WOVigilant

subpage of reddit/

  • WOVigilant is a Reddit account of Wikipediocracy’s Vigilant.

The WPO account (that can only be seen by members), “Witchsmeller Pursuivant” shows 19043 posts, about 1 in 14 posts there are his. He registered early there, Mar 29, 2012; his Wikipedia Review account is also member-only. It was nowhere near as large a percentage of posts as arose later on WPO.

I may document more about him here, but for now, the immediate occasion is his appearance on Reddit, allied with the Smith socks. He calls mention of that alliance “concern trolling,” which it is not. I am not trying or pretending to help him out, which is what a concern troll does. It’s straight critique. Anyway, the Smith socks will be documented on the page on Reddit throwaways, what will be here is a list of his posts related to our concerns, as well as responses to the mud he tosses. Some of these claims have a factual basis, though taken out of context and misrepresented.

His appearance as a troll in the AMA thread for Jimbo Wales has been covered on WikipediaSucks, in a private forum there. I do not intend, however, to fill that forum with flame wars, as too many have done. Nor do I intend to respond in detail on Reddit, in spite of the trolls claims that I’m running away. This was all basically irrelevant to the posts where it began, and debating irrelevant points is much of what can go wrong with social media where moderation is weak.

Vigilant had been commenting derisively on Wikipediocracy, his haven, about WikipediaSucks, an independent WP-critic site (which also criticizes critics) but this is what arose on Reddit (times GMT)

The conversation there:

  • Wales: But most people are nice, and I think that’s a pretty good thing.
  • Vigilant: On en.wp? LMAO!!!! >Are you just a miniTrump where anyone who critiques you [is] ‘nasty’?

Nothing in Wales’ post called anyone “nasty.” This was classic trolling, and so is “LMAO.” Wales did not respond, but others did. See the conversation and the ratings.

  • pronoun99: Found the 1.
  • Vigilant: Proud of it. Holding shitheels’ feet to the fire for over a decade.
  • AnImbroglio: proceeded to skin him and nail him to the wall,  insightfully and accurately, meeting massive approval.

So elsewhere in the labyrinth of that post, Vigilant had listed a series of alleged failures of Wales. On wikitop.cc, we are publishing factual documents that cover many of the incidents mentioned, but Vigilant’s list is useless, simply classic trolling, and seen as such on Reddit. So a user asked a stupid question (such are pretty common on Reddit, it’s the nature of the beast):

  • anti_pope: Are you Patrick Byrne or something?

and I responded to that:

  • 20:30:42 20 Dec 2019 Abdlomax: WOVigilant appears to be a well-known, highly aggressive troll, Vigilant, mostly active on Wikipediocracy. No, not Patrick Byrne. Vigilant will present whatever embarrassing fact or allegation he can find, in as negative a way as possible, and make some up to boot. And he persists, year after year, obsessed and useless. Unless you like this kind of crap.

And then what ensued demonstrated what was stated, in spades. Under the same post: I will respond to each claim.

    • 22:04:13 30 Dec 2019 WOVigilant: Abd aka Dennis George Lomax is a known net.kook. He has been kicked out of nearly every community for being a complete shithead. Judge for yourselves [deleted] cites WMF, RatWiki, ED, and Reddit shitposts. screenshot

My birth name was relevant how? Vigilant’s troll habits show.

The factual claim here would be “kicked out of nearly every community.” That is radically false. I’ve been active on-line since the 1980s and have only rarely, over that time, been “kicked out” of communities. “Complete shit-head” is conclusory and fact-free. To actually assess this claim would take an extensive list of communities in which I have participated. Maybe I’ll compile that. But the largest communities in which I participate of late are Reddit and Quora. No sign of being kicked out, and the trolls attacking me tend to disappear (though few try on Quora, it’s a real-name site). On Quora, where I have 5.5 million content views and over two thousand followers, they actually like what Vigilant and others hate: Answers that thoroughly explore a topic. The WPO trolls and others hate long comments. This will come up.

Yes, I was banned by the WMF. Why? My claim in Lomax v. WMF is that the announcement of such a ban is defamatory, because of what people will conclude from it, together with the various policy statements. The WMF claims that no, it is just an announcement of a ban and no reason can be inferred. Well, which is it? There will be other comments relating to the possible purpose of the ban. But the history of it is totally clear, because some, at least, of the various players have revealed their roles.

Article written by Darryl L. Smith and maintained and supported by continuing socks, with few exceptions. Darryl Smith was the mastermind behind the WMF ban, that’s all clear from verifiable evidence. He declared he would accomplish it, and he did. And the WMF doesn’t care that it was manipulated, obviously, and refused to re-examine the case with new evidence. That article contains many deceptive claims, which we will see repeated. So Vigilant is allying himself with one of the most vicious sets of impersonation and trollsock masters active.

Knowyourmeme page copied from RatWiki and never approved, creator account apparently deleted.

That page was created by Mr.Strong, Oliver D. Smith, admitted as such and then blocked under many, many names. The page was updated (by someone unknown to me) to be far more accurate, that’s why Vigilant pointed to the old revision. (But the current page (as archived just now) is not Dramatica material, not as it is.)

    • He’s an old, insane, irrelevant idiot with terminal Dunning-Kruger’s disease.

So irrelevant that Vigilant is going to make 13 posts and counting to Reddit, in places where my identity is either totally irrelevant or almost entirely so, and, in addition, he will start up more trolling on Wikipediocracy. And the cause is obvious. Abd dared to describe Vigilant as-he-is, a very much not-nice guy, poking and provoking and flaming. For a decade.

Dunning-Kruger is not a “disease.” It is an effect, a cognitive bias, and fairly common, I’d say. In fact, I think we are looking at a case, Vigilant, who is quite certain that he is smarter and tougher than all his targets, it appears. Or is he? He has never pointed to an example where I argued that I was smarter than others. Further, I place little value on “smarter” as in comparison with others.  Very smart people, in certain ways, can also be very stupid, in other ways. So this is just more trollshit.

On the subject of intelligence, though, some facts. When I was in high school, my intelligence was measured at 157, which was more or less off the charts, the test was not designed for that. I had a verbal aptitude SAT score of 793/800 and math aptitude of 783/800. My math achievement score was 800, i.e, perfect. I was admitted to Cal Tech, and that is how I managed to sit with Linus Pauling and Richard P. Feynman for my freshman and sophomore years (the years when Feynman gave the lectures that became the physics text). At that point I took a break, came back, got passing grades, could have returned, but instead left school forever. I was interested in other things.

And so he jumps into a thread where my identity, nutter or not, is almost totally irrelevant. Okay, that was a brief comment, though what I told the OP was pretty standard. But he followed it up, essentially he is spamming, demonstrating his troll nature.

  • 23:02:15 30 Dec 2019 WOVigilant Give Abdlomax no time or conversation. He is an old, insane, net.kook who has been kicked out of every community he’s joined. [and then the exact list as above was posted. . .] You’ll do less damage to your brain by huffing oven cleaner rather than listening to this deranged fool. This comment has been deleted.

Splendidly, on track, Shitsmeller Pursuivant.

This is a great example of how someone searching for shit can end up eating it. Those sources do not show me as a “numerologist” at all. Actually, they show me as debunking what might shallowly be called numerology. Even the RatWiki article didn’t get this stupid. And even if I were a numerologist, that would prove what? What exactly is a numerologist, if distinct from someone who is ungrounded and who thinks that numbers (generally human abstractions) are real and pregnant with meaning? (As many have believed through history, were they therefore “DSM-V insane”? and there is no such thing as “DSM-V insane.” That is a troll concept.) But I don’t think that. At all.

    • 23:25:08 30 Dec 2019 WOVigilant Every time Abd Lomax gets kicked out of a group, it’s someone else’s sinister means to fuck him over. Every. Fucking. Time. It has always been this way.

If it has always been this way, it should be possible to show examples going way back, since I’ve been on-line active since the 1980s. There is, contrary to the rest of Vigilant’s claims, only a short list of groups I’ve been “kicked out of.” But here is a claim that is just about those sites. Short blocks don’t count, and blocks not confirmed as a ban, rather than as some possibly temporary admin action, are not actually being “kicked out.” So we have the following alleged “kicked outs.”

  • the Murabitun, in about 1979 or so, when that group did not exist. I was never a “member.” I was asked to leave a particular gathering, not for any misbehavior. I was not “kicked out” and I could have gone back, I was assured. But I didn’t, because I knew what the Shaykh was up to, and was quite happy about it, and the Shaykh essentially confirmed that later, as I interpreted it. I was not interested in what that group became. (But that has also been misrepresented.)
  • Wikipedia. I never claimed a sinister intention to “fuck me over,” and how, exactly, would I be “fucked over” by being blocked on Wikipedia, and later community banned? I had abandoned Wikipedia! I knew I would be indeffed and the community ban did not surprise me in the least. I chose that course, and took and still take full responsibility for it. As to the situation that led me to abandon Wikipedia, where I had worked for years, that’s another story, which is being told elsewhere. But where is the alleged “sinister” conspiracy claim?
  • Wikipediocracy. It is not clear that any records are available. I was, however, as I recall, confronting Vigilant about his accusations of pedophilia or pedophilia defense. I tend to write long posts, because I include evidence, not merely the short snappy sound bites which Wikipediots tend to like. I was banned there without warning or notice.  It is not clear who decided to ban me. I had some communication with Zoloft and more recently he claimed that he had been “ordered” to ban me. None of that would be surprising to me, because Vigilant is their pet troll. They love the content he generates. What “sinister” intention? Again, being banned was a benefit to me, it led me to avoid wasting time with futile conversations.
  • LENR Forum. I declared a boycott of LENR Forum because of arbitrary moderator deletions, without notice or opportunity to recover content, pending a change in policy and practice. The Mod responded by promptly banning me. Again, I take full responsibility. So, again, what conspiracy story? As it happened, that moderator practice was stopped, and that community supported me with thousands of dollars in expenses for cold fusion journalism. My time freed up, I began to focus on the blog and that led to actual expense-paid journalism instead of mere chatter. So how was I “fucked over”?
  • Then comes an actual conspiracy. An intention to “get all your work deleted,” if I did not stop documenting the “Anglo Pyramidologist” sock activity was declared by a sock believed to be Darryl L. Smith (on substantial evidence) and he wrote that he would do this through private complaints to administrators. And then that happened, and a Wikiversity bureaucrat fell for it and violated all guidelines and traditions there to block me indef (and to delete material that had always been allowed, by inventing an entirely new deletion reason, ignoring actual deletion discussion consensus. And it is clear that complaints were coordinated, filed with the WMF. I had, in fact, consulted with a WMF board member and had been told that there was no chance they would ban me on the basis of what I had actually done. But if they were fed lies and did not see through them, obviously, it was possible. They do not ask a target for information, they provide no warning and will not explain the ban to office-banned users. So this, indeed, represents a “sinister” conspiracy, with intent to harm. I was never actually  banned on Wikiversity, I had planned to appeal that, and had admin support. And, of course, that admin was threatened, and eventually desysopped on trumped-up charges. I had already abandoned Wikiversity a year before, almost entirely, because of that possibility, the cause of operating on community consensus had failed, it had become clear. So what was, to my mind, the crown jewel of WMF wikis, that could function with academic neutrality rather than encyclopedic neutrality — they are very different — was lost, because of some trolls who used impersonation and other methods to attack their targets, and whom I had exposed through steward checkuser requests.
  • And then RationalWiki. The Smith brothers created extensive disruption (including writing an article on me, and another article entitled “RationalWiki Smith brothers conspiracy theory,” and — I was a sysop there at the time, and had been for years, without problems —  I was “promoted” (desysopped out of process) and then improperly declared “banned” by whom? Supported by David Gerard. by accounts later found to be Oliver or Darryl Smith. In that deletion discussion linked, Marky would be Darryl Smith and MrOrganic, who had created the “conspiracy theory” article, was Oliver, his twin brother. They (probably Darryl at that time) also created massive impersonation socking, convincing naive Rats that I was very disruptive, threatening to sue them, by making such threats, etc. Hundreds of socks have been involved, and it still continues.
  • Encyclopedia Dramatica is also claimed to have banned me. That never happened. I was blocked for a time during the period where they have no database record, but unblocked. I was recently blocked by mistake, unblocked.

So Vigilant continued:

Again, the troll is eating shit that he creates. That is an article written about me and the Murabitun, quoting a usenet post of mine. The “shady cult” was a comment from that author, not from me. And there is no “fault” assigned, no claim of malicious intent at all. This is covered above. And Vigilant continued:

  • Another theory, that fits more closely with the available evidence is that Abd aka Dennis George Lomax is a lowlife scumbag who cannot get along with ANYONE, eventually getting kicked out of every group he infiltrates, who retaliates by telling terrible lies about anyone who says, “Abd is a loon.” You decide, dear reader.

No “terrible lies” have been shown. Not even falsehoods, but it is always possible to make a mistake. Unless your name is Vigilant, Witchsmeller Pursuivant, who, to my knowledge has never made a mistake that he admitted. In this sequence we see where he uses sources entirely in opposition to what the sources actually show, and trolls have learned that few people read sources. They just read claims and accept what they like and reject what they don’t.

Exceptions are, unfortunately, too rare for the health of the planet. But some do actually read sources, consider arguments, and judge for themselves, if there is a judgment needed. Vigilant is actively attempting to prevent people from reading what I write, or asking questions of people who know. In a word:

Troll.

  • 23:32:21 30 Dec 2019 WOVigilant Places this dipshit has been banned from: [repeating the list from other posts, but adding two]
    • OffWiki
    • Some weird Islamic numerology cult

As to OffWiki, I was blocked there by Wil Sinclair, the crazy “Flounder,” who also blocked the co-“Flounders,” I was not the only one. That site was doomed, and a big part of the attack on that site was Vigilant and possibly some other Wikipediots. There was no support from the Offwiki users, when he asked, for banning me. But he was freaked out and abandoning the declared principles, and it appears that his life was falling apart. This is meaningless.

As to the “weird numerology cult,” he made that up. The sources he cited show the opposite of what he claimed. And the trolling character of all this becomes even more obvious. He went on:

    • You’re going to lose the nuisance lolsuit against the WMF. You’re known as a complete nutter here. Your days of being a mod on Sucks are likely numbered. Face it, Dennis, you’re the poster child for Dunning-Kruger.

None of this is relevant in place. One comment about Dunning-Kruger. Through my life, it has occurred that some people would tell me “You think you are so smart.” It is not a testimony to their own intelligence, that they imagine they can mind-read me. I was never claiming to be “smarter.” That is a claim that stupid people make, in my experience. And when someone writes something from knowledge and study, that they don’t understand or don’t like, they make that “you think” comment.

I filed a lawsuit and my expectation is that I can’t lose. I actually won the game I’m playing by filing it. While it is theoretically possible, experts have opined that the terrible consequences predicted by Vigilant are quite unlikely. I have opinions from legal experts that it is possible I will see a favorable ruling, but it is even more possible that the judge will issue a provisional dismissal if I fail to properly amend.

What was important to me was to stand up for what I had found through research, and “winning” or “losing” are not what matter to me. I trust reality much more than I trust my own ideas or what I might want or ask for. Vigilant has complained for years about how stupid and wrong others are, but has accomplished nothing himself, that we can see, except for massive posts on Wikipediocracy, useless for anything worthwhile. He jealously protects his anonymity, I have always been open about my identity, with extremely rare exceptions for special purposes that don’t matter here.

Classic troll tactic: find someone who, from some history, is likely to say something Bad about the target and ask for their comment. Etherman apparently claims to be a corporate attorney but his comments about libel law don’t inspire me.  He’s entitled to his opinion and I researched his factual claims. He is not my attorney and I would not consider retaining him at all. I have extensive experience with truly skilled attorneys and he doesn’t appear to be one, and what’s he doing wasting his time on Reddit? He obviously has some sort of screw loose.

  • 16:36:45 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant You’re a numerologist who got kicked out of a numerologist club. That’s just freaking sad.

Don’t confuse him with fact. He is replying to my pointing out that the sources he cited show nothing of the kind. I was never a member of a “numerologist club” and have never been “kicked out” of one. He made this up, and, like a true troll, believes that he irritates his target by repeating it. Nah, I’m happy that he puts his troll nature on full display. Some good might come of it. And he will try to find some wedge, no matter how irrelevant, to pursue his theme of his target being an idiot, stupid, or something even worse. How about “pedophile defender”? Speak of the devil . . .

  • 16:38:30 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant Dennis, Tell us more about your pedophilia apologism. The ‘infantilism of adolescence’ or some such screed which sounds remarkably like, “Dennis ‘Abd’ Lomax would like to have sex with underage girls.” Explain your motivations for wanting to allow adult on child sex.

Classic loaded question. A comment that western culture has, over the last two centuries or so, redefined what would have been “young women,” clearly marriageable, as “children,” i.e, that infantilizes them, bears no relation to “wanting to have sex with underage girls.” Underage” is a matter of local law, and is quite modern. In Islam, classically, sex with a child before sexual maturity, even if married, was considered rape. All sex outside of marriage was considered unlawful, and marriage required parental consent. But people get crazy about this topic, and Vigilant knows that and attempts to play on it.

Never have I expressed any opinion allowing or justifying “adult on child sex.” To imply that I have is a libel. If someone wants more details — I’ve written extensively on the topic because of claims that Muhammad was a pedophile (which are preposterous) — they can ask. Sex that is locally illegal is harmful, regardless of age, and sex outside of marriage is, my understanding, forbidden.

  • 16:40:25 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant You know fuck all about wikipedia and wikipedia criticism. You’ve been kicked out of every single community except the dregs of wikipedia sucks, which is the leper colony of wikipedia criticism. Graff Statler had more cogent things to say about wikipedia than you do. How’s that lolsuit going against the WMF?

So, this was a post where a user complained about how the user was treated on Wikipedia, and I wrote some considerations. Nowhere does Vigilant correct any actual errors or misrepresentations made to the OP. This is all pure personal attack and trolling. That’s Vigilant, all right! Sucks is an open forum also using phpBB like Wikipediocracy. It is, yes, to some extent a refuge for those who have been banned from Wikipediocracy, but is not limited to that, and participants include Zoloft, for example, who is also a trustee for Wikipediocracy.

Vigilant spared no pains to attack Graaf Statler for everything. Graaf is pretty crazy, all right, but he does make some nice trains. I am still a member with a live account on Wikipedia Review, and I had very extensive Wikipedia and other wiki experience. I’ve been paid as a wiki consultant, with satisfied customers. (That is not a TOS violation, if I don’t edit the wiki directly as a paid user, but provide wikitext, and I always advised a client with a conflict of interest to disclose it.) Further, I am one of the very few non-admin users who successfully took two admins to the Arbitration Committee — the first was reprimanded and the second was desysopped — and if you really want to know why I was banned on Wikipedia, I’d suggest looking at that. They shoot the messenger, and that happens in many organizations.

  • 16:42:45 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant ‘…Sounds like Vigilant…’ when the account name is WOVigilant, an account you have acknowledged in the past is verified as mine? Are you sundowning, old man? Tell me more about how you understand high energy physics better than anyone because you claimed you sat in on some classes in the 60s. You’re clearly a candidate for DSM-V malignant narcissism diagnoses.

But the contributions do sound like Vigilant. The Smith brothers often impersonate a presumed or expected enemy, so I was ruling that out. (I don’t know where I verified this before a few days ago. I was not aware of the Reddit Vigilant account, AFAIK, until then).

As to high-energy physics, the basis for this comment is? Where have I claimed a high understanding of “high energy physics”? This is probably based on assumptions about my position on cold fusion, but cold fusion is an experimental phenomenon that takes place without high energy being involved. Behind it may actually be extremely low-temperature physics, based on close to zero relative energy of two deuterium molecules in confinement, in the original work, but that is speculative. As to high-energy physics, I know enough to explain in detail why deuterium fusion at room temperature was considered impossible. Could Vigilant? Yet he thinks he knows enough to criticize others. Troll, pure and simple, playing on stereotypes.

Yeah, I did sit in some classes (two years with Feynman), but I’d been studying nuclear physics since I was maybe 12 or so. And Feynman has been a major inspiration for me. I heard his stories (published later in Surely You are Joking, Mr. Feynman) from him, when he visited Page House..

  • 16:56:16 31 Dec. 2019 WOVigilant Another person Dennis “Abd” Lomax fucked with posted on wikipediocracy:

Lomax was banned for harassment, including doxing several people, including myself. At least one Wikiversity admin was striking some of his edits, so if he wants to lie more about his behaviour he needs to explain why I have evidence of his comments being hidden after multiple editors complained.

The doxing abuse was also off-wiki; Lomax posted a photo of my house on his blog with full address, my family member names etc.

That was written by Oliver D. Smith, now widely known. The actual post. [private forum, member-only] What actually happened? On Wikiversity, I was studying the phenomenon of single-purpose accounts, clearly registered for trolling or attack, triggering response against their target. As I learned things, I added them to the page, which was in my user space. At one point, I found a blog post on the sock family, and when I put the URL into it, I did not notice that it contained the name of Oliver Smith. This was noticed by an admin (very possibly from a private complaint) who deleted the page. The page was restored by me with that URL removed (and with permission). It was simply a mistake. Nothing else was being deleted relating to these issues.

I published no image of his house. I was looking at sock patterns, with a map showing IP locations, and they clearly clustered, and in the middle of the cluster was a location shown in several web sites documenting the Smith brothers. So I put a copy of that material on my blog. I removed it quickly, replacing it with the general location and the names of Oliver D. and Darryl L. Smith, removing the names of other family members. Most of my sock documentation has been of Darryl socks, so Oliver may not realize it, but when he has complained about his “family” being outed, he was confirming that the sock master was his brother.

He has also claimed that the whole brother story was his lie. So, no matter how we slice it, Vigilant is here citing an admitted liar to make his points. Vigilant has never cared about reality, only the stories he can tell of how stupid, vicious, unethical, or whatever, his targets are. And he will use whatever he can find..

  • 17:03:16 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant So, you admit to being a numerologist. You admit to being paid to go to a numerologist conference. Perfect. Every time you open your piehole, you indict yourself further. You really are the dumbest person I’ve ever seen.

Okay, a story about the man who invited me and paid my expenses (that is not “being paid,” I made no profit on that, beyond having a nice trip). We were discussing the Qur’an by email and I mentioned that there was no agreed exact text of the Qur’an, and he wrote “I have no patience for fools,” and I wrote back, “If we differ in anything, this is it.” And to his credit, he laughed and then we had more useful conversations. (An exact single text is a common myth among Muslims. Scholars know differently. The differences are small, but they exist, and they impact the kind of study that was underneath the Rashad Khalifa claims — I knew him personally, as I was living in Tucson up to about 1979. )

What that man was claiming  could technically be called “numerology.” But what I was there to look at were more specifically claims of significant patterns in certain counts of letters, words, and verse numbers in the Qur’an. This man’s work was impressive, to see him speak. He had found amazing patterns.

My conclusion was that this was a product of an uncontrolled search process, that this was classic pseudoscience, with claims of meaning that can never be proven false; but it is possible to debunk the reasons to believe the claims. I was there because I was an expert on the material and was also willing to give his claims fair consideration. In other words, a Truzzi-style skeptic. My primary goal was to understand, not debunk.

That Vigilant keeps repeating the insane numerology claim is a continued demonstration of trolling. There is no actual communication, no real exploration of issues, only attack and more attack, and this is why WP:DNFTT. Trolls demand attention, demand interaction, and if one does not engage with a troll, they claim cowardice and avoidance. Classic.

  • 17:05:13 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant P.S. Why do you always seem to be addressing the crowd when you start losing the conversation? Do you have issues with engaging your opponent directly as opposed to playing to the stands? It makes you look like a coward.

Classic concern trolling. When I post to mailing lists, I address the entire audience of the list, generally, a few personal comments aside. I am not in a conversation with this troll. I’m documenting what I see. I’m not attempting to convince Vigilant of anything. He is free to revel in his own shit.

In any case, that third-person style is something I’ve been doing for more than three decades. I don’t care what I “look like” to a troll, because trolls are not my readership.

Trolls will claim that they have “won” if the target disengages. That could make some sense in a context where there is a defined topic and judges. It makes no sense on Reddit. This coverage of that troll attack is on a forum with open public comment. As well, the troll has full access to Wikipediocracy. He could also comment on WikipediaSucks.co, if he dares and if the other mods don’t immediately whack him.

  • 17:13:58 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant Oh, Dennis, thank you so much for your concern trolling about the company I keep. Your convenient inability to remember things is becoming worrisome from a neurological perspective. Why is it that you’ve been kicked out of so many places? Why is it that every single place you’ve been kicked out of calls you an insane, vindictive troll? You and Graff share a loooot of traits in common

Concern troll calls another a concern troll.

Noting the company he keeps, not for him —  he already knows the company he keeps — is not concern trolling. This is a troll turning everything into personal attack, as he did with Wales, and as he has done with many, many people over the last decade. Someone spending that kind of time on personal attack, what kind of person is this? Not my problem. If it is a problem, it is Wikipediocracy’s problem. He radically misrepresents my history and then asks why it was as he claims. Trolling. If anyone is tempted to believe this, ask me! And there are others one can ask. The story of “insane vindictive troll” was created by the Smith brothers (Anglo Pyramidologist sock family on Wikipedia) as retaliation, and that’s all quite visible if anyone looks. It is only that people don’t look that leads some to swallow the propaganda.

Mostly, on-line, when people see flame wars, their reaction is “a pox on both your houses.” Few will actually look at the etiology.

  • 17:15:27 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant [quoting me] “I’ll respond elsewhere to factual claims.” Your running away is noted.

This is not “running away.” I could respond in situ in two ways: one with fact and fact-based argument, which with troll claims, always takes many more words, playing right into the troll’s game plan, where the “discussion” is off-topic, or I could respond with sound-bites, which to be anything other than flaming back, takes high skill and, in fact, time, usually. There are exceptions, one is coming up. Or I can do what I’m doing, writing a detailed response, focusing mostly on factual claims but also adding analysis. If anyone cares, this is fully responding, far from “running away.”

Most people don’t care, which is why this is on a blog page, not a blog post. Some may find value here, that is up to them.

(1) This was in response to this comment by me, which was concise and adequately cogent to anyone knowledgeable. If someone else wants to understand the reference, again, they may ask. This is classic from a troll: if anything is said that might lead them to be seen in a way that they don’t like, they simply attack it as incoherent or lies or idiocy. Fact makes no difference. But the issue here was not fact, it was his claim “You really are the dumbest person I’ve ever seen.” and what I wrote back was pointing out that he can’t see himself, which is not “truth” but is actually pretty likely, because of that Dunning-Kruger effect he likes to write about. I replied:

Vampires can’t see themselves in a mirror.

And then, “Boomer.” I’m not a boomer. My father was not in the military then, having served in the National Guard, I think in the 1920s or so. The boomer generation begins in about 1946 as birth year. I was born before then.

  • 17:24:58 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant From the Wikimedia Foundation regarding Dennis “Abd” Lomax

And then he quotes the email sent by the WMF to Oliver D. Smith, which Smith published, crowing about what he had accomplished. What Oliver would have been complaining to the WMF about at that time is entirely unclear. The email does not state why I was banned, what “conduct” it was based on.

Remarkable here: Vigilant knows that the WMF issues bans with inadequate investigation, that these may be politically motivated, that’s all standard fare on Wikipediocracy. My lawsuit against the WMF is based on a claim that their publication of the ban (which is quite distinct from actually banning) is defamatory, and what he is demonstrating is that it is, in fact, defamatory, because of how it is used — all of which could have been anticipated if they had actually investigated more thoroughly.

With no explanation of what I had actually — allegedly — done, it is impossible to be certain, but one possibility that has occurred to me is that an email to Joshua P. Schroeder was spoofed to make it appear it was from me, and so when he complained about harassment, he was telling the “truth.” I.e, how it appeared to him. I have published all the correspondence with Schroeder, it was definitely not harassment. I was never asked to stop emailing him.

Oliver Smith was Anglo Pyramidologist, and is banned under many socks from Wikipedia. What I was mainly doing was exposing AP socking, including impersonation-to-defame, and, contrary to the claims of the Wikiversity ‘crat who blocked me there, most checkuser requests I had filed were actioned by stewards, and many global locks were issued. So what did the WMF actually look at? We don’t know. And that is part of why I filed the lawsuit, to find out. Vigilant continued:

  • This was done for real world harassment. Everyone here should know that the WMF is convinced that Lomax is a persistent, credible threat to others.

It unclear. Yes, many would conclude that, which is a major point in my lawsuit. However, the only incident that could be considered “real world harassment” was some information I put up on a web site about Schroeder, giving his updated employment in Chile (but not the more detailed information that would be considered harassment). In fact, I asked them to take that down, and, after some argument (“It’s true, isn’t it?”) they did take it down, but meanwhile the Smiths had archived it. In other words, if that were harassment, the Smiths were enshrining it so that they could then use it against me. Any concern for Schroeder was fake. And, in fact, that information was already obsolete. So it was actually harmless.

Nice. I hope people actually read what is there. Vigilant says the usual. While I was unblocked on Wikiversity after that, it was clear to me by that time that Wikiversity, in spite of having traditions that promoted academic freedom, was quite vulnerable to what the founder (JWSchmidt) called “Wikipedia Disease.” I called it “Wiki disease,” it is a set of phenomena that are common to wikis without protective structure.

Community control is a myth if there is no coherent community. Most users pay no attention to central process, so those who do — administrators — can run wild with very little restraint.  Contrary to Vigilant’s claim there, I actually did leave Wikiversity, and only came back at the end of 2017 to remedy a major injustice, caused by impersonation socking. I had concluded that it was not a safe place for content. And it wasn’t.

It was trivial to “neutralize” Wikiversity content. Most Wikipedians had no understanding of that, being focused on articles rather than learning resources (which can include material with opinions, original research, etc.).

To neutralize an allegedly biased Wikiversity resource would take minutes. This was all demonstrated, and it defused what could have become major edit wars. Instead, the users, supposedly at odds, cooperated to create a deeper resource. This is outside the Wikipedian world-view.

Besides being a private forum — one needs to be registered to see it — there is a reason why Vigilant did not link to the specific Wikipediocracy page. Much of the comment there was supportive of me and what I have done, at least in some ways. There is exposure of the Smith activities. Again, you must be registered to see it, but this is the account Oliver D. Smith was using. Flamed out, quickly. Ends with the “brother story was a lie I told to prevent being banned” claim. That was a lie, unless he did some very sophisticated IP fakery, before it would make any difference. No, as the heat started to crank up, and he had essentially outed his brother many times, he tried to fix it with a new lie.

Smith socks showed up to comment in this affair. Those will be documented elsewhere, with the rest of the Smith Reddit sock potpourri.

This Wikipediocracy thread shows how the WP Critic community viewed me before the Smith affair.

Vigilant has also been active discussing me on Wikipediocracy.

Guys who can’t get dates have their own wiki

this was actually about incelwiki, i.e., about guys who can’t get dates, or at least that is the stereotype. So Vigilant, always looking for a coatrack for his Abd Attack mission, put in:

Also, https://wikitop.cc/w/Main_Page

That is, in fact, newly created, not fully set up, as a coordinating wiki for wikipedia critique, and there is cooperation from a number of people in the critical community. This has nothing to do with incels.

17:41:18 31 Dec 2019 WOVigilant  Dennis “Abd” Lomax was banned from wikipediocracy for being a belligerent kook who wrote walls and walls of shitty text about things he didn’t understand. Nothing. Has. Changed.

Definitely Vigilant has not changed, though the ratio of coherent fact to pure venom has declined. As for me, I went on to far more rewarding activities. I’ll mention Quora as actually a minor example, where writing detailed responses to questions was actually appreciated instead of condemned as “walls of text,” which is his knee-jerk reaction and has been for a decade. On Quora, appreciation can be measured, and it shows. Profile.

Vigilant continued.

  • 20:59:36 1 Jan 2020 WOVigilant [Even though mixed with mud, made a valid point, wow! It’s possible!]

Heads up, people.

The ‘reddit/wovigilant’ link that Dennis ‘Abd’ Lomax is spamming in here leads to a domain that he controls and is likely a honeypot where he can gather information on those who click through.

You can see the ‘coldfusioncommunity.net’ based URL if you hover over the link.

Abd has a long history of this type of underhanded behavior.

Admins in this group should ban him for this bullshit.

Trolls hate targets that refuse to engage. But they hate, even more, those that shine light on them, their history, their activities, and they will attack these most intensely. They may pretend to have a concern, an “important issue” — and sometimes there is some basis for it — but, for them, the real point is expressing contempt and hatred. This practice is the ancient enemy of humanity.

Vigilant was correct that the links could be misleading, the way they were presented, so I changed all of them to “my blog.” So people know what they are clicking on. I also wrote about the claim of “long history.”

I have changed the display for the URL to “my blog” to avoid possible confusion. Those links are to specific sections responding to each comment of WOVigilant, instead of filling this sub with the necessary detail.

If I have a “long history of this type of underhanded behavior,” perhaps Vigilant could point to many examples, or maybe a few, or how about one fucking example? This troll has been lying about so many people for so many years,it’s about time he be exposed. But I wouldn’t do it here. Off topic.

As could be expected from this troll, no factual response, just concern trolling and mindless insult (and now spreading into a new WiA post, about another target of his):

  • 03:30:01 2 Jan 2019 WOVigilant Oh god, now you’re a fanboi? Is there anything you don’t suck at?

None of this actually makes any sense. Fanboi of what? All I did was to thank him for a link he provided. I’ll take the question under advisement. “Suck” is a relative term. By whose standards? But this is a troll questions. Trolls are not looking for answers to questions, they are looking to provoke and irritate and sometimes to defame, though he’s quite sucking at that here.

  • 03:31:13 2 Jan 2019 WOVigilant Dude. That is quite the display of autism you wrote. Seek professional help.

Okay, my turn. “Coward, hiding behind anonymity, hurling insult after insult, believing you are safe behind the wall.” However, the strongest punishment for someone like this: having to live with himself. What evil company!

I’ve spent extensive time in therapy, at times. Autism was never on the table. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, and Vigilant would know this because it was a cause of connection with Wil Sinclair, and was discussed on Wikipediocracy. ADHD is considered a developmental disorder (because it can interfere with social adaptation) and it is likely to be a genetic variation, a subpopulation adaptation more suited for hunter-gatherer life than settled, agricultural instincts.

One of the traits is hyperfocus. I have always been able to do things that were difficult for others, not intrinsicially difficult, but by inclination. These things require patience beyond the ordinary. It has led to high performance in certain areas. Long story.

Here, this page reflects about a day’s collection of data, mostly just data, plus a little time commenting on it.

Vigilant hates this, as he always hated detailed commentary on Wikipediocracy. Vigilant and others like him in this respect are anti-academic. They hate detail. Get to the point, man!

But “points” are opinions, interpretations, and in sane thought, evidence comes first. To what I will call normies, the collection of data without a point is insane, and a normie will believe that the collector must be trying to prove something, and if they like that something, they may look at the data, and if they don’t, they won’t. And this is all connected with the Dunning-Kruger effect, that Vigilant loves to toss as an accusation, failing to consider it in himself. Trolls are vampires, that cannot see themselves in a mirror. If they actually looked, they would see nothing.

(But some trolls are merely young, displaying adolescent defiance. That is, to a degree, functional. It is when this continues into age that it creates damage.)

Wikipedia and Wikipediocracy are heavily infected with this avoidance of reality, which it is, because evidence exists in a level of reality far more grounded than opinion and interpretation. A tolerance for observation of “meaningless” data leads to deep knowledge, it’s all about how the brain works.

Defending Vigilant? The Smith brothers, who are also haters. See the list of recent Reddit throwaway accounts (almost entirely Smith, some openly Oliver, mostly, and most likely, Darryl L. Smith). And there is a comment here.

It’s telling that the only support for WOVigilant’s hatred has come from throwaway accounts. He’s claiming that I have no support, which is easy to disprove. It is Vigilant who only is free in a protected zone.

That might be ending. We’ll see if Wikipediocracy will grow some gravitas and become a genuine critical site, or if it will remain a troll bridge. There is some hope. There are Wikipediocrats on the Discord server (invitation), and participating on Wikipediasucks.co, where I was recently invited to Mod. Some of these people are sane, which correlates with being nice. And we are beginning to build a collection of WP-criticism-related articles, on https://wikitop.cc, created for collaboration (still formative, but one could request an account by comment here, giving a real email address — which will not be published). The comment will be deleted if not relevant here.

  • 16:24:27 2 Jan 2019 WOVigilant They made you a mod so now you’re going to try to be an attack dog? Damn, son. You work cheap.

Definitely not his son, nor of an age where that could be ordinary usage. I’m likely old enough to be his father, probably not his grandfather, but maybe. As to working cheap, I’m working pro bono, and being a mod would not be compensation. Like being a wiki admin, more of a burden than a benefit.

My role is not attack dog, but mess with others, or with me — as you have been doing for years — I might bark and bite. As to the question above, I suck at running away. A protective dog may prefer to die than run away. It’s in his or her nature. Probably better to back up slowly, avoid any fast moves, say calming words. Unless you prefer to get into a fight with a dog.

Vigilant appears to be clear on one thing. He is Top Dog, and better leave him alone, because he will chew you up and spit you out! Fastest gun in the west!

And the fastest gun in the west better hide, because he’ll have many coming after him. He’s been protected on Wikipediocracy. But he ventured out from, to Reddit, which is more like the Wild West, and reacted strongly to a very simple comment, obviously true, about him, see above. And then he lies, all part of his trolling habits, and he doesn’t care if it’s obvious.

16:25:06 2 Jan 2019 WOVigilant Autist writes autism. Nobody cares.

Obvious lie. He cares or he would not have written all these comments. I care enough to do the study and comment on it. Does anyone else care? Maybe, maybe not. So what? I do what I do and reality always responds. What others care about is not really my business, unless they bring their concerns to me.

He is ablist, to boot, using “autism” as an insult.

Irrelevant, incoherent. I’ll believe at least some of this if I see a driver’s license. If I found he was driving a school bus, I’d stop that. He has ah, “intense interests” that are incompatible with a position of trust around children.

  • 18:04:36 2 Jan 2019 WOVigilant OP says, “Hit the road, Jack…” You’re an insufferable bore who gives smug ‘advice’. What’s not to love?

Hatred, that’s what not to love, but that’s Vigilant’s addiction. There was no criticism from him of my comments (which could be called advice), only attack, and now, again, nothing helpful to the OP in that discussion, and he has filled the OP’s post with massive irrelevancies. “Smug” has nothing to do with whether advice is useful or not. It is a personality projection, not factual. And this is what Vigilant has done for a decade. The chickens are coming home to roost.

So another legit user objected to the doc links I was placing wrt the Smith socks, and we are discussing that. So, of course, Vigilant dives in:

20:31:25 2 Jan 2019 WOVigilant The problem is that Another Boring Diatribe is constitutionally unable to refrain from replying. It isn’t just on reddit, it’s everywhere. He is delusionally certain that he has something important to say in virtually every situation, regardless of topic, venue, audience or seriousness. He is inevitably wrong.

He’s really describing himself, though I would not say that he is “inevitably wrong”; however almost all of his comments are expressing contempt and hatred and he is terminally incautious about fact. Notice the contradiction: I am supposedly banned almost everywhere, yet I’m replying everywhere? To do that, I’d need to create many sock puppets, which I don’t do. I do create alternate accounts, to be sure, but don’t use them to evade bans (with very rare exceptions with very particular purposes). I ignore most negative commentary about me.

He claimed that my refusal to answer him in detail on Reddit was “running away,” a classic troll claim. So now he claims that response is a compulsion, which I suppose is Bad. Yet he is demonstrating a determination to respond to everything. Pot. Kettle. Black. As can be seen above, he responded with something that was not a personal attack, so I have not responded on Reddit to that comment, though I listed it here.

Now, if his claim of “constitutionally unable to refrain from replying” were true, then his continuing to prod and provoke would be predictably creating more replies from me. If he believes that I’m a troll or an idiot or whatever, he is willfully creating a flood of trolling or idiocy. Yet it is not true. I watched Vigilant rail on me for years without replying. But that was mostly on Wikipediocracy. This is more public, so . . . as I wrote above in response to his question, what don’t I suck at, I suck at running away. It is possible that I might not run away even if it were better for me. That is one of the basic survival traits, called “avoiding domination.” It is normal human behavior, especially male behavior.

What I’m doing is working for me. Whether I care about it working for anyone else depends on my relationship with those people, and, as well, the power or authority they have. The real problem is a too-common lack of moderation on subreddits, particularly WikiInAction.

21:05:23 2 Jan 2019 WOVigilant Have you seen my baseball?

Ah, the master troll at work! I’ll discuss this elsewhere, but this could allow him to have “the last word.” See, that matters to me not at all. Let him have his “baseball” or “good driver” last word. If this was some kind of contest, others will judge it. But can he refrain from further comment? Maybe. We may have our ideas, but reality is reality.

This was not quite Vigilant’s last word. Seeing his question about his baseball, and seeing that any answer to it would be off-topic, i.e., more of the same, I PM’d him with:

You asked, “Have you seen my baseball.”
No.
Have you seen my baseball bat?

He responded

Still clueless.
Let’s take a look at your autism and general unlikability, shall we?
Wherein Abd gets his shit pushed back in. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Community_Review/Abd

Context: private communication. Does he imagine that pointing to that old discussion, which was just the middle of the Ottava Wars, would show something to me that I don’t know? At that point, and for quite some time, I was popular on Wikiversity, not what he would imagine, but central process could show something different, it’s a basic wiki problem. So, anyway, I responded:

I think I found the bat. Thanks.

At this point I was done, I thought. But he responded:

The one missing from your belfry?
I doubt it.

Very Vigilant. faux-clever, but actually meaningless. What would it mean that there is a “bat missing from my belfry”? Not, it’s all about snappy snark, no substance. And so . . . I responded, with some business.

what you write me can and will be published. I’m a journalist. If you wish confidentiality, you’ll need to ask for it.

and his response shows that he has no other mode of operation. He reads what is written to him as material in which he can find Wrong to attack. But he’s totally incautious, as with much that he wrote on Reddit. He replied:

lol
You’re not a journalist.
You’re sad, insane old crank who thinks he is things that he isn’t.
If we’re being honest, you’re Graff Statler with native English proficiency.

It appears that Vigilant considers himself an authority on the meanings of the English language. I’m clearly a blogger, I doubt that he would challenge that, though he might try to find a way. Are bloggers journalists? It’s actually a common question. One answer: U.S. Court: Bloggers Are Journalists

I learned in this exchange what it takes to shut Vigilant up. It seems that when he realizes he can’t win a battle, he disappears from it. He will make a comment when he thinks it is safe. In the first exchange on the Wales AMA, he was directly confronted and exposed, and to clear popular approval. So he vanished for a time.

Then my refusal to debate him in the WiA thread, responding instead on the blog, led him to end that with a non-sequitur. Had I responded to that in situ, he’d then have had a basis for asserting more cluelessness. But I didn’t respond there, I simply continued documenting, which is what I’ve done for many years. I used to document in public, as on Wikipedia. It did work, but most Wikipedians were intolerant of it. So it was not skillful politically.

And then in the discussion about Strelnikov’s blog, he likewise bailed with a non-sequitur. He is a troll, using troll tactics, and on a troll mission, that is rooted in a belief that others are “shitheels,” and that applies to about everyone. Recently on Wikipediocracy, in response to a discussion between Eric Corbett and Poetlister:

You two dipshits make me long for the days of Abd and Ottava Rima.

Ottava almost entirely disappeared, probably realized that his career as an academic was more important, as it surely was. But Abd is Not Dead Yet.

To use the ancient metaphor or archetype, Vigilant is the voice of Satan. Satan hates the human, they are, for him, literally “shit,” with no redeeming value. There are people who like what Vigilant does. They are in danger.

19:44:58  7 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

You’d do well not to listen to abd.

He’s net.kook and is permabanned from many websites, including being globally banned from ALL WMF sites. He’s filed a lolsuit against the WMF. He runs his own insane asylum website, coldfusioncommunity, etc, etc.

Check out his account contributions and you’ll quickly see what I mean.

I did indeed file a suit with the WMF being a major defendant (and the only one served so far, for technical reasons, that may be remedied). It is awaiting a decision on the WMF’s Motion to Dismiss. Which if it was a lolsuit, one might think would be quickly adjudicated. All case documents are hosted here. It has been waiting since 20 September.

“his account contributions” must be in reference to user/Abdlomax. I’m proud of my Reddits. However, it pales by comparison with quora.com/profile/Abd-Ul-Rahman-Lomax

Or, for that matter, my long-term WMF activity. global account log for Abd

36,363 edits. I was also admin on Wikiversity for a time, with many logged actions. What happened? Long story, but many are familiar with the WikiMedia Foundation’s arbitrary and unaccountable ban process. And I’m in court over that. The case may hinge on technicalities, not substance, but I decided to go for it. I was not banned for any violation of the Terms of Service. And their case is basically “We don’t have to have any reason at all.” And they refused to check their investigation. But, here, we see that Vigilant cites the ban as if they had a good reason. And several of those who complained have done the same. “See! Look how awful Abd is!”

Yet they are blocked and banned themselves. Contributions/Vigilant~enwiki. Global account shows 142 edits, only to en.wiki. This 2015 Wikipediocracy conversation can give a clue about Vigilant, but Poetlister’s tag line says much: “Nonentities, claiming to be vigilant, are jealous of people with real achievements. They proxy for banned user Timothy Usher, using his dubious claims in vain attempts to belittle them.”

Poetlister, by the way, was WMF-globally-banned as well. It’s meaningless, beyond meaning that “somebody didn’t like you” and “somebody had some clout.”

00:13:53 15 Jan 2020  (in r/sudoku) [deleted] (screenshot)

I would strongly advise nobody to follow any links to domains that Abd controls.

He has an extensive history online of using servers he controls to acquire personally identifying information when someone unsuspectingly visits them.

He has an equally long history of being a net.kook with a very long grudge carrying capacity.

Two of the three r/sudoku moderators have accounts on coldfusioncommunity.net for access and participation in the sudoku subwiki. There is zero history of abuse of “personally identifying information” by me. Any site owner with raw domain access can see the access log, and any user should know that. Those who are concerned about that use open proxies or TOR nodes. For most, it doesn’t matter at all, and there is no risk to any user of that sub from accessing any of my domains. The mods of r/sudoku know what Vig is up to and if he is not already banned, if he tries it again, he will be, I’ve been informed. If the mods were concerned about my domain, they would not have allowed extensive links to it on that sub.

00:23:54 16 Jan 2020 WOVigilant on r/sudoku [comment deleted by mod] screenshot

Hey guys,

Do yourself a favor and make that ban permanent.

Banned from ratwiki https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abd_ul-Rahman_Lomax

Banned by the wikimedia foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Abd

Banned from wikipediocracy

Banned from encyclopediadramatica

As an internet troll, and cyber-harasser, Lomax is infamous for disruption, trolling of admins, and posting of other editors personal information. He has been banned on a number of forums and wikis, including Wikipedia, RationalWiki, Wikiversity, Meta-Wiki,[50] and Encyclopedia Dramatica.[51]

He uses his blog to attack administrators on websites he is banned from; mainly by weaponizing Google searches, so if someone searches a name — his blog will show up with ad hominem, lies and smears written about them. After being blocked from RationalWiki and Wikipedia, Lomax wrote thousands of words on his blog about his bans, continuing to attack more editors.

Vigilant knows perfectly well the difference between a block and a ban. Reddit uses the same word for a temporary block and a permanent ban, which is then confusing when discussing in a wikipedia context. What reality exists here has been presented in a way to exaggerate the impression.

  • I was community-banned on Wikipedia in 2011. I never attempted to appeal that, nor did I violate it, because I didn’t want to edit that project any more, having concluded it was unsafe.
  • The next alleged ban in time sequence was on Wikiversity, where a single ‘crat blocked me indef, for no violated warning and as part of an attack on me, which is easy to see if one looks. Wikiversity policy requires a Community Review for a ban. I was planning on appealing the block, and an admin had already declared intention to unblock — and was threatened with desysop if he did (and they later desysopped him anyway for bullshit reasons). I had some time before also concluded that while Wikiversity had much more freedom, it was also unsafe as a place to build content, so I’d abandoned it already.

I had come back to handle a case of impersonation socking-to-defame, and what followed was retaliation by the sock master, who threatened to “get all [my] work deleted.”

  • The sock master then created a RationalWiki article on me, and he or his brother engineered the block and alleged ban (RatWiki ban procedure was not followed). But, again, I don’t want to edit RatWiki, so made no big fuss about it. The article is rather widely known as a hit piece. It’s full of misleading references and comments not supported by sources cited unless you squint.

Vigilant knows full well that RatWiki is even more unreliable than Wikipedia. It is a joke wiki, sometimes called Dramatica Light.

  • I was then banned by the WMF without warning or explanation. But it’s quite clear that coordinated complaints were made. I had full disclosed fact on possible issues to a WMF board member ,and he wrote that there was no chance of a global ban based on that. But … what if complainants lied, and the lies were believed? The WMF, when it investigates complaints, does not warn the targeted user and there is no opportunity to present what might change how evidence is seen. All to “protect the privacy” of the complainants. However, if a person is banned based on verifiable fact, that is not about the complainant at all, it is about activity of the alleged offender. The WMF has set up an abusive process.
  • I was never banned on meta, nor was I blocked. What is shown is the contributions display which simply reflects the global ban.
  • Also, I was blocked for a time on Encyclopedia Dramatica, but was unblocked before the site went down. They tried to register an impersonation account there, but that was whacked and an account was created for me, which was in good standing when ED went down again.

I documented the massive socking of the Anglo Pyramidologist sock family. That is what is behind all this. Documenting activity, of what might be a thousand socks, will definitely take “thousands of words.” Those were not blog “posts” which are articles created for interest, but evidence pages, which can support opinion. They are not polemic, though they may include some opinions. All of them are open for comment and correct, but instead of correcting what they call “lies,” they simply call them lies, but when they have actually pointed out errors, which they have done occasionally, those are simply corrected.

But who cares? It’s obvious who cares, and Vigilant also cares, because I have started to document his activities, so he is searching for any mud he can toss.

He is proud of a decade of “holding shitheels’ feet to the fire,” but someone who holds him accountable is obviously, he will claim, an enemy of all that is good and sane, and a shitheel for sure.

What I’m doing is making all this a bit easier to see, if anyone cares. Conclusions will be up to the entire community, or the community of those who care. When I document it, I’m mostly done. But they keep creating more to document. . . .

22:28:07 17 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Are we to have the pleasure of your company here now that you’ve been BANNED from r/sudoku?

As you’ve been told by everyone, your birdbrained attempt at a lolsuit is shuffling off this mortal coil.

The only remaining question is does the wmf go after you for costs?

Trolling question, typical Vigilant. I see a content feed from r/WikiInAction and whether I respond or not has nothing to do with r/sudoku. I was blocked for 7 days, without warning, for violating an order that was not presented as an order. The whole affair was silly, but being blocked, I developed a far better way to respond to r/sudoku questions, and I won’t be going back to the old way, except for possible brief comments.

And I am not about to go back and try to stir the pot in a post from 4 months ago. But Vigilant is quite willing to do that, because he knows that (1) I’ll see it, from my Notifications, (2) he has claimed that I cannot refrain from responding, and (3) I can respond there and (4) he believes I have a Reddit addiction and must write on Reddit.

No, I’ve turned the freed-up time to writing for WikipediaSucks.co, where I am a moderator, and writing responses to r/sudoku questions on the wiki. This was the first of these, and the second. These are written for people interested in sudoku, and the second OP is a moderator on that sub. They are long and detailed and while Vigilant hates long posts, people who ask questions love detail. And that’s why I have so much positive reception on Quora. The way Quora works, people who are not interested don’t see long responses. They see the first few words with a “more” button. The Quora interface could still be drastically improved, but it’s much better than standard Forum interfaces, which are spendthrift with screen space.

And I can write with total freedom and much better tools than on Reddit. What I’m doing with Vigilant’s ravings drives him crazy because he knows that if someone defends themselves in a forum like that, they will look bad to many. I suspect that this effect will be minimized with this procedure. This page is crazy long, but each response is not so long. And if people don’t want to read it, they don’t even have to look at it. If I write something of general interest here they can always take it back to Reddit. But I’m not expecting that at all. It is merely a possibility.

The “lolsuit” is an actual lawsuit, and if not, the WMF would not have retained Jones Day (whose work I know from personal experience), and especially that extra Reply would not have been filed. After all, “lolsuit” and skilled attornies, the initial Motion to Dismiss would have been more than enough.  My non-lawyer opinion is that while it is possible that the judge will allow the suit to proceed, it is more likely that he will require an amended complaint be filed, with a deadline, and dismissal if that is not filed. If he dismisses with prejudice, not allowing amendment, I might timely request reconsideration and then, if that is unsuccessful, an appeal would be possible and there is precedent for success at that. I’m not describing all the possibilities and possible difficulties here, but, quite simply, Not Dead Yet.

And then, costs. The WMF made significant costs necessary by refusing to consider a settlement, and a provision settlement was obvious and very possible and practical. But the WMF position appears to be ‘We are the WMF, We are Untouchable.” That can be an expensive position, any lawyer would tell them that, but would they listen? It is obvious that they don’t want to encourage others to sue, so there would be a possible motive to “punish” me for suing. My sense from legal commentary on this is that it is unlikely, given the conditions of this case, that a court would tolerate that. But lawyers will tell you that it is impossible to reliably predict what a court will do.

On the other hand, if you want to know the future, ask Vigilant. He has inside information from his Father. But he might lie about it and so might his Father.

My trust is entirely in Reality. I don’t need to know the future. My stand is “Reality is better than I can imagine.”

22:43:32 17 Jan 2000 WOVigilant

https://www.reddit.com/r/sudoku/comments/eo57ww/interesting_uniqueness_pattern/fehqkjw/

I have banned Abd for 7 days for not following an order to delete the copied and pasted text in his wiki.

Saaaaay what?!?!

Small point. Vigilant had written, in this Wikipedia discussion sub, that I was “BANNED,” and on Wikipedia, banned is far more than blocked, it implies a community decision, not merely an individual admin decision. But any admin can block, and any Reddit mod can “ban,” but whether or not it sticks is another issue. Vigilant also implied by this that I’d be shut down from sudoku activity re reddit, and that’s not happening and would not happen even if I were permanently banned. However, I have decent communication with the mods on r/sudoku and I don’t expect more trouble, it is possible that the ban will be lifted before the 7 days, or not, and I don’t actually care.

It is up to the mods to decide what is best. Vigilant wrote much crap about this on Wikipediocracy. I respect moderator rights — and have been and am a moderator myself.

Blocked for 7 days on Reddit is a ban, yes. But I am not then BANNED as in the comment or BANNINATED as on Wikipediocracy. And I have over 30 years of internet experience. The first time I was actually blocked on Wikipedia, it was a shock. If one has been quite active, as I had been, it can be disconcerting, to say the least. It can cause a temporary obsession. But that was over ten years ago, and I learned to recognize the reactions and detach from them and find functional responses. In fact, after being banned there, I was paid as a consultant by a WP blocked user and gave her wikitext to put up to be unblocked, and she was.

I have learned to take a block as an opportunity, because it always proved to be such.

While we are on the topic of Viglant and Reddit, I found this old comment from him, where he showed (1) he knew the identity of those trolls I was confronting — as I did — and (2) he wanted no part of it. Now, he is using the material they wrote. Why? It’s obvious. He became desperate for material to use in his war against reality.

00:06:33 19 Jan 2000 WOVigilant

Were you banned or not?

It’s a pretty simple question with an obvious answer

Indeed. Trolls always attempt to frame the issue in a way that makes their point. However: the facts are obvious and fully acknowledged. So why is it necessary to ask the question?

… Because the troll is a troll and will always attempt to push whatever the troll thinks will irritate and annoy. There is probably zero audience for that discussion, it’s a four-month old post. I get a notification of all responses, so the troll knows I will see it. And, if I did not create this page, nobody else would, or very few. It’s addressed to me, and surely I already know what happened on the sub. The troll does not know what actually happened but will use the fact — a 7-day ban for “for not following an order to delete the copied and pasted text in his wiki.” — as if proof of something. On Wikipediocracy :

Post by Vigilant » Wed Jan 15, 2020 7:16 pm

rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
The Great and Powerful Oz Abd is BANNED from the sudoku subreddit for being a giant dick and copy/pasting stuff from their subreddit into his stupid coldfusion site.
Dude, WTF?
Please stop
Be sure to also write them up on your honeypot website, you fucking nut.

The glee is obvious. But “for being a giant dick” is essentially a lie. I was not short-banned for abuse. I frequently have copied material from the reddit sub to the Sudoku subwiki, and two of the three moderators have accounts on the wiki. It has been extremely useful, and this incident was the first (and, so far) the only complaint.

The banning mod wrote to me (my emphasis):

… I don’t want to order you to do anything, but it would relieve a lot of tension, if you deleted that wiki page as a sign of good faith. However, I do order you to leave the link in the discussion, so that we can see what you tried to do. If you delete the link, then I’ll ban you, because I think that you’d be trying to hide your trail. …

I was slow to see what was happening and did not respond skillfully. I wrote back:

There is now a lot of work in that page. I’m not going to delete it. I would not remove the link, because it continues the discussion. I have used this technique when responding on-reddit was creating disruption, when back-and-forth becomes complex and not of interest to most.

What I had not recognized was that the moderator was actually upset. His response to the above was to ban me “for 7 days for not following an order to delete the copied and pasted text in his wiki.”  A more skillful response from me would have agreed to delete it immediately, and then restore what was acceptable. In fact, the next morning, I redacted it to remove all personal comments — which were intended to be helpful but which obviously were not taken that way. I offered to revision-delete it in PM to that mod, and he said I could leave it. This was a tempest in a teapot, and more of it can be seen if the post where the moderator announced the ban is read more deeply. I was actually defending another user against claims that he had been personally attacking the other mod. It was all a fiasco. But the result will be positive..

When we are upset, confusion can reign. And moderators are human and can become confused. It’s pretty common on reddit, where many mods have low experience. He is not vicious, at all. When he demanded that I delete what I had written, I was offended. Offended, I did not think with maximum clarity. In fact, when I’m not offended, I know how to handle situations like this with skill. When I edited that page the next morning, I apologized to the banning mod. He has not responded. I think the whole affair has left him somewhat perplexed. But it doesn’t matter. My assumption is that when the 7 days are up, I will not be banned. I am copying more to the wiki and responding there, and I will continue that. One of the responses on Wikipediocracy was to note that the demand to delete was weird, as it was. Copying from Reddit is routine and not against any policies, nor against the spirit of the policies, and linking back to external material is routine on reddit, indeed it is more or less what Reddit is for.

But this moderator, I suspect, had never before encountered this issue. It doesn’t matter, really. I do not need to post to the sub, so if he does react to future commentary, so what? Yes, posting to that sub was a major activity for me, and was very popular there (I was often thanked explicitly), but it is now replaced by writing much better comments on the wiki, also being appreciated by those whose posts I am copying.

So why would I “write them up” on my blog or wiki? This mention is solely about Vigilant and what is behind his ravings. It is also obscure, they are not likely to even see it, though I don’t mind if they do.

“Please stop” was not about my wiki at all, but about the reddit sudoku wiki.

00:09:20 18 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

[full lazy-links to logs for me, I’ve texted them:]
Abd Wikipedia contributions
Abd Wikipedia block log
Abd RationalWiki block log
Abd Wikiversity block log

These pages speak for themselves.
Also, don’t visit his blog without sufficient malware protection.

I’m proud of my WMF and wiki history. Do those logs “speak for themselves”? Can we understand a block log, for example, with no consideration for the context?

As some facts:

  • I confronted a major faction on Wikipedia, successfully. Two of those Wikipedia blocks were by an admin who was desysopped for the actions. Then there was an ArbCom sanction (the so-called MYOB ban) that made no sense and that was gradually interpreted beyond all intention, with many unanticipated blocks without warning, until I gave up on Wikipedia and used the opportunity to test an old proposal. Confront a factionally popular admin, what happens? Vigilant certainly knows, but he has taken on a personal vendetta and he will lie in such.
  • RationalWiki, where most active users are sysops, uses the block log like a chat channel. I was in good standing on RatWiki, for years, until the Smith brothers raised a huge ruckus, with impersonation socking, the whole nine yards. Skeptical was a Smith brother, and for a long time the Rats believed that the impersonations were me. Some of them are now quite aware of the problem, others not. And since I don’t want to edit RatWiki, I have not pursued unblock. It would be opposed, I’m sure, by David Gerard, who always wanted to get rid of me, but the moderators stopped him. But he became, over time, the Big Cheese, as techies often do.
  • There is much history around the WV blocks. Three were by Sidelight12, a rogue probationary custodian. I went to meta and requested desysop, granted. I was one of the only active WV users who knew how to navigate those systems. And that fact was not lost on certain ‘crats who had become abusive. So, several times, any excuse was used to block. The last two blocks were by a ‘crat who had been inactive and who showed up in the middle of a massive attack that began with Smith brother impersonation socking-to-defame, exposed by me (through steward checkuser). And in retaliation I was threatened that they would privately arrange for all my work to be deleted. And they did exactly that. The first block by the ‘crat, one year without warning for allegedly repeated disruptive editing, — for removing a proposed deletion tag that the ‘crat had placed. Policy was that any user could remove a prod. The other crat wrote that he would have unblocked, but then I was re-blocked for having a long block log. And then the ‘crat went on a bot deletion rampage, all violating policy. So what was going on? It’s really obvious if anyone actually looks. I had already abandoned Wikiversity as unsafe and only came back to handle the impersonations. And what occurred certainly proved it was unsafe. However, this is why the cold fusion wiki was formed, to hold that deleted content and then for other purposes. Some of the content I was able to recover through WV sysop cooperation, and my user space material — which had a great deal of Wikiversity history in it — I recovered from system dumps.
  • As to malware, any web site can get infected, but there have been no reports of such with either the blog or the wiki. Vigilant is attempting to suppress information about what he’s doing. He has also commented this way on Wikipediocracy. He has referred to a “long history,” but where is this “history.” No examples have been cited of anything more than a vague and unspecified claim by a WMF steward.
  • So for that case, I know exactly who would be the “innocent person,” a Smith brother. So Vigilant is now in bed with them. I doubt that the sex is any good, but when you are Vigilant, the odiferous “witchsmeller pursuivant,” maybe any sex is good sex.

02:20:02 20 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Obsessively blathering on about each and every reddit post in your ‘blog’.
Totally not a nutjob action… ::eyeroll::
Motor on net.kook.

  • It’s my blog and I can blather as much as I want. Or document as much as I want, or opine as much as I want. The scare quotes are meaningless, this is a WordPress installation. A blog. However, these posts are not “blog posts” exactly, I’ve used the word because it’s shorter than “pages in the page hierarchy on a blog.” Vigilant is posting there, where it is off topic and nobody is reading it all. He has claimed that I’m afraid of being exposed, and all this proves the opposite. I invented this response because every move he makes makes him more visible. I collect evidence first, and then use it later. He desperately wants me to respond there, but that’s not gonna happen, this is what’s gonna happen, until he slinks away, as he did before, and if he doesn’t slink away, he will be more and more obvious. And wait until I cover this in a more visible way. This is just a small taste, and when I go for something stronger, it will be polemic, designed to penetrate the fog that he revels in.

For now, I documented his extensive trolling on Wikipediocracy on a private forum there. I’ll keep that up. In his most recent post there, copied here, he claimed I was a quitter. Doesn’t he realize that this is a challenge, that this could motivate me to never quit this “task,” as long as he keeps feeding me material? That was a list of crazy examples, by the way. As well, I started to document all of his Wikipediocracy posts, because putting them all in one place makes him far more visible.

My thread about Vigilant on WikipediaSucks.co (the alternative to Wikipediocracy. Vigilant lost his marbles when they made me a moderator, predicting immediate doom and disaster.)

An older thread about Vigilant there, not written by me.

This guy has been hiding behind anonymity for many years, while attacking real people. It’s dangerous to claim that one is the fastest gun in the west, but . . . he pissed on my name for many years, and I ignored almost all of it. That’s ended. He is now a project. And I have no idea where it will go. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I trust reality and I have learned that when I document it, I learn and Stuff Happens.

Every Reddit post about me feeds the project, creates possible traffic here and then possible traffic on the other relevant pages. I don’t think anyone has ever responded like this. So we’ll see what happens.

Eventually, I will probably blog about this, which will get far more page views. It’s even possible I’ll write on Quora, where I get many almost automatic page views, but that depends on finding an appropriate context. I haven’t looked yet. If he keeps feeding me incentive, I will.

07:50:40 20 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

[quoted Debunking spiritualism, no other content]

Abd Lomax is a minor internet eccentric who joins wikis, argues with practically everyone and gets banned, sometimes for doxing. He been banned on Wikipedia, Wikiversity and Meta-wiki for causing disruption. A few weeks ago he was globally banned by the Wikimedia Foundation. In his defence he claims he was framed by various Wikipedia users who do not like him. I find this hard to believe. The article continues to attract a lot of drama from Abd and has now spilled onto other websites including ED. He accuses two skeptical brothers of creating his RW article, one of these is called ODS. He continues to dox users on his website. It appears to be un-needed drama that is spilling onto different wikis. I don’t see anything recent Abd has published on cold fusion. He now spends 99% of time moaning on his blog about Rationalwiki or Wikipedia users. This article plays in his favour, it gives him attention. He has been socking on RW on loads of proxies. He claims 5 of the sock accounts were his but the rest were ‘impersonation’. It appears to be drama spilling out onto the website. If the article was deleted, he would then have nothing to moan about and fuck off away from this place. He is feeding off the publicity, I also believe he is making money about his RW article, because his blog is funded and he keeps writing articles on RW. Debunking spiritualism (talk) 11:37, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

This is so cool. Background. DS (Debunking spiritualism, Darryl L. Smith) was the organizer of the attack on me and “fringe science” on Wikiversity. As an IP, he canvassed for support from the prominent anti-fringe faction, fanning flames. He had previously created the Rational Wiki article on me as Markey, and he has a long list of socks on RationalWiki. He is almost certainly the source of all the impersonation socks I have identified. He routinely lied about what I claim. He is blocked on RW as “Aeschylus,” who was openly Oliver D. Smith, Darryl’s twin brother. That is an error, and the blocking tech probably knows that (but doesn’t care). Darryl does have an active account, and the anti-fringe attack articles he writes are popular there, as he was popular with the anti-fringe faction on Wikipedia, which was dismayed when he was blocked as Goblin Face — and other socks — there. (Wikipedia classifies socks of both Oliver and Darryl Smith as Anglo Pyramidologist, which was an early Oliver Smith account).

So Vigilant is quoting without comment, Darryl Smith and so becomes responsible for it. But Vigilant is anonymous and is one of the few active Wikipediocrats who is that. They keep him around as an entertaining attack dog. Still, highly active anonymous users often slip up eventually. In any case, this is an opportunity to go over each of these Smith claims. That comment is dense with deceptions, and trolls know this: they can accuse with a few words, and to respond takes many, and many communities have no patience for long comments. Trolls know that most targets will become obsessed by the lies, so they learn how to offend and irritate and trigger such responses. On RatWiki, one can find many examples where a target of an article became upset. And when that happens, Darryl (it’s likely him, not the brother Oliver, who is a serious nut job, but not an impersonator, AFAIK), creates impersonation socks to get the offended subject blocked. I found many cases of this. They make a mockery of the RW claim to welcome critique. And RW tolerated this for years.

Abd Lomax is a minor internet eccentric […]

If minor, why the article?

who joins wikis , argues with practically everyone and gets banned, sometimes for doxing.

I was blocked on RW by Darryl for doxing. But where was the doxxing? What I did was to identify accounts as being controlled by the same person. This is not doxxing. *Later*, after being blocked, I did identify the sock masters. As was typical, the claim was made without references. It’s alleged as well that I doxxed Joshua P. Schroeder. In fact, he’s quite well-known and I added a reference on another site to his employment in Chile (which was obsolete). I also later mentioned this on the blog. Both those mentions were archived by Darryl Smith, as proof of my bad behavior, but that enshrined them, so my deletion of my own mention and my request for deletion on that forum — eventually granted — were useless. I pointed all this out to Schroeder, and those emails were called “harassment,” openly and probably in a complaint to the WMF, which was coordinated with other complaints from “reputable Wikipedians.”

He been banned on Wikipedia, Wikiversity and Meta-wiki for causing disruption.

Banned on Wikipedia in 2001 for a very short period of socking to test a theory of how a blocked user could make positive contributions without causing disruption. As to Wikiversity, I was blocked twice the same day by a ‘crat for (1) removing a proposed deletion template that had been placed by that ‘crat. One year for following policy, fantastic! And then reblocked indef for having a long block log, which was full of BS blocks and very few legit ones. It had been threatened by DS that he would get all my work deleted by private complaint to admins. And that ‘crat proceeded to fulfill that threat. Entirely contrary to policy. So . . . it’s all way obvious if anyone looks at the history, but few do that.

A few weeks ago he was globally banned by the Wikimedia Foundation. In his defence he claims he was framed by various Wikipedia users who do not like him.

“Framed.” The WMF global ban process is highly vulnerable to that. The target is not warned and evidence can be put together that will look bad, but I had disclosed everything to a WMF board member, because I saw the complaint process coming. He said that there was no chance of being banned for what I had done. Was he wrong? Well, not exactly. It is likely that the complainants lied. Email harassment would be grounds for global ban. Did I harass JPS? The WMF would not be able to see the mails directly, and it is entirely possible that a mail  was presented out-of-context. This is the entire correspondence with JPS. The goal of that was to collaborate in getting the information about him removed. He became hostile and stopped responding, so I stopped sending emails. He never asked me to stop mailing him. He and I disagreed, that’s about it.

I find this hard to believe.

He’s lying. He knows the truth on this, because it was him. He simply knows that the story will seem implausible to his audience, the Rats. However, it has been privately accepted by some Rats, that block of DS shows it.

The article continues to attract a lot of drama from Abd and has now spilled onto other websites including ED.

His brother started the ED article. His brother was blocked there, most of the time. They also claim I was banned there. I was blocked for a time, but that was lifted, but the claim continued. Many Oliver Smith socks were blocked on ED. That isn’t obvious unless one has sock documentation. These massively disruptive trolls are blocked over and over, but it is largely concealed because of anonymity. So they can attack someone else who has almost never been anonymous.

He accuses two skeptical brothers of creating his RW article, one of these is called ODS.

Oliver was at that time editing as ODS, as I recall. Oliver did not create the article, Darryl did, and much of this was admitted in email coming from a known ODS account. Darryl wants this to be about some alleged attack on “skepticism.” But I’m a skeptic in the Truzzi tradition, and published as such.

He continues to dox users on his website.

Him and his brother, who attack real people with real names — not just me — and who hide behind their own rather shabbily protected anonymity. The only persons doxxed by any stretch on the site are Oliver and Darryl Smith.

It appears to be un-needed drama that is spilling onto different wikis. I don’t see anything recent Abd has published on cold fusion.

He doesn’t see everything. Lately, though, I have published little on cold fusion. That will probably change. What I did publish was enough for a lifetime, though.

He now spends 99% of time moaning on his blog about Rationalwiki or Wikipedia users.

Documentation is not moaning. Only a troll would call it that. And he is attempting to generalize was was very specific about him and his brother. I did, on isolated pages, point to “enablers,” those Rats who supported his defamatory campaigns. That was very little. (And a WordPress blog has posts — the blog proper, and featured — and pages — which can be used to compiled data and information and cover specific topics in detail. And in this period there has been substantial activity on pages that have nothing to do with the Smiths, but often cold fusion. But they don’t see those because they only look at the category Anglo Pyramidologist, and whenever they have cited the blog, they have pointed to the category display (which changes). They have mostly attempted to conceal the coverage. They hide.

This article plays in his favour, it gives him attention.

Perhaps, but it is also widely used for defamation. Links to it were sent to at least two of my children with suspicion of pedophilia. There has been other damage.

He has been socking on RW on loads of proxies.

All of that which was me was openly acknowledged, but the list of socks that Darryl had posted was almost all him. The real socks, disclosed an authenticated, he did not list. Why? Well, he would take a sock name, modify it slightly, and repost the information abusively, and twisted a little. And the Rats fell for it. All to cover up what the real sock had written, to bury it in a pile of troll/impersonation socks, designed to be immediately blocked. This trick worked on RatWiki, because most users really don’t pay attention and don’t have any understanding of the tactic.

He claims 5 of the sock accounts were his but the rest were ‘impersonation’. It appears to be drama spilling out onto the website. If the article was deleted, he would then have nothing to moan about and fuck off away from this place.

He was here arguing for deletion. Had he admitted he had written the article, it is possible it would have been deleted. But he presented this as if I had threatened the Rats, and, of course, they were not about to give in to threats. At this point, things were starting to heat up. . .  Later, in May, he started deleting evidence on RatWiki that connected him with his brother (Oliver has often blabbed.) And then, at the end, displayed craziness and then claimed the account had been hacked. And it was claimed that I’d hacked it, but that would make no sense, and he clearly had regained control of the account if it had been hacked. However, the Rats believed it, apparently. Except some don’t. I like Rats. Intelligent creatures, and some of them are friendly. And some are just rats.

He is feeding off the publicity, I also believe he is making money about his RW article, because his blog is funded and he keeps writing articles on RW. Debunking spiritualism (talk) 11:37, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Non sequitur. I was given a substantial grant for writing (it was about Wikipedia, some years ago), and it is still not exhausted. I raised money for covering the lawsuit Rossi v. Darden, and it ended up exceeding my expenses for travel and lodging in Miami. I never asked for donations for writing about the Anglo Pyramidologist socks. And I write few “articles” on “RW” as such, but since I was attacked for documenting massive Smith disruption on WMF wikis, I followed the old principle of “you know you are over the target when the flak gets intense,” so I continued collecting evidence. And I don’t regret it. These trolls have caused massive damage to web sites and to real people, for many years. And now comes “Vigilant” who lies with them, in more ways than one.

(Anything I assert here can be documented if needed. Comments are open.) Correction of errors is invited. Notice the comments already, from Oliver D. Smith (that’s actually him) and from anon trolls, almost certainly Darryl.)

This is ironic. Vigilant has spend well over a decade in contemptuous attack on Wikipedia and Wikipedians and critics of Wikipedia, when his entire Wikipedia career was 2 months in 2006: Contributions. Sole purpose: to attack a real-life person.

Notice how he uses his talk page access to attack the blocking admin. Remarkable: his talk page access was not therefore removed. He recently asked about being unblocked. He got an answer there that indicated it was possible and how to go about it. And then he showed that he was unwilling to expose himself to the “screams.” I.e.:

Coward!

I agree that it is possible he could be unblocked, and the legions that hate him might allow it based on WP:ROPE.

17:34:05 20 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

This vote has been closed. Please do not add, remove or change votes. The result of this vote was: Abd appears to be some sort of highly advanced text-producing bioweapon.

No link given, but it is immediately recognizable as David Gerard, who attempted to desysop me years before and was stopped by RatWiki mods, but he outlasted them and took the opportunity presented by the Smiths to do what he’d long wanted.

Yes, I am obviously a “text-producing bioweapon,” if my text is used in some kind of battle. And someone on a side really wants to eliminate the threat generated by someone who can actually write and who does so freely. The comment was the close of a moderation discussion in 2002 on RationalWiki, and the conclusion was essentially “no action.” If one wants to see the long-term picture, much of it is there. I was not desysopped and I was not blocked. However, because Hipocrite was allowed to say “Go rape your kids,” without consequence,  I did abandon most editing on RatWiki for years, with few exceptions. JzG was pissed off that I was not banned, and notice that the mods blamed those others as much as me. In fact, I wasn’t blamed at all. It was only claimed that I was my own enemy by writing so much. Except I didn’t care about continuing to edit RatWiki, so “enemy” how? Had I been desysopped, that would have been a “promotion,” and that is what they call it, for a reason. What I discover by writing is the real nature of a community.

This is all more evidence that the coward, Vigilant, is utterly obsessed.
20:14:57 20 Jan 2020 WOVigilant
[quoted without link]:

15:06, 26 October 2017 Skeptical (talk | contribs) changed block settings for Abd (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of π×infinity! (account creation disabled, cannot edit own talk page) (repeated doxxing as well as harassment, now attacking rationalwiki users on his personal blog)

Links to contribs restored and link to block log added to timestamp. Skeptical’s block log is interesting.

The attack socks he blocked appeared before I was blocked. That kind of socking, with trolling names like that, were what I saw on Wikiversity and meta, when I arranged for checkuser of an Darryl Smith impersonation sock that had been used very effectively to harass a user. These were all steward identified as the same master. And there were links found that tracked back to RatWiki. Oliver claimed that the socking was not him. Later he claimed it was all him, he’d been lying about the brother, and then he retracted that and said we’d have to figure it out for ourselves. We have. There is a brother, it’s a fact. The contrary hypothesis — that it’s all Oliver — leaves too many implausibilities in place. These are clearly twin brothers, but I did not conclude all that until later.

I was not doxxing anyone at that point. Identifying accounts with each other is not doxxing, and it’s done all the time.

Skeptical registered 23 September 2017 and immediately created an article that would be of high interest to Darryl Smith. Skeptical, however, also edited Oliver-interest pages. Definitely, this is an Anglo Pyramidologist account, the patterns are unmistakable. This would be characteristic Darryl, not Oliver. “skeptic” and “skeptical” often appears in Darryl sock names. But there are other strong signals indicating Oliver (which was uncommon at that time),  and I consider it possible that they shared the account. Skeptical retired when referred to as “Oliver.”

Skeptical sysop rights were more recently removed: “(suspected ban evasion — user may petition to prove otherwise)” Darryl is not banned, but Oliver is. Yet the close connections have become obvious,

Skeptical, anonymous on the face, registered 23 Sept, dove into Smith topics, and only a month later was blocking a long-term user based on blog pages about Anglo Pyramidologist socks (not posts, by the way, it makes a difference), the block made possible by David Gerard’s out-of-process desysop. For substantial periods of time, most of Gerard’s actions were protecting the Smiths in some way. Gerard is infamous.

Vigilant is bed with, lying with, the most disruptive trolls I ever encountered. It fits him like a lubricated glove.

00:42:31 21 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

I’m seeing a woman, in her 70s like me, and her children ran an “intervention,” believing that she was getting involved with some dangerous lunatic, because of the RationalWiki article. Tossing mud can cause real-world harm, but that is only the beginning. The field I am working in — I have been published under peer review in, in a significant mainstream journal — has possibilities; if the reported effect could be made to work reliably (which is difficult), it might save a trillion dollars per year. Every year that the necessary research for that is postponed, then, may have a lost opportunity cost of a trillion dollars (times the probability of success). The effect is real, but at this point it is still a laboratory curiosity. My stand is not for “belief,” but for scientific research to clarify open issues, which is funded and under way. If the RW article and other activities ends up harming that cause …. the cost could be enormous.

  • The lady’s children were correct
  • You are a dangerous lunatic
  • You know nothing about fusion
  • The probability of your success is ZERO
  • Nobody reads your ‘blog’/honeypot

Okay, let’s deconstruct this. The children based a conclusion on the RationalWiki article, and Vigilant knows full well that Ratwiki is not any kind of reliable source. The children’s concern is natural, but the woman knows me very well, for years now. She knows my history and she knows my sixth child — who lives here. Her children know me very little.  “Dangerous lunatic” is not a fact, I was expressing a sense of what she told me. It would mean, say, “dangerous to her financial health.” But she has spent very little in connection with me. We don’t live together, etc. If we did marry, there would be a separate property agreement, to alleviate the kid’s concerns. I’d insist on it. Look do I need to say that this is trolling?

This alleged “no-nothing about fusion” not only started studying nuclear physics when he was 12, he went to Cal Tech and sat with Feyman in the 2-years of his only undergrad lectures, and knows very, very well why “cold fusion” was considered impossible. I wrote a review for a mainstream peer-reviewed journal, and the reviewer appears to have been a physicist. His first impression of the article was that the thought it was horrible. So I rewrote it to address his specific concerns and he then turned around entirely and helped write the conclusion. I was invited to write that review by a professor of physics, and routinely communicate with physicists on the topic. I am not a physicist, but what I write about is generally not physics. It’s chemistry and experimental evidence.

There is no sign I have ever seen that Vigilant understands anything about physics, but he would understand less about “cold fusion.” I doubt that he could define it. It is a popular name for a body of experimental evidence that was called “fusion” before there was any clear evidence that it was nuclear in nature. It was not for another two years that such evidence was found and published and confirmed. Later, it was quite accurately called the “Anomalous Heat Effect,” and was known to be found, under very difficult-to-control conditions, in metal deuterides. At this point, the position in peer-reviewed journals is that there is a real effect, but there is no accepted theory that explains it. There are attempts at explanation that are, at this time, unverified.

However, it is fusion because of the fuel and the product. What is generally known as “fusion” is not what is happening. It’s something else. However, what is known is sufficient to predict that if the effect can be controlled, produced reliably, it could be a source of energy that could supply most of human needs. That “if” is big. It is possible that even when the effect is understood — which we want for science — it will still not be practical. Spending so far on cold fusion has possibly approached or exceeded a billion dollars. There has been recent investment. Bill Gates gave $6 million to Texas Tech for work that was designed to improve precision in measurements of what I wrote about in my article. That’s science, not some looney-tunes belief. Google recently put in $10 million in a project to see if they could verify the effect. They failed, but they knew that they could fail, and they identified very clearly some of the problems. Why would they put in the funding? Because if this works, a trillion dollars per year. On thinking like that, Industrial Heat raised on the order of $70 million or more, and had a commitment for another $150 million, initially buying rights to Rossi technology. They knew there was a high possibility he was a fraud, but there was also a possibility that he was merely eccentric. They were willing to spend about $25 million to find out. They found out. He was a fraud. But they also spent about $50 million in pure research, including work on theory. It is a very difficult field, they knew that. Billionaires and major corporations do not think that the “chance of success is zero.” But a useless and anonymous piece of hate claims that. Who should we believe? Difficult question, eh?

The effect is real, the evidence for that is overwhelming. Reality does not translate immediately to practicality, but it does translate to possibility. Pursuing that possibility could take a century and many billions of dollars. Considering that, my approach was to design and suggest research to nail down the science, not to pursue commercial success, or certainly not exclusively.

In particular a goal I set was to measure with increased precision the ratio of energy released to helium produced in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment. Right now the best measurements show the theoretical value for deuterium/helium conversion, but the error bars are on the order of ten percent. Nailing that number would resolve, much more clearly, the controversy over the nuclear nature of the effect. It also has theoretical significance. I.e,. if the number deviates significantly from the fusion value, it could reveal more details about mechanism. I’d give the number, but surely Vigilant, who thinks himself qualified to assess my level of knowledge, could tell us and he could tell us what might affect that number, explaining the range of measurements that have been made.

However, all Vigilant cares about is something he can allege to make me look like a kook. Because I identified him as a troll in a discussion on Reddit where he was creamed, heavily downvoted. And this is ironic, he thinks nobody is reading my blog. My heavy readership is on Quora, not the blog, and I really haven’t been checking page views. I write blog pages to pursue research and documentation, not to create interesting stories. That can be for blog posts. Or Quora. So I looked at Awstats. This page only, 20 days in this month so far, 500 views. That is somewhat different from “nobody.” I get over 90,000 views per month on Quora. I wonder how many Vigilant gets?

He’s writing these trolling comments, addressing me, because he knows that I will get Reddit notification. He’s being downvoted. I looked at his posts and saw on with 2 upvotes. I looked at the post and it was deleted. This was a post to r/sudoku, where there has long been a pattern of downvotes of everything I post. There are some people who react to me that way, there always have been. But I’m actually very popular there. In any case, that had two upvotes because it was deleted before others saw it. He thinks nobody is reading my comments, but there is little sign that anyone is accepting his. He’s obsessed and not realizing how idiotic he looks for continuing to post these comments on old reddit posts.

Ah, and the “honeypot” lie. He sometimes claims I’m collecting private information, but that is only the case for pure and obvious trolls, actually attacking, and even then, it involves going through megabytes of data and usually what is found is an open proxy or TOR node. There is zero risk to a casual reader. If you leave a comment on a page, it will show your IP address to the site admin, which is me. This is completely standard WordPress blog software. He is a liar and does not want people to read the truth. (and if there are errors on this site, corrections are invited. And that has been done even for Oliver Smith, on occasion.)

00:48:31 21 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

‘King of the Trolls’ Abd ul-Rahman Lomax[1]

I think the title is appropopiate given the huge number of wikis/forums Lomax has been banned from for trolling and harassment. Even the troll wiki Encylopedia Dramatica banned him a few days ago. Of course he isn’t actually a good troll, nor is funny; the trolling he specialises in is malicious in the sense of constantly attacking people.Arcticos (talk) 19:04, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

That is from this discussion on RationalWiki. Arcticos (contributions) was blocked as Oliver D. Smith (Aeschylus). This was hilarious, in several ways. I was blocked, not banned, on Encyclopedia Dramatica, for a short time (for creating this page, Oliver D. Smith/Smith on Smith, considered “unfunny,” I guess you gotta know too much to get the joke), then unblocked, but the Smith brothers (and Vigilant) kept claiming I was banned. In fact, Oliver Smith had many socks banned as part of the same sequence. The only persons I could be considered — at that time — as attacking (or defending against) would be the twins, Darryl and Oliver Smith. Oliver occasionally called it “attacking my family.” The next discussion on that page is a conversation between Oliver (Arcticos) and Darryl (John66), where they both lie. Oliver reports that I was claiming that he was John66, when he knows that is false. On Encyclopedia Dramatica, he “joked” that I was Skeptic from Britain, a Wikipedia user attacking cholesterol and statin skeptics. He was confronted by Michaeldsuarez and admitted that SfB was his brother. That strengthened other clues I had, and I compared thousands of known edits of his brother on RationalWiki, and the edits of SfB, and they matched, i.e., it could be seen that the sock master had moved activity to the other wiki. Just before SfB flamed out on Wikipedia, John66 appeared on RatWiki. The edits dovetailed, and the topics were a continuation. He was preparing to bail. There are many other signs that John66 is Darryl. And these twins have been lying for many years, and attacking anyone who told the truth about them.

(And there is much hilarity on that page. It starts out with Debunking spiritualism lying about email with me. I only had email discussion with Oliver. So was he Oliver? Later, probably getting heat from his brother for so much blabbing, he claimed the he had been lying about the brother for years, then that maybe he was telling the truth, figure it out. I did figure it out. There is definitely a brother, that’s public record. And there are, over many years, two clear personalities. There is more evidence as well, much of which I’m not publishing yet because it would reveal methods. Bottom line though, it’s obvious: Oliver Smith lies. His brother is, on the other hand, not only a deceptive liar, but a prolific creator of impersonation/trollsocks. Quite a family!

Discussion on that page includes the following tagged Oliver Smith (Aeschylus) socks: Agent47 (actually admits being Oliver), Callimachus, Octo, (blatantly lies, misrepresents what I was doing, and Arcticos. I revealed that Octo was Oliver, which he very obviously was. I do not make the assumption he claims about editing. (notice the lack of examples other than himself.) But I do look at article histories, applying the duck test to discover possible socks, then I look at the full history of that suspected sock and look for signals and consistency. That leads me to more articles and more suspected socks. It takes time. Few will do this kind of research. But once it is done and presented, it’s pretty easy to follow, and some Rats actually did that. Not all, obviously. Oliver has created many, many accounts on RatWiki and when banned, continued to create them. Same as on Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Dramatica. But he was not the impersonation troll that originally raised my curiosity. That was Darryl. I.e., John66, who shows up much later, the other Darryl socks — setting aside trollsocks — having vanished mysteriously. They did not vanish. He went to Wikipedia and edited furiously there, with a shift in emphasis from anti-spiritualism etc. to anti-fringe medical issues, including attacking a genuine skeptic, Gary Taubes, author of Bad Science, the deepest study of the early history of cold fusion, who later applied the same standards to the colossal mess of “dietary science” that isn’t.

The Rats appear to have believed DS, even though all my email with Oliver was published. Too many of them don’t do research, that is beneath their kind of skepticism, which already knows stuff without doing all that boring research.

Darryl creates many trolling accounts, and appears to still be doing it. There were accounts impersonating me — incredibly crudely — on RationalWiki today.

So Vigilant is quoting Oliver Smith. And he knows who Oliver and Darryl Smith are and what they do. So it’s all convenient for him. He can just copy what they have written in a flash. It will take much much longer to respond. However, this also serves as a coatrack to hang Smith stories on. So I don’t mind at all, and I could do this for a very long time. If it becomes repetitive, I’ll just link to prior discussions, and I will create organization of this content, making much more accessible. I have yet to do much in the way of actual counterattack. Not enough motivation yet. But it’s possible.

15:55:06 21 Jan 2019 WOvigilant

Lomax had about 30 articles very negative about Rationalwiki users, some of these contained dox. He has now removed some those from public-view and they are password protected, but he is talking about contacting the media privately about his ban from Rationalwiki and Wikipedia. He says that is a possibility, he also says his obsession with all of this has damaged his health, I can believe that. He was writing thousands of words about this every-day, it was not normal.

There is coverage of the source discussion just above.

That was written by Debunking spiritualism, i.e., Darryl L. Smith. He lied about having email from me. Email was with his brother, Oliver D. Smith. I was not writing “articles” on Anglo Pyramidologist, I was creating research notes in “pages.” Correction of errors was invited and accepted. However, the norm was that the Smiths called it “lies,” without pointing and, in fact, refusing to point to specific “lies” or errors. There are no lies in it, because I’m a journalist and it is stupid for a journalist to lie, it defeats the entire purpose. But I do make mistakes and even lots of mistakes, so I’ve always depended on readers to point them out. And some do, for which I’m grateful. There are at this point 105 pages with the category “Anglo Pyramidologist.” There are 5 posts, which are far more public. Whenever Smith would link to the blog, he would link to the AngloPyramidologist category instead of the actual page. At the time he linked, the page referred was a probably at the top of the Category display. Which was meaningless and transient.

There are 18 pages currently “private.” 4 are in the Anglo Pyramidologist category,. mostly because they represented incomplete research. Collections of evidence are not “negative,” which is not an aspect of evidence, but of opinion about it. I do comment on occasion on the pages, with opinions. Some of those could be considered “negative,” but “negative opinion” about RationalWiki is ubiquitous. If I have an unsupported opinion on those pages, again, comment has always been invited. I would either support the opinion or redact it. (And redaction, when it happened, was then called “hiding” by these trolls.)

I’m “not normal.” Get over it. I’ve never claimed to be “normal,” which  is an undefined term. Normal in what way? Intelligence testing when I was in high school reported IQ 157, as I recall. Maybe it was 156, and does it matter? I’ve never claimed intelligence as an argument for being right. But it does mean that I’m likely to see things that others miss, that’s all. Lots of smart people are socially disabled, and there are ways in which I was. But I also learned how to overcome that, ending up being highly successful in certain activities that required high social skill. My point is only that calling me “normal” might be an insult. Here, calling me “not normal” was intended as an insult. This was written by someone who is widely regarded as insane, Oliver D. Smith. And Vigilant knows that, so he is hiding behind quotation for what he knows are deceptive. No examples were given in that discussion. The fact: at one point I hid some pages for political reasons. So. This was Oliver Smith talking about pages (not “articles,” rather mostly collections of evidence, not polemic based on that). In the discussion one user sees their name in a feed, with the article password-protected. That’s because it was a placeholder. The context suspected them of being an “enabler,” specifically of the Smiths, and I’d stand for that, based on evidence. That is certainly mild and certainly not doxxing. It’s all designed to create an impression in the minds of lazy readers. The Smiths became quite good at that. Until persistent documentation finally tipped the balance, and Vigilant is attacking that, because his goal is spreading contempt and hatred, and he cares nothing about reality, honesty, truth, and attacks love. Those are satanic qualities, and his self-identification as “Witchsmeller pursuivant” is a confirmation of that. A “witch hunt” is motivated by  hatred of “witches,” i.e. powerful females suspected of some kind of “evil.” Witch hunts were a clear manifestation of the satanic archetype. Satan, in the archetype or metaphor, disguises himself as a hater of evil. Which is evil.

Darry L. Smith threatened me on a WMF wiki that he would get all my work deleted by “private complaint to administrators.” And that actually happened, in spite of all of that deletion being contrary to policy. I was accused by them of doxxing, when they had not only doxxed, but impersonated their target on Wikipedia. They had grossly violated the Terms of Service. Yet by handling their attack on me through private complaints, they were able to find administrators vulnerable to knee-jerk opinion. What Mu301 did on Wikiversity was radically out of process. Page deletion there was not a unilateral decision by an administrator. But he did it on his own, with a bot and over objection and without time to recover the content. Radical departure from Wikiversity policies. And why? Some emergency? Those pages had been there for years. I was able to recover them from a site dump, they are all on the attached wiki.

This was a ‘crat carrying out a declared deletion agenda, based on private complaints (which he hinted at). WMF bans are also based on private complaints, and a target is not warned and is explicitly denied any appeal. The WMF claims, in their defense in court, that they can ban for any reason and no reason, so therefore announcing a ban is just a fact, and does not defame the banned person, but the WMF community knows that this is preposterous.

Ah, but I digress. Vigilant is quoting uncritically a pile of lies, because that’s what he loves. Lies.

15:57:36 21 Jan 2020 WOVigilant [comment deleted]

Lomax email
The above attempted re-writes or deletions requests is because of Lomax blackmailing, coercing and harassing RW users – so like myself we want the option of being left alone by this nutcase. Below is a harassing email I’ve just received. Lomax believes I have a brother involved in this website, I don’t. That’s the “smith brother conspiracy theory” he’s obsessed with. Aside from this misinformation and conspiracy theory, he claims to be taking legal action. But note how rude and aggressive this old prick is:
[and then there was an unreadable copy of the email, Vigilant is incompetent.]

here is what Smith quoted:

If I don’t want RW to have an article on me, my recourse is with the RMF. I did email them, they ignored it (not surprising). Next step is a certified letter, a formal demand.

You and your brother have lied so extensively about me and what I was doing, and created such a widespread mess, that the only way to undo it is probably to come completely clean, and openly acknowledge what you know, in a way that is verifiably you. Otherwise it would be considered impersonation. That is the mess you and your brother have created.

You complained to the WMF. What did you complain about? That is not going to be a privileged communication, it’s vulnerable to subpoena.

I don’t think you realize how difficult it could be to undo the damage you and your brother have done. Having a sysop account is largely meaningless on RW. Any user, generally, can rewrite an article. I could rewrite may article. But would it stick? The two of you have created a myth that the RW community believes, demonstrating how naive and gullible they are.

All those vandalizing socks on RationalWiki, copying my text, twisting it, and vandalizing with it, who were they?

David Gerard only acts when he has cover. He is, after all, real-name and vulnerable to defamation suits.

And it appears that it will be coming to that.

Significant parts of the email were omitted. The entire mail. This was, as well, a private email and not intended for publication. What Darryl wanted to do by publishing this was create the impression of an impending lawsuit, which will generally cause the Rats to dig in their heels. There was no threat to Rats, and what was described as possible for RatWiki was only a certified demand letter. That letter was never sent, because I ultimately decided to focus on what had done the most damage, the WMF’s publication of the ban that the Smiths had engineered. That could reveal information crucial from a legal perspective.

Darryl, as DS, had been lying about our alleged communication. There had been no threats and no proposed deal. He made that up to make it look like he was caving into threats. And … who is he? The story they tell makes no sense at all, and that it was swallowed by Rats shows how naively unskeptical they are. They were fooled for years, because they liked the snarky and hostile articles written by the Smiths.

This is my public archive of those mails. They were correspondence with Oliver D. Smith, using his long-standing public email address. Yet, here, Debunking spiritualism claims they were sent to him. Was this an admission of being Oliver Smith? It certainly looks like that, but did the Rats notice the obvious? No, they were too busy smelling the Limberger, which is their imagination of whoever is a target there.

Did you know that people whom we think believe differently from us are all crazy and may do wild and crazy things, like creating hundreds of trollsocks impersonating themselves. It all makes sense once we understand that they are crazy!

Were those mails “harassing”? That single email was the last sent to Oliver, after he had sent me eight.

Rather, at this point, Oliver decided to declare that the brother story, which had been created by the Smiths — not by me or by enemies — was a lie, that he’d been lying for years. Now, do we believe him? Why should we? There was an obvious motive for lying about this, to protect his brother, who claimed that he was being paid to write or edit.

Oliver also later claimed that this was harassment. Yet he began it, and never asked me to stop replying.  (He referred, at the end, to his emails with Rome Viharo, and Viharo provided me with copies, so those are also there.)  And they continue to blame those who think there are two brothers “conspiracy theorists.” In science, theories are proposed for testing. They are not “beliefs.” Do I believe that there are two brothers? I’m really not certain, but, folks, Occam’s Razor. There remains a critical study to do. It will take effort, but it will probably generate evidence that will confirm or kill the “twin brother” story. And I don’t care which. Does it really matter if there are one or two?

16:00:53  21 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

My point still stands. Even if he has reformed on a dime, he still has to make up for it, a formal apology to every specific person he doxxed is a start, but that’s that: it’s a start. Given the damage he’s done, he probably has to go through an entire personality change. –It’s-a me, Lgm sigpic.png LeftyGreenMario!(Mod) 00:12, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

More from the same discussion, see above, in which the RatWiki community was fed a pile of lies by the Smith socks. They lapped it up. They still seem to believe that story. Yesterday, three sysops there showed that they believe I’m still editing RatWiki. (I haven’t for a year, and then very little and not disruptively like that.) The behavior, the sock names, the edits, all that, points to Darryl Smith. I first saw it on Wikiversity and the meta wiki, and documented it. That angered Darryl, and so he made his threat to get all my work deleted. It didn’t work, none was deleted, but merely moved. And the documentation was extended. I had no idea when I started how many socks had been created. I don’t have a count yet, because I don’t have a single compilation, but I think it exceeds a thousand. Most of those troll socks have passed unnoticed, because I don’t watch all the time. Far from it! They get away with their crazy because most Rats can’t comprehend that someone would do something like this, unless it’s a crazy person, and someone who is writing articles for them, they will not suspect is crazy. Eventually, they figured out that Oliver was over the edge and he was banned. But Darryl has merely gone into something close to hibernation. When he’s done this before, he was busy on Wikpedia.

Documenting socks — without real names — was called “doxxing.” To be sure, it was possible to google the basic account name, Anglo Pyramidologist and come up with accusations of identity. I did not report that until much later, after it had become clear that the scale of disruption was enormous, and the identities were confirmed. The only base for the accusation that I doxxed on WMF wikis — or on RatWiki was a URL used accidentally on Wikiversity, not noticing that it had Oliver Smith in it. It was promptly revision-deleted. In fact, what I was documenting was not Oliver, except for the old history. It was Darryl, but many had confused the two. Later, they figured it out.

18:08:56 21 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Thank you for your patience while we reviewed this. I just wanted to close the loop on this matter as we concluded our investigation. We’ve taken what you’ve sent into consideration as we reviewed Abd’s conduct in a larger context in regards to whether the Foundation should take any action. We determined that the conduct did merit Foundation-led action and yesterday, 24 February 2018, we proceeded in enforcing a Wikimedia Foundation Global Ban against Abd. This means that this user is no longer welcome on the Wikimedia projects, under any username he has used or may use in the future. While we obviously can’t guarantee our global ban will stop the issues the community has been facing I’m hopeful that it will help. We will continue to watch and listen for future issues, moving forward, but please let us know if you have any questions or believe there is something else we can do to help. Warm regards.

Vigilant left off the first words.

Hello, Oliver

This was the notice published by Oliver Smith on RatWiki. He was quite proud of it. It is possible that he knew about the ban before I did. They do not actually notify banned users. The tool disables log-in, and they shut down not only outgoing mail, but incoming (through the server), so that other users cannot contact a banned user.

Oliver had no basis for complaint to the WMF. None. But he also routinely lied about the facts, and combined with other reports, the WMF may easily have assumed that if multiple users are complaining, it must be truthful. If they lied, that was defamation. In fact, even if they were not lying, but motivated by malice, it could be defamation, certainly in Massachusetts. Now, what fact is established here? Only that I was banned, which is not in controversy. Plus, of course, that Oliver Smith, blocked under numerous accounts on Wikipedia, was a complainant. Is that what Vigilant wants us to notice? But that’s my point about all of this. Thanks for making my point, faggot. (in the old meaning, of course).

21:12:32 21 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Pissed_at_us#Abd_ul-Rahman_Lomax

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax As User:Abd, after being permanently banned for doxxing, trolling, and harassing other users in October 2017, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax used his blog to spread lies and conspiracy theories about us, specifically thinking that his article was created solely by two brothers.

Far out. Who initially wrote that? I didn’t know. The message is Smith, but many bought it and passed it on. It was BabyLuigiOnFire, 18 January, 2018, and after the text cited, was proof:

Top quote
RationalWiki, see the Wikipedia article, has been said to be “kind of snarky and rude,” which is a vast understatement. It has been identified as a “debunking site,” and such may purport to be promoting scientific thinking and recognition of pseudscience[sic], but debunking and genuine skepticism are quite distinct. RationalWiki is commonly pseudoskeptical. As a wiki, however, YMMV.[65]

The quoted material was quite mild and represents very common opinion about RationalWiki. There is an RW article on Pseudoskepticism, and it’s pretty good except for one thing: it focuses on “those pseudoskeptics,” those who are skeptical of what we believe, whereas genuine skepticism is skeptical of self. That, in fact, could be called “science.”

The claim about lies on the blog, long-standing, has never been substantiated with the citation of any actual intentionally false statement, and surely they know the English language. In fact, if a statement on the blog is false, and if this is pointed out, it will be corrected. If there is controversy over the fact, that will be covered. In other words, all these claims about lies are false, or, worse, themselves lies. The Smith brothers were already well-known before I became involved. It is not a “conspiracy theory,” it is a specific claim, and it is not as stated. I did not claim that the article was created by two brothers. It was by one of them, Darryl L. Smith, as Marky. Other RW users made minor contributions from time to time, but heavy lifting was by Smith socks (including participation by Darryl’s brother Oliver):

… not mentioning many troll and impersonation socks.y the way, what “user” was “harassed”? The record shows that I was harassed, heavily.

Vigilant is relying on a collection of opinions from juvenile snarks, when he would normally dismiss them as compleat idiots. But he’s obsessed and will use anything he can find.

22:45:56 21 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Abd Lomax is socking and linking to his cold fusion community blog. I just had to revdel one of his edits. He now has a blog post on my Rationalwiki account claiming to have identified me. He says he knows my real name and location and he lists it. He got my name and location wrong, but as he is attempting full dox of users here, I just semi-protected this page as he will no doubt turn up here again and again on new IPs. Debunking spiritualism (talk) 20:44, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I’ve added a link to the edit. Debunking spiritualism is blocked as Aeschylus, i.e., Oliver, but that’s not correct. This was Darryl L. Smith. I did not have his address, rather, the address of Oliver (which is their parent’s home), and I did not publish information adequate to locate the home. However, there was a lot of evidence being collected, including IP locations, and mapped. It all fit. Yes, this was (limited) doxing. However, it was not being done on RatWiki. Darryl created a pile of impersonation socks. This was a pattern: I would create a sock and disclose it on the blog to prove it was me. A mountain of impersonations with similar names would be created, plus many more with various names taken from my history. The idea was to bury the real — and non-disruptive — edits with garbage. It worked. The sock I had created before the pile he named was not named. But others with similar names were. Impersonation socking like that on Wikipedia was what got me involved with investigating this in the first place. All that was steward checkuser-proven, and there were breadcrumbs leading back to RatWiki. Later, I compared the edits of the Anglo Pyramidologist socks on Wikipedia with the RatWiki edit histories. It all fit. And, of course, they call it lies but don’t actually point to any. This guy had doxxed many. There are so many stories here….

So what did he rev-del?

More impersonation socks

This account is verified as Abd ul-Rahman Lomax here. The many vandal and trolling accounts pretending to be me are impersonation socks, and the one who is intensely aware of them, obsessed by me, is … nah, you can figure it out. I could say more, but won’t. A word to the wise is sufficient. —Authentic (talk) 20:36, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Authentic was me, as could be verified. There was discussion. With extensive lies tossed in. It was possible to verify my claims. Did anyone do that? No. Nobody cares, bottom line. And there goes the wiki. Debunking spiritualism, two months later, went on a deletion spree, and at the end, attempted to make it look like his account had been hacked, and who was blamed for that. Guess! What was he doing? Deleting evidence that he and Oliver were from the same family. Oliver had mentioned it many times. The cat was long out of the bag and he was desperately trying to stuff it back in. The claim of doxxing from that link was preposterous. It would not show you anything but my identity variation and if you wanted to find doxing, you’d need to google it. And, of course, he provided a clue that it existed. If anyone wanted to know.

There was more. This was also rev-del’d, not by DS. Total nonsense. Attacks on user pages, pretending to be me, etc.

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax‎‎ is being impersonated and harassed by biased skeptic Rationalwiki trolls. It is clearly Tim Farley doing this. This was the same man who has harassed Rome Viharo. Lomax will document all this on coldfusioncommunity.net (unsigned, added by A_full_disclosure 21:03, 5 March 2018)

There is much more like this.

Vigilant is citing a RatWiki troll, blocked under many accounts on Wikipedia and also globally locked under many (but that is not a ban), as if a reliable source.

00:33:04 22 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Most people think that words have some specific meaning and that’s that. I live in a different universe, where meaning is invented and is not actually real. It’s all made up, but the really cool thing is that then one is free to make up meanings that actually work, instead of being bound by them (i.e., by “true meaning.”)

–Abd (talk) 02:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Neat. Where the hell did I write this? There was a gap in my Wikiversity contributions there. I found out why.

I found an offwiki edit signed at that time, in an archive on another wiki of mine. This was a discussion with wllm. The ontology is fairly standard, but to people who do not learn semantics and transformative ontology, it could seem crazy. However, this is widely understood: “Meaning” is a human phenomenon, it does not exist in nature. We invent meaning and doing so is quintessentially human. What happens happens, and what we make it mean, especially as to “good” and “bad”, is created by us. Some of this may be instinctive, but it is programmable. and the understanding that meaning is not absolute is incredibly liberating. This could be a very long discussion. The meaning we assign to happenings has a dramatic effect on our psyche, and it can free us or bind us. That’s all.

There was more. It’s an archive from a Flow page, a disaster, but the text can be recovered. It’s here.

01:41:39 23 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

That’s it?
That’s all you’ve got?
Low energy. Sad.

If the seas were ink and the trees were pens . . .

He is desperate to find an exit for this that doesn’t make him look like a loser, but . . . his efforts make him look like a loser. Wait until I actually create polemic to use this evidence. At this point, I’m using the occasion to provide information about all this crap he’s dredging up. This comment is the troll trolling to see if I will respond there, where there is no readership because of the age of the comments. I see it because he is responding to me but good chance there is nobody reading that but him and me. However, there are places where I can write about this to increase visibility. He’s the one who hides, not me.

05:06:54 23 Jan 202o WOVigilant

Dance, monkey.

Is that all you’ve got? (Apparently not, he has an endless supply of irrelevancies.)

19:36:12 23 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Stop making stuff up, Abd. You deleted a user’s comments, for no reason, and gave no reason. You also wrote completely unnecessary innuendo and insults against at least three separate users here, not including the one you blocked. You think you’re right, but you are wrong. You claimed nobody objected to your block, but two users did. Now you’re here talking behind the back of someone who you blocked. Also, your spam deletion refusal was noticable. It looks to me that you went on strike until you got your way by blocking someone you disagreed with. Just Anyone (talk) 16:04, 6 July 2014 (PDT)

This was on Offwiki, a project wllm started in an attempt to create a Wikipedia consensus-seeking forum. He and it were under intense attack, from people like Vigilant. As I recall, Just Anyone was part of that, but I’m not sure So, here, Vigilant quotes an anonymous user making claims. Truth? Lies? The context is totally missing, all this establishes is that a person had an opinion. It is heavily interpretive and hostile. This shows what? I know that I would not delete comments for “no reason.” The interpretations are weird. I’m alleged to be “Talking behind someone’s back,” when this was a public wiki, everything visible.

And this establishes that Vigilant is desperate to toss anything that looks like mud, all irrelevant trolling in context.

19:45:46 23 Jan 2020

IRONY!!!

21:02, 31 December 2017 Mu301 discuss contribs changed block settings for Abd discuss contribs with an expiration time of indefinite (cannot create accounts) (Wikiversity is not your personal podium: persistent long term disruption https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Abd&diff=1795552&oldid=1795534) 18:20, 31 December 2017 Mu301 discuss contribs blocked Abd discuss contribs with an expiration time of 1 year (cannot create accounts) (Repeat disruptive editing of pages: you have interfered with a legitimate discussion of the scope of a wikiversity resource https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Fringe_science&type=revision&diff=1795468&oldid=1795081)

The short of the above is that the ‘crat lied. If anyone wants more detail, ask, it would be obvious if anyone investigates. There were two blocks, the first for a year, based on the in-policy removal of a proposed deletion template and an attempt to resolve a dispute. The second was a few hours later, based on a long block log, which actually was not all that long, compared to those he was cooperating with.

Here, this is totally irrelevant to context, so he’s disrupting a discussion. Trolls troll.

19:46:52 23 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Here we go again.

Someone has broken the seventh seal and the Armageddon Bloviating Dickhole has awoken.

You write walls of text that effectively kill every fucking thread you participate in. You’ve been asked, continually, to stop doing that. You just can’t stop for very long and you ran everyone out of patience

Irrelevant, completely off-topic and quoting some unknown jerk. It has always been the case that some like my detailed comments and some dislike them, but the strange thing is that anyone can skip them. If it actually is a “wall-of-text” it is trivial to skip. On Wikipediocracy, Vigilant would quote, in toto, a long text of mine, with his only addition being “tl;dr” at the bottom. He has always been a troll, it is an intensely crafted persona. He hates, and expresses it over and over.

19:51:14 23 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Well, the extent of your knowledge is the most shallow of puddles.

The existence of a checkuser wiki where they store data on problem users for later use is well known and confirmed by direct statement of several CUs.

Is there a single thing you DON’T suck at?

We’ve received a number of complaints and have grown very weary of the drama that you have drawn to our site. There are more productive ways that we could spend our time (like developing our educational resources) rather than allow you to continue the activities for which you were blocked. –mikeu talk 20:53, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

It is more than confirmed by unlinked statements, this is the URL of the wiki.

That is not the “database” that was being discussed. Vigilant will take any comment and even what is not said and use it to troll. I.e., if I did not mention it here — even though I mentioned it in another conversation with the OP elsewhere — it is proof that I’m ignorant and don’t know about it, but if I mention everything I know, there you go, a tome. This is all totally obvious.

As to Mu301’s comments, I was almost totally inactive on WV by that time. And the disruption that occurred came in from outside, from his friends from Wikipedia. I was not at all using Wikiversity as a “private podium” — as mentioned above in another section. All my writing had moved elsewhere by then.

17:02:12 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Don’t take advice on how to behave on wikipedia from a guy who is in the very small list of globally locked accounts.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Ban_Policy/en#List_of_global_bans_placed_by_the_Wikimedia_Foundation

Abd, since 24 February 2018

Just sayin’

I provide advice for a person to consider. The advice can be verified as sound. The user could ask about it on wikipediasuck.co, or on wikipediocracy.com, or on a Discord server on wikis, the Treehouse (invitation), or even cooler, the user could ask for help from the other users he’s been revert-warring with. That’s a great technique to break the ice and disarm a possible “enemy.”. I.e., “I think maybe I’ve misunderstood the policies, can you help me out?” And then listen and learn. What I’ve been saying here is very standard advice.

I survived, for some years, having an entire faction of users and administrators on my ass on Wikipedia, but I abandoned that project in 2011 (before I was banned from there). I was paid, as a consultant, to advise a user how to get unblocked. It worked, of course. Of course, you could always decide to believe WOVigilant, who was blocked on Wikipedia in 2006, and who became a long-term troll, currently dedicated to attacking me, see his Reddit profile!

Vigilant~enwiki Central Auth, which shows his wiki experience and status.

Abd Central Auth, likewise. Yes, I’m globally banned, but I have not edited Wikipedia since 2011, and was blocked on Wikiversity as part of the sequence that led to the global ban. It was not for an ban-worthy on-wiki activity, but the office does not explain global bans, I don’t truly know why I was banned, except it is obvious that there were private complaints.

17:03:16 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

I wouldn’t take advice from a guy associated with diet woo on what is safe and what is not.

Instead, perhaps, take advice from an anonymous troll who is stalking my Reddit comments and attacking them and me in every way he can imagine. See his profile!

Actually, the value of internet comments is never as “advice,” as such. I gave personal experience, and I also researched the topic. I wrote more about this on a wikipedia critic site. I write about balancing risk and benefit, because nothing is purely “safe.”

As to “food woo,” that’s completely irrelevant. I follow food science and research, the very opposite of “woo.” But some ignorant haters will call anything they don’t understand “woo.” And this has zero to do with food safety it would be about nutrition. A healthy food sufficiently contaminated with, say, salmonella, will still make you sick. From researching this, I just bought what appears to be an excellent book, cited in the Wikipedia article on Torisashi.

Vigilant does not care about the topic of discussions, he does not care about real people, in fact, he hates people, they are so ignorant and disgusting, such “shitheels,” especially if they disagree with him.  Look at the beginning of this page if curious!

17:04:09 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAA!!!
Abd telling people not to argue!!!!
Oh, my sides!!!!

Context:  a noob, not understanding Wikipedia policy, guidelines and actual practice, who is not only arguing with experienced users, but is quite likely to be blocked in short order, and what noobs do when blocked is argue with it, which is the exact opposite of what works. I practiced this for years if blocked. I did on occasion, argue. It never worked. I have thirty years of on-line experience, as a moderator and user, and “argument” almost always fails at just about everything. What works? Something far more subtle that Vigilant certainly will not understand with his instinctive and constant contempt and hatred. One does not create consensus by arguing with people, but by understanding them and addressing their concerns. Wikipedia became, far too extensively, a field of argument, not to mention personal attack.

17:04:39 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

When are you going to apologize, Abd?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that particular act of contrition…

  • (1) I suggested apology, not as an expression of contrition, but as skillful communication (that has other benefits as well). It is empowering, unlike what a hater like Vigilant will think.
  • (2) Apologies are generally conveyed privately and personally, though not always.
  • (3) I’ll be amazed if I ever see Vigilant apologize. (I’d love to be amazed!) There is an example of the power of prompt apology a little later in his trolling today. The value of a suggestion does not depend on the perfection of the one suggesting. Vigilant is a hater, period, not even remotely interested in what would help the OP.
  •  
  • (4) Apologize for what? An apology in a vacuum is meaningless. This is obvious trolling, along with the rest of this troll’s Reddit contributions since 30 Dec 2019.

17:05:39 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Dude, don’t take advice from this guy. He’s globally banned by the WMF.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Ban_Policy/en#List_of_global_bans_placed_by_the_Wikimedia_Foundation

Obsessed, he’s repeating himself. See above

17:06:15 24 July 2020 WOVigilant.

 

I once slapped a daughter of mine who was about to bite me on the arm. We were all in family therapy, and I’ve encouraged my children to be fully open about everything with therapists, and so the therapist learned about it. And I went to an anger management group. — Abd

I could not find the context of this comment. It is like something I might have written on Quora. Google does not find it. However, this is an opportunity to tell more of the story.

The daughter had a history of biting, though she had never bitten me. When upset, that old behavior might resurface. I had just been to a museum with two daughters and I was parked on the street. The other daughter normally sat behind the driver, but I did not want to open that door because of traffic. So I opened the right hand rear door, and the younger daughter tried to crowd her way in. I held her back, so that the other daughter could enter, and that’s when she bared her teeth and made to bite me. I slapped her. And then I immediately apologized to her. “I’m sorry I slapped you. I would rather be bit than slap you.” So, then, when this came up in family therapy, the therapist agonized over whether or not to report it. She consulted her supervisor and the response was routine. Always report if there is any doubt at all. So the Department of Children and Families opened an investigation. Now, raising seven kids under sometimes difficult conditions, I had ample opportunity to interact with them. Lots of parents are completely freaked out by a report and contact from DCF. I wasn’t. I had always found them helpful and professional and very knowledgeable. And that’s what I expected.

I know other parents who responded with hostility, and ended up with severe difficulties. I had immediately apologized, which helped. I also enrolled in an anger management therapy group, not that I had a big problem with anger, but that slap arose in a flash, I did not think about it. I needed to head that reactivity off. That can take skill and training. It can cause major damage. That all helped with DCF and they found “neglect” — I had, in fact, neglected to stop myself (and it is illegal to slap kids in my state, no excuses), but they did not find “abuse,” which would be a pattern, child at risk.

Now, what was Vigilant’s point here? This has zero relationship to the topic of the post. He probably thinks it makes me look bad. Maybe it does, I don’t know, but I fully trust reality and don’t have any habit of hiding.

18:05:18 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

You see guys?
If you hammer Abd long enough and hard enough, you can get him to post in a more succinct manner.
Have at it.

    1. Off topic trolling
    2. Meaningless. Who hammered? My position appears to be the prevailing one, there. What he is trying to do is to get others to “hammer” at me.
    3. However, if my comments are too long, I have always invited and been happy to accommodate requests for a more succinct summary. That is not unfriendly at all.

15:11:32 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

I did run into problems on Wikiversity, a few years ago, but those are in the past. I am now a major force there, with cooperative support from site administration. — Abd

Narrator: “He’s banned there…”

Like all of Vigilant’s other comments for almost a month, this is off-topic trolling.

No context, no date. I was indeed a major force on Wikiversity during more than one period. And I was never banned there. Wikiversity policy required a Community Review to ban, it was not within the authority of a custodian or ‘crat to ban. I’d very possibly have been unblocked, but (1) I did not want to edit Wikiversity, I’d actually given up on it a year earlier, so I was in no rush and (2) I had other fish to fry, most immediately rescuing all the content that was being deleted by that same blocking ‘crat, also totally out-of-process, using a bot with no warning, and (3) the WMF ban, without notice or warning, intervened. My editing activities on WMF wikis were on meta, not Wikiversity, and meta had no problem.

So that statement was likely quite true when made. Again, this is Vigilant scouring my history, looking for any comment by me or about me that can be framed to be “bad” or “wrong” in some way. What he is doing most effectively is establishing just how viciously obsessed he is.

20:09:50 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

I made a personal appeal to him to avoid conflict, as I was literally spending all the time that I had to contribute to this site trying to resolve various conflicts that all involved Abd.

Again, totally and ridiculously off-topic trolling.

If this was a wiki, who was this? Obviously someone who believed it was their personal responsibility to “resolve conflicts,” and probably immediately, instead of setting up conditions for conflicts to clarify. Instead, he believe it was his decision, and it was an emergency. I’ve been a constant stand for community governance on wikis by consensus, and I was effective at obtaining and demonstrating it. There have always been those who disliked that and who attacked, especially certain admins suffering from what the Founder of Wikiversity called “Wikipedia disease.” Without context, this is meaningless.

Okay, I found the reference. This is a quote from a Auggie post on Wikipediocracy, who quotes Wil Sinclair as having said that. Wil was attempting to manage a site without establishing support from others, pretty much what I described above. He asked me to help. I did. I short blocked a user who was being highly disruptive, ignoring warnings and making it impossible to work on a piece of the project. For two hours. Wil then gave me no support at all.

It was a wiki. Generally, any error could be corrected (including a bad block). He really had no wiki experience. He was under attack, the site was under attack, and I was under attack. I was on the phone with him at one point, he was completely hysterical, believing he was going to be sued by a user. I talked him down so he could sleep. But the next day, he was right back into his panic. He was in way over his head, and unless he trusted someone, backing up and taking his time to review events, the site was doomed. He never found someone he could trust, and that is why Offwiki went dark. He did, in fact, take responsibility for the failure in the end. I liked Wil, but he was reactive as hell.

Vigilant, who had hated Wil and Offwiki, constantly blamed me for the demise of that project, over the years. Of course, that’s what he does. He hates and blames people.

Auggie abruptly shut down his Forum and his wiki (encyc), losing years of content, with contributions from many people, when he was doxxed. So many people, so vulnerable, depend on anonymity. Bad Idea. While there are risks from being open, hatred and venom fester in the anonymous lack of responsibility. And that’s Vigilant.

20:10:26 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

I also fundamentally oppose that Abd be involved in drafting any proposals for the simple reason that I would rather stick forks in my eyes than be required to read any more of his voluminous drivel.

A bit of hyperbole? Or literal? What? What proposal, in what context, and why would anyone be forced to read what I write? Don’t want to read it, don’t read it! But I’ve seen this for many years. People hate detailed comments, and in-depth coverage of issues. Audiences vary, but I find that the people I respect do not necessarily read all of what I write, but respect it. On Quora, I have high views (over 5.5 million) and over 2000 followers, and when you follow someone on Quora, you are fed their posts and comments. Nobody is forced to read long posts. On Quora, one sees the first few lines, with a “more” link. No, these are people who are attempting to suppress opinion and commentary and especially documentation. Now, where was this?

This was Vigilant on Wikipediocracy in 2015 with selected quotes from Colin on Commons. I was involved in a few policy issues there for a time. Colin had no responsibility to read what I write. He had low privilege on the site. It’s trivial to skip a section in a discussion, and he was, in effect, proposing that if there were some decision process, drafting a proposal, I should be banned — if his comment were not simply dumping his personal reaction on the community. I was never blocked on Commons. I was in good standing there when WMF office-banned. I have not looked up the context.

I’ve been very active on-line since before the internet. I’ve been involved in plenty of controversies. At one point I got a post office box in San Quentin, California because there was a bomb threat. I was confronting what are now called radical Islamists, and other haters. On Wikipedia I was a stand for project neutrality and confronted admin abuse. It is not suprising that some people really don’t like me or what I write. But nobody has to read it! I never claimed that anyone was responsible for having read what I’d written. Some did, though, and some confirmed what I’d written, an ArbCom case turned on that.

This is my favorite quote about Vigilant, it comes from Poetlister, who is also WMF Office-banned and who was the first person to be “community banned” before th WMF started issuing office bans. I defended Poetlister, along with a substantial minority of users, Poetlister was railroaded. Vigilant knows how corrupt the wikis can be, it’s most of what he writes about when he’s not writing about me. But to attack me, he picks criticisms from people he hates. Anyway, this is Poetlister’s current tag line on Wikipediocracy:

Nonentities, claiming to be vigilant, are jealous of people with real achievements. They proxy for banned user Timothy Usher, using his dubious claims in vain attempts to belittle them.

While I was working intensely for the welfare of the WMF community, what was Vigilant doing? Above, I point to his very small number of contributions in the short period he edited, ending with his block in 2006 for having only one purpose: to attack Jeff Merkey. Whether or not Merkey “deserved it” is irrelevant. I was never a single-purpose editor like that, and anyone who is, is likely to be blocked.

(Timothy Usher was involved in the attacks on me on Offwiki, by the way. I don’t remember much about him.)

Hatred and contempt and “belittling” are Vigilant’s raison d’etre. You can see it in the first comments discussed at the top of this page. He’s proud of it. I’m simply documenting it and providing some informed opinion. I’m not his judge. The human community and reality are.

20:36:05 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

I have deleted all that rubbish, any further attempt to provoke people and/or engaging in collecting informations about actions without consent will lead to an immediate and definitive block on this wiki. –M/ (talk) 15:50, 24 May 2014 (UTC) regarding Abd’s doxxing

Vigilant (in bold) is lying. This had nothing to do with doxxing. The quote is from my meta talk page. I had become interested in global locks. Originally, global locks were intended for narrow use, but I did see some signs that usage had crept beyond that. So I decided to study the locks. All of them. I collected the global log for the last 5000 lock actions, it was about three months. They were analyzed as to apparent cause. There were no accusations of impropriety. There were one or more stewards commenting on the process, no warnings or disapproval. However, the study was coming to the point of classifying actions by steward, and the numbers of locks per steward were shown. The steward with the largest number of locks was Billinghurst. My assessment: while he made a mistake, he fixed it immediately. Billinghurst looked good in the study. However, one steward’s situation was becoming obvious. I had not pointed it out and did not plan to “accuse,” only to show what was in the record. That was Vituzzu. M/ was the other Italian steward. He did not merely delete the study, it was suppressed so that even admins could not see it. Nothing but sorted data from public logs.

Wiki theory has it be that the community can see what functionaries are doing — with exceptions that are intended to be rare — that’s why the logs exist. Billinghurst asserted: “Review, yes [is okay]. Forensic nitpicking, into areas that may identify real people is not.” Now, what I actually knew were abuses of the lock tool involved a person whose real identity was know. I was in fact, in extensive communication with this person, an Italian history professor, whom Vituzzu hated. If there was sensitive data there, it was in a public log. (and the person involved would have supported me 100%.) No, this was cover-up. Billinghurst suggests that the Ombudsman Commission is oversight for the stewards. In potential yes, but using what data? There was very extensive work in that study (I have a copy), and the Commission does not address what was being shown, which was not, in itself, abuse of the checkuser tool. The only way to address it would be with an RfC on meta, and without evidence, it would be not only useless, but suicidal. Dangerous enough with evidence — I proved that on en.wiki. I had thought of Billinghurst as one of the better, saner stewards. But when push came to shove, he would protect another steward over standing for the rights of the community to know what is going on. I mentioned the suppression on the central meta discussion forum. There was zero response and interest, so at this point, I concluded that the global community was hopeless. I had support, but it was not enough. It was not long after this that I concluded that Wikiversity had also become unsafe, not a place to develop content, in spite of excellent theory and practice there. If the ones with tools run away with the place, and if the community is not organized, nobody will be able to stop them.

The structure is designed in such a way as to be completely vulnerable to that. It is not bad people, it’s a defective system that brings out the worst in people, over time — and that also empowers the worst people, on occasion.

In any case, none of this was serving to address the issue brought by the OP. Classic trolling.

21:13:58 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Wikiversity is mostly remembered for the epic and foolish noticeboard wars waged by Abd…

Misquoted to create a false impression. This was a comment by Eric Barbour on Wikipediocracy. A fuller quote is

. . . epic and foolish noticeboard wars waged by Abd, Barry Kort, Ottava and a few other people in 2010-2011

Wikiversity doesn’t have noticeboards as such, with extensive debate. There have been no wars in what exists, much less wars waged by me. There were some conflicts, yes, but far less than what one would see on Wikipedia. The norm was cooperation. On Wikipediocracy in a discussion linked in another section above, a budding conflict between Cirt and me was mentioned. What happened there, in fact, was that I suggested to Cirt something that completely resolved the conflict, and we ended up collaborating, and this later spilled over into WikiSource, where he was admin and I helped resolve a nasty situation there. The Wikipediiots, often, see only drama and conflict. Cooperation is boring.

Barbour clearly had no clear understanding of the mission and practice of Wikiversity. He was just making a casual comment, not researched, based on some superficial impressions and it really wasn’t about me. As it happens. Barbour is an owner of WikipediaSucks.co, a well-known long-term critic, as well as an author of a huge compilation of pages that I’m working on prepping and uploading to wikitop.cc. And Barbour surely knows my history, and recently made me a moderator on that forum. He has been easy to work with.

This is what trolls do: scour the internet for stuff to quote to try to make their target look bad. When someone has been very active, as I have being since the 1980s, there will be lots of material. But is it being presented with balance? Guess!

I can also find many quotations where people were grateful for what I was doing, even inspired. It would prove nothing but that other points of view exist. I’m much more interested in what is going on now, and this is making Vigilant more visible as the dedicated hater he is, than he has ever been. And it is giving me an opportunity to look at those old situations. Anyone can comment on those replies on Reddit, or here with comments, or on Wikipediasucks.co. where I have referred to this.

21:24:42 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

One does not “talk to” Ottava, or VOC, or Abd. One is talked at, and BY them. The street is one-way only.

Again totally off-topic and mostly unintelligible. I don’t know who VOC is. Ottava is unforgettable, though but the OP would not know who that is. None of this is helpful to the OP.

This is presented as a quote, but I could not find a source. It’s a common accusation. However, these “conversations” are in text, and text is by someone, yes, but on all sides. I’m obviously reading what Vigilant is spewing, so this entire exercise is a counterexample for what he’s claiming. Vigilant is talking to me, but by posting in a public forum. That is not talking to me or with me, it is trolling and grandstanding. I have no idea if he is reading these replies, and I don’t care. They are not “at” him. They are for myself and anyone who cares to read another point of view.

Years ago, I was quite excited by mailing list communication. One could carry on multiple conversations at the same time. One could completely express oneself without interruption, and everyone could read at leisure, at their own pace, in their own time. There was no problem of dominating the floor. Yet, I found, people treated long posts as they would treat long speeches. Something was drastically off. I now have some idea that this could have to do with reading speed. I speed read and skim over what is not of high interest. It is not like listening to a speech — which I commonly find quite boring even with good speakers. I would much rather read it. Of late, I have transcribed videos of talks, creating the best of both worlds. I can read it and I can also see the person, with both cross-linked. Of course, a boatload of work! But incredibly educational.

21:25:46 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

I have no doubt that Abd will again misuse Custodial tools. –JWSchmidt 03:22, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, JWSchmidt. Founder of Wikiversity. Abused and blocked by SBJohnny. And he believed that I was just another Wikipedian, because I advised him to back off, he was attacking nearly everyone. (He really had been abused and was taking it all badly.) He would not say something like that today. This was in a Community Review of me filed by Ottava Rima in a campaign to get revenge for my work in his desysopping, a long story. What was the first “abuse of custodial tools”? It would be blocking Ottava Rima for a year — and requesting immediate review, i.e, if it were an error, it could easily be corrected. Ottava had threatened the community with steward intervention if things did not go his way. That threat, disrupting process, I considered intolerable, but it was up to the community to decide.

That discussion was a train wreck, as recognized at the time. I did write too much, I had not yet developed higher process skill. SBJohnny really wanted to get rid of me. Why? Because I knew what he had done and had the skill to run a Community review. By this time I had run two Wikipedia ArbCom cases and succeeded in both, one admin was reprimanded and the other was desysopped. Long story.

22:18:21 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

“….Ask Abd about it….”
That’s usually quite an exhausting undertaking.

This is quoted but source is obscure. The concept is preposterous. It could only be exhausting to ask a question if one must listen to the answer, or read a tome, with no breaks, etc., and a deadline, but that is always optional. If this is “usually exhausting,” this is the familiar objection to detailed responses, which come from people who are not actually interested in any response. I write long Answers on Quora and people who have asked the question thank me, and people who are not interested in the topic either don’t see it at all or skip it entirely, it takes up little space in their feed. Quora is brilliantly designed that way, compared to discussion fora.

I found the source. Wikipediocracy again, in 2012. This, like Wikipedia Review before it, is like a neighborhood bar, where people chat and argue and brawl and trawl as most of them get a bit drunk. Or very drunk. One might start reading at this comment.

Mentioned are Brian Josephson, Nobel Prize Winner and a friend, Linus Pauling, with whom I sat for freshman chemistry at Cal Tech, and then Eric Barbour, mentioned above, wrote:

That’s a cold-fusion mess. Ask Abd about it. JzG was the primary abuser, but the Connolley gang were involved. http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=33616

Barbour knew I’m expert on the topic, both of so-called “cold fusion” and the Wikipedia ArbCom cases involving it. What Vigilant quotes was bar-room snark by iii. That’s all. There is then quite a bit of cogent discussion.

23:31:51 24 Jan 2020 WOVigilant

Only if you’re willing to dedicate hours and hours reading Abd’s lengthy mindspills for months on end. Even Moulton failed to get him to be logical, and he had nearly unlimited time to dedicate to the effort.

This is from a page I created on Wikipediocracy in 2013. And now I see something I’d not remembered: iii is Joshua P. Schroeder. Certain facts now click…. And the source of the quote is SBJohnny. These people cared nothing about academic freedom. And that they and their ilk ended up controlling Wikiversity is an incredible tragedy.

Wikiversity was not a collection of “articles,” and it allows subpages in mainspace, which allows various points of view to be expressed. Like a university library, it is neutrality by inclusion rather than by exclusion (i.e., like an encyclopedia). And it turns out that it is, even in very controversial topics, possible to negotiate a consensus top-level page. Jimbo Wales thought that supporters of fringe ideas would not mind them being labelled as fringe, and he was correct. But SBJ and JPS and the like were not content with neutrality, they wanted to suppress whatever they disagreed with.

JPS had written, “surely I can make nice with Abd,” and he was right. He could, and “making nice” did not require reading much of anything. This was SBJ using the opportunity to snarl and snark.

There was a lot on that page.

I am so glad I don’t have to collaborate with Wikipedians any more!

For review, of this Vigilant stalking, on WikipediaSucks.co

Addition to this comment after first save: On Wikipediocracy, where he normally hides, Vigilant announced this as “Abd gives up,” and “running away.” This is classic trolling, but with a twist, that leaves the troll looking like a compleat idiot, if anyone checks. That reference is to a post in a series of six pages of ranting about me and Sucks — and sometimes other targets.

All I have done is to stop responding with commentary, specifically to his voluminous outpourings on Reddit, there being no sign that anyone is taking them seriously (except on r/internet drama, where they lap up shitposts).

Given that I have responded above, in detail, to 72 deceptive posts from Vigilant, (and now there are 197 more at last update) I am announcing this:

If any real person (such as an established Reddit account) requests that I answer an allegation in more detail, it is my intention to do so. I am not hiding. A request can be by PM to u/Abdlomax on Reddit. Requests by anonymous comment here will be considered.

Vigilant’s general character and MO are well-established by this page, but it is long. I may create a summary later and I may blog about it (blog posts are far more visible).

Vigilant developed a strategy. He collects snippets, quotes that he thinks will make me look bad. He does not bother saving the URLs, for many of them. This takes little time — except he has to read a lot about me, but the posting then can takes him less than a minute per comment. Writing specific responses takes much more time. Hence, from now on, I will be responding with a generic link to this page and this section. Which I can do in seconds. I don’t have to search for anything.

So far, this has allowed me to review many years of activity, which is a useful exercise for me. But I also have other possibly useful activities.

Thanks for all the fish.

7 thoughts on “WOVigilant”

  1. Have you not realised yet no one believe a word you say?

    I mean… take this example:

    “When I was in high school, my intelligence was measured at 157, which was more or less off the charts, the test was not designed for that.”

    An IQ of 157? Albert Einstein had an IQ of~ 160.

    Your posts are always filled with blatant absurdities like this.

    1. Fascinating. Great example. What I stated was a fact. Read it carefully. And then I indicated that the test may not have been accurate. As to Einstein, I’m surprised to see you being so sloppy about IQ. IQ is not a thing that one has, though popular writing about it is fuzzy. IQ is a test result, and then can vary with the test, greatly. You know much more about IQ than this, so I conclude that you are simply finding mud to toss. So . . . if my posts are filled with what is like that, great. Accurate facts.

      That test was about sixty years ago. I doubt that the records still exist. But that’s my memory. My SAT aptitude and achievement tests were compatible with that. And, to me, this is just fact. It does not make me “smarter” than anyone else. It does, however, make me a bit resistant to people calling me stupid or using the “you think you’re so smart” argument, mind-reading arrogance into what is often just a statement of fact.

      Now, stop this nonsense. If you continue with what is essentially irrelevant attack, you will lose your right to correct errors. I have no obligation to allow you to comment here.

      1. 95% of all IQ scores fall between 70 and 130; individuals who score 130 or higher on an IQ test are in the top 2.1% and individuals who scores over 150 are in the top 0.1%.

        The people with IQ’s above 150 are notable savants and geniuses. That totally excludes you; anyone who looks at your website and your own biography can see you aren’t a savant or genius.

        But thanks for once again proving you are a massive liar.

        1. ” If you continue with what is essentially irrelevant attack, you will lose your right to correct errors. I have no obligation to allow you to comment here.”

          I’m not ‘attacking’ you for pointing out the reality you don’t have the IQ score of Albert Einstein…

          And I don’t intend to comment here after this post; your own posts discredit you, so thanks.

          Having re-read the biography you wrote of yourself, about 3/4 of the claims seem to be made up and have no basis in fact like your claim you scored 157 in an IQ test. Are you still claiming you were a midwife (whose heard of a male midwife) who delivered hundreds of babies? lol

          1. This is just stupid enough to be the real Oliver Smith. He knows how to contact me in a verified way, so I’m assuming this is him. I’m getting a lot of troll comments that are very unlikely to be him. The points:
            1. “you don’t have the IQ score of Albert Einstein” is not a “reality,” because we have no IQ score for Einstein. As well, I do not claim to “have an IQ score.” I claim that I was, as a high school student, informed that this was a test result. I have little confidence that this is particularly meaningful. I did take an on-line IQ test recently, a Mensa test, and the result was substantially lower, as I recall in the 130s, which is still called “very gifted.” And with that and fifty cents, I could ride the subway, years ago.
            2. Look up midwife. “Middle English midwif, from mid with (from Old English) + wif woman.” While male midwives are rare, they certainly exist. In any case, I was never licensed. Four of those deliveries were my own children, and my ex-wife and I founded the Arizona School of Midwifery; she became licensed, and she delivered about 200 babies before moving out of Arizona. I only delivered maybe thirty. This is possibly the most rewarding thing I ever did. Long story. OMG! Researching this, I found an article about midwifery in Arizona that covers the school. I left Tucson in 1980, and I knew that the school had closed in 1981. (Basically, it graduated enough midwives to saturate the market.) But I did not know what happened then, until now. Very, very gratifying, what we did impacted many lives, and continues. (When we started, there were only one or two “lay midwives” in Arizona, practicing on the reservations in the north, near Utah.)

            (I incorporated the School in 1977. The corporation commission records are not on-line from then. There would be a document in state archives with my signature. But it doesn’t really matter here. This is simply another example of a Smith brother making assumptions with no basis in fact, only in their immediate impression.)

            And, being exposed thoroughly, he bails. He’s done that many times. His choice, but he may still correct errors, if he dares. As well, he discloses his purpose, which is not to correct errors about himself, but to discredit me. That’s trolling, no surprise for this very long term troll. But at least he is not hiding behind proxy servers, like his brother.

    1. Well, I admit to some level of judgment in the page. However, facts? He is a ‘legend,” all right, poster boy for what?

      For hatred and bile.

      Like you, he hides his identity. (This comment used a TOR node.) Real people do not need to hide identity like this. He and you attack real people, while hiding. So of course you will ask this stupid question.

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