down since I was active on RatWiki. The person behind the sock is doing everything he can to abuse RationalWiki, including creating legal difficulties, at least for himself, but also possibly for the project. It has never been my goal to “close down RationalWiki” and all the socks claiming that were impersonations. Most accounts blocked as me on RatWiki have been impersonations. I used to disclose all socks, but it did no good at all, so if I sock again I will not disclose it. The behavior of others is trained by how we treat them.

20:44, 21 February 2019‎ Cold fusions reverted.

20:45, 21 February 2019 DuceMoosolini  blocked Coldfusions (Block evasion: fuck off already)

This is standard RatWiki insanity, sysops get their rocks off telling “block evaders” to fuck off. This, with any self-respecting block evader, will encourage more evasion, it’s like clockwork. Most RatWiki sysops are not aware of WP:INSULT. Or they DGAF. If they want more trolling, their behavior is perfect. Encyclopedia Dramatica wants more trolling! In order to stop troll sock attacks, ED shut down account registration, which, I am sure, caused that troll great joy. He won!

But does RatWiki want more drama? How does this further the mission? Comments like that on RatWiki will be called “concern trolling.” Charming, they are. Not.

These trolling accounts were almost certainly a Smith brother. Oliver claimed that most troll socks, impersonations, were Darryl. Then he claimed he was lying. Then he took it all back. In periods when Darryl is active, it can be possible to tell, otherwise, what is very clear is that when the Smiths are involved, and when it serves their purposes, massive troll socking, with provocative names, appear.

20:45, 21 February 2019 Bongolian semi-protected the article with “Excessive vandalism: Chronic vandalism by abd “.

This is typical for Bongolian. Also a moderator. It was exactly the response the vandal wanted.

I have never vandalized RationalWiki. Not ever. All vandalism claimed to be me has been impersonation, generally blatant (like this), since they want to blame it on me. Unless as impersonation, where it is illegal but often effective, vandalism is pointless, all it does is to waste some time of RatWiki users. That’s not enough benefit. I prefer to document what actually happens.

00:17, 22 February 2019‎ LeftyGreenMario edited the section on ED. Did he notice that the link does not support the claim in the text? Did he become curious and look for that “defamatory article?” Did he check to see why I was blocked? I rather doubt it. He’s stupid, not necessarily vicious. Actually, most RatWikians are teenagers or not much older, social misfits. Exceptions are rare. Genuine skeptics who have become involved burn out rapidly.

They lie about my position on skepticism. Skepticism is essential to science, one is not “pseudoskeptical” merely by disagreeing with something. “Pseudoskeptical” is pretend skepticism that is actually a belief in something without clear evidence. Gary Taubes is now under attack by a Darryl sock. He is a genuine skeptic, he wrote the classic book on Bad Science (referring to cold fusion). He is also documenting and writing books about Bad Science in other areas, some of which have become information cascades, where something is accepted as “mainstream” through reputation and not through actual clear science. The author of the RatWiki article is either ignorant or lies. For example, the Atkins diet does not encourage high protein. That is an old myth. The diet is HFLC, i.e., high fat, low carb, moderate protein.

Expose mainstream idiocy (which he did, quite effectively), and there will be plenty who will attack in return, providing lots of quotes for the RatWiki trolls. The Wikipedia article has problems, but is much more neutral and fair.

As to the RatWiki article, if someone creates a straw man argument, attributing it to the article target, that then becomes a source to smear the target with the argument. There is a highly critical quotation from a skeptical physician, but the actual review contradicts much of what the article claims. This is a disagreement, focusing mostly on other issues, where the physician indulges in some hyperbole, while, in fact, agreeing with much, and what he asserted as what Taubes is “preaching” is not a fair representation of Taubes’ actual positions.

RatWiki “skepticism” tends to be a belief in the infallibility of the mainstream, which is definitely not “scientific.” They use “skeptic” about what they call “pseudoscience,” which means, for them, whatever they believe is wrong; if someone is skeptical about mainstream opinion, they are called “denialists,” “pseudoscientists,” “quacks,” or “cranks.” In the cited physician article, much of the “mainstream” view is rejected. This kind of cherry-picking is common, not only on RatWiki, but also on Wikipedia. The physician joins Taubes in cautioning against confirmation bias. An editor searching for material with a slant can find it!

On and on

2019/02/24 at 23:17 (UT), using an open proxy, a troll, calling himself “Chinese Communist,”  posted a comment to the Dysklyver page here. It pointed to the Wikipedia Contributions page for Deleet (Emil Kirkegaard) and claimed he had been “banned.” Calling a block a “ban” is a common Oliver trope. He claims that “six people” emailed the WikiMedia Foundation about his “racist edits.” He named one of them, in fact. I’m not repeating it because nothing from this troll is reliable. There may be a core of truth, though, which could be that he, and certain others, in collaboration, emailed the Foundation or ArbComm. That is more or less how I was Office-banned. No warning, no explanation, and then the Smiths claimed it was for this or that, and they have even claimed a list of complainants, most of whom were plausible. But “plausible is not proof.”

However, Deleet has not been banned. He has been blocked without explanation, and he may appeal to the Committee, and his email access was left so he could do that, authenticated as the user. This would be common ArbComm practice in certain situations and there is an obvious possibility. I suspect he was accused of threatening Wikipedia users with legal action.

Technically, that should not disallow off-wiki warnings of a defamation action, the policy on No Legal Threats only applies to on-wiki threats, but the Committee is not always precise in its responses. Without knowing what actually happened, it is impossible to assess this.

ArbComm would be very unlikely to ban a user privately for “racist edits.” (The Office might. I’m half-way hoping they do, because it would be nice to add another plaintiff to what I intend to file tomorrow.)

That Emil Kirkegaard is a likely plaintiff in the very real lawsuit against Oliver Smith (which was just claimed to be a Mikemikev fantasy, do they actually believe that people will trust them?) could be a relevant fact to an ArbComm decision. I have no information as to whether or not Deleet has questioned or appealed this. Frankly, he doesn’t need Wikipedia for anything.

So, I thought, if this is a Smith, he will not wait long to announce it on Rational Wiki. I looked. Sure enough, eight minutes.

23:24, 24 February 2019 User account Muslim guy (talk | contribs) was created
23:30, 24 February 2019 (diff | hist) . . (+607)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎ (Adding comment about his recent ban)
00:26, 25 February 2019 (diff | hist) . . (+180)‎ . . N Talk:Alt-center ‎ (Another example)
00:27, 25 February 2019 (diff | hist) . . (+38)‎ . . m Talk:Alt-center
00:52, 25 February 2019 (diff | hist) . . (+2,115)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎ (→‎Kirkegaard whitewashing Wikipedia articles)
00:54, 25 February 2019 (diff | hist) . . (+152)‎ . . User talk:Arcticos ‎ (→‎Sysop) (current)

There is zero information on Wikipedia about the alleged ban (which isn’t a ban). It is only visible if you look at Deleet contributions (or in other logs, where it would be buried in a mountain of information). There were allegations of conflict of interest (some from Smith socks), against Deleet, but ArbComm would not issue a private block like that over conflict of interest, that would be handled on the Conflict of Interest noticeboard. That someone is somehow involved with a subject does not necessarily create a COI, and even if one were found, the user would normally be warned, not blocked, unless they violate the warning.

There is no notice on the Deleet talk page, so someone watching that page would not see anything. Only if someone were stalking him, frequently checking on contributions, etc., would they notice it. And someone who was complaining, trying to get him blocked, might very well see it, but not necessarily immediately.

And, in fact, the block was on February 21, so all this flap was three days later. Unless Deleet did something I’m not aware of — I certainly don’t follow most of his activity — he has done nothing worthy of a block or ban. His communication with ArbComm will be private. I think there is a good chance the block will be lifted, possibly even with an apology, or not. ArbComm, and Wikipedia in general, are terrible about apologies, and huge messes are created and never cleaned up, because “beating a dead horse” and “it doesn’t matter for improving articles.”

Muslim Guy (liar, he’s not a Muslim, trolls with similar names appeared as attack socks about me), asserts this about Deleet:

On his Wikipedia user-page before he was banned Kirkegaard wrote he was recruiting people off-site to help him edit Wikipedia (link to Wikipedia). What he meant by this was getting his friends to create articles for race realists, this is a conflict of interest and meat-puppet issue which is against Wikipedia rules.

This is standard Oliver Smith BS, and an example of how he creates misleading sourcing. If you have what he claims in mind, i.e., his mind-reading of Emil’s purpose, you can look at the link and it looks real. But this is what Deleet actually wrote, it is on his current user page:

• This is my only account despite claims to the contrary.
• I strongly agree with an inclusionist approach to editing.
• I think intellectual diversity is desirable among information workers such as researchers, journalists and Wikipedia editors.
• I am working towards recruiting more subject matter experts to Wikipedia in the academic fields I’m active in.
• I am building a FAQ page for intelligence and related research based on mainstream statements, textbooks by reputable authors, and surveys of researchers.

There is nothing reprehensible or contrary to Wikipedia policy or guidelines there. The “recruiting” item refers to an essay on recruiting subject matter experts. Many consider this a good thing to do. I don’t, because Wikipedia never became welcoming to experts who disagree with the views of dominant factions. So it is encouraging experts to waste their time debating Lilliputians, too often.

The FAQ would belong more on Wikiversity. On Wikipedia it is highly vulnerable to deletion. (It would also be vulnerable on Wikiversity, but much less likely unless Deleet were to edit it aggressively and without regard for consensus.) And if it is imbalanced, which it certainly could be, it could be balanced, either through consensus by editing, or by creation of an alternate FAQ, and I developed procedures on Wikiversity, the result of which were an almost complete lack of revert warring, as well as deletion of good-faith work, compared to Wikipedia, and improved neutrality overall. It can be done if the editors are willing. The community generally favored it, but also became, too often, distracted and not paying attention to central process. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and if liberty is lost, it can be too late to protect it.

Kirkegaard does appear to be an academic. When his RationalWiki article appeared, he seemed to welcome it. Then he found that the claims of RationalWiki to welcome civil disagreement were vacuous hypocrisy. They don’t. They actually used to, but that disappeared, and I’m suspecting that a big part of that disappearance was the result of enabling the Smith brothers.

(To keep diversity, it is not enough to tolerate minority opinion, it must be actively protected. Academic institutions have a long history of doing this, often at high cost. There are conditions and situations where simply telling the truth can raise a lynch mob to string up the “liar.” Democracy is superior to dictatorship only where it protects diversity, even diversity that disagrees with democracy. Hence the ACLU, and when I said something that promoted the ACLU ideals, these fascists quoted it as proof of Something Bad. They are actually fascist, i.e., oppressive and intolerant and willing to use whatever power they can gather to crush dissent, while pretending to be “anti-fascist.” Give them admin tools, they will use it to exclude contrary opinion. Oliver, as admin on Metapedia, did exactly that, there was a beautiful example I found.)

So: from the timing, very high probability that “Chinese Communist,” who also used “Chinese dude” in his email address (compare with “Asian dude” for an obvious Oliver sock on the Encyclopedia Dramatica Forum), is “Muslim guy,” and from the focus and arguments, this is very likely Oliver, playing with himself when he commented on User talk:Arcticos, or it’s the brother, Darryl. I will check timings, because Darryl is active and sometimes this provides information.