Checkuser evidence

Checkuser evidence has become available from Encyclopedia Dramatica, and it is being claimed that it shows Oliver D. Smith impersonation socking, something that has been a known practice of the Smith brothers. I will compile that evidence here and connect it with other information I have. The most clear page available shows the edits of 86.14.46.42, which is immediately recognizable as likely Smith IP. This page was apparently obtained by Junius Thaddeus, also known as Michaeldsuarez (WMF accounts). I have known Michael for years. He could be mistaken on this or that, but he does not lie, and Smith is reduced to that, simply accusing him and the other checkuser involved of lying. It’s a long-term pattern, and many in the RationalWiki crowd fall for it. If someone supports or appears to support anything fringe, therefore, it appears the thinking appears to go, they are likely to lie or troll. The thinking may be: “After all, some of us lie and troll, so if reasonable people (us!) lie and troll, obviously unreasonable people would do it even more!”

Everything is fair in fighting pseudoscience and quackery, right?

 

That is a screenshot from the MediaWiki checkuser interface. While anything can be faked with enough work, Michael has no motive to fake this. It would be a big job to create all those entries and convert them to the image. I will be checking edit histories on ED to verify that these are real.
File page. [archive.is copy] [archive.is image]
https://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/86.14.43.42

IP: 86.14.43.42
ISP: Virgin Media
Type: Broadband
Assignment: Dynamic IP
Continent: Europe
Country: United Kingdom gb flag
State/Region: Hertfordshire
City: Watford
Latitude: 51.6667  (51° 40′ 0.12″ N)
Longitude: -0.4  (0° 24′ 0.00″ W)
Postal Code: WD17

The probability is very high that this is Anglo Pyramidologist or his brother. See the list of IPs at geolocation/ and, in particular, 86.14.2.77. This is very unlikely to be Mikemikev, who sometimes edits from locations in the London area, but not these IPs.

The evidence here, behaviorally, is blatantly Anglo Pyramidologist. The accounts:

Contributions/ODS matches the checkuser report. The content is typical Oliver D. Smith. ODS is a name used by Oliver D. Smith on RationalWiki in February and March of 2018. He is sill editing RationalWikiWiki as Oliver D Smith, creating revenge articles on Michaeldsuarez yesterday, as this is written.

Contributions/Nivea matches. The content is ODS agenda attacking Mikemikev.

Contributions/Rupert_Smythe  matches. Anglo Pyramidologist agenda.

Contributions/Rupert1488 matches. Rupert1488 accuses JuniusThaddeus, on his user page (that’s vandalism),  of not deleting articles on individuals. But he did. See the log for Mikemikev

He did not create the article on Hu1, which is now at Vajna, this is Eleonóra Dubiczki, an obsession of Oliver D. Smith. Rightpedia is not an individual. This could appear to serve Mikemikev (active on Rightpedia). However, the checkuser log shows that this would be impersonation. I saw a series of socks on Wikipedia pretending to be Dubiczki and other Rightpedia people, blatantly Oliver D. Smith.

Contributions/DueSouth

follows up on agenda of Nivea and other ODS socks. The habit of many edits to say little is an Anglo Pyramidologist trait. If it was not already obvious, this is Oliver D. Smith, on Talk:Rome Viharo.

The full discussion there. (archived copy) ODS has been busted by so many people, and essentially he claims they are all lying. He impersonates people, and then claims that another enemy was the impersonator. However, there is also his brother, and with two people, sometimes they can fool checkuser. But here he did not bother with evasion. He apparently felt secure enough to use home IP.

The first checkuser was Hipcrime. It appears that JuniusThaddeus was posting old screenshots so he asked Hipcrime to verify. See this discussion. DueSouth, as is usual, gunks it up with a farrago of accusations. Oliver D. Smith continually creates new accounts and massive confusion. The claim of “you have no proof” is very common when he is talking to people holding proof. He’s a bald-faced liar.

the prior checkuser screenshots:
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/File:DarrylAndOliverSmithKiwiPyre.png
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/File:DarrylAndOliverSmithKiwiPyre2.png
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/File:DarrylAndOliverSmithKiwiPyre3.png
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/File:OliverSmithEgyptianMongol.png
All these are on archive.is.

The accounts involved:

Contributions/EgyptianMongol. MDS apparently thinks this is ODS. This one account might not be him. The log snippet shows only that the checkuser looked at it, not what the checkuser found. (But those who can see the log were asked. If MDS was misrepresenting it, this would likely come out.) However, the other accounts are AP (which could be Oliver or Darryl), but most appear to be Oliver, from the names alone, but also contributions.

Contributions/Barkhang_monastery
Contributions/Caves_of_Kaliya
Contributions/Mycenae
Contributions/Kiwi_Pyre
Contributions/NorseSword
Contributions/AncientSword

Kiwi Pyre is not  clear as Oliver. The account was blocked because “confirmed as Oliver,” i.e., presumably checkuser confirmed, but Oliver and Darryl have commonly used the same access, so this could be Darryl. The rest of those names are standard Oliver user names. What is clear is that this is not Mikemikev, and is a Smith brother.

As to editing RationalWiki, it has become more difficult to distinguish between Oliver and Darryl Smith, since there has been subject cross-over. My studies generally refer to AP, or Anglo Pyramidologist, which is the name applied on Wikipedia to both brothers, though Oliver was the original AP account.

He, in context obviously Oliver D. Smith, claims on the RV talk page, linked above,  “I’ve not edited RationalWiki in over 6 months.” The date of the claim is September 22, 2018.

ODS last edited RW on March 22, 2018. Six months. However, this was not the last Oliver Smith editing of RW. Others since then have been very clear.

The most recent identified Oliver Smith sock on RationalWiki is Contributions/Octo. Very standard Oliver Smith working-account behavior. Octo edited a few days ago. Before that, we have many trolling accounts, which could be him or his brother, but an accounts with more edits would be:

Contributions/Callimachus “retired” May 22. Oliver Smith accounts display very clear and very idiosyncratic interests. He’s lying on Encyclopedia Dramatica, though I suppose it is possible someone is creating an elaborate ruse. Nah, they’d need to get access to his service provider, which would be a lot of work, and to do that over days … extremely unlikely. Octo, like many Smith brother accounts on RW, was very quickly given advanced privileges. I’ve been involved with RW for many years, and this is unusually fast. Autoconfirmed, yes, that’s very easy. Usually sysop takes a bit more, unless the user is recognized as returning. If RW sysops don’t recognize Oliver, they are strikingly brain-dead. I don’t think so. I think they tolerate him, because he serves certain purposes. (However, Octo could be Darryl. Callimachus was certainly Oliver (he admits it here), in which case I’ve shown four months instead of six. But Octo is obviously Oliver as well. See this discussion. The mention of Octo, before this, was quite obscure. (And they lie about “no evidence.” There is actually too much evidence, i.e., it’s overwhelming. No, I don’t think that only one person edits an article. In fact, for many articles, I identify only a very few as being AP socks. Oliver and his brother attempt to convince RW sysops that they are all being attacked. Some of them appear to fall for it. I’m just documenting what I have found, and that’s intolerable for Oliver and certain other trolls.

(I don’t think I have ever claimed that there have been 1000 Oliver D. Smith accounts “here,” i.e., on RatWiki.) However, at times there have been bursts of impersonation socking that has obviously been Oliver or his brother, and I consider them together, as does Wikipedia, where there are over 200 socks listed, as I recall. I list all the accounts I have identified, but I have not counted them. There are, indeed, many. It is possible there are some misidentifications, because when someone creates hundreds of small-edit count accounts, there will likely be some. However, the longer-term accounts are quite clear, because the behavior is obvious. In addition, there is, in some cases, technical evidence. I received email from Oliver, and published it. This was back and forth with a known public email address for him. This was not somone impersonating him, and he acknowledged being some of the accounts I had identified. But he also claimed most of the other accounts were his brother. Then, later, he claimed they were all him. He lies, routinely. There is independent evidence about his brother.

And, again, he uses the confusion that he and his brother created. In the recent discussion on Encyclopedia Dramatica, he taunts JuniusThaddeus about his former opinion that Darryl, the brother, did not exist. That’s a not-uncommon opinion, that it’s all Oliver. If so, something is very, very strange about the brother, because there is independent evidence of a twin brother, and there were two distinct personalities, from the beginning of the Anglo Pyramidologist history on Wikipedia. Two distinct sets of interests, and that bifurcation continued. Oliver is very public in certain ways, the brother is far more private. The brother is more disruptive, was behind the massive impersonation socking, during which Oliver showed up and claimed it was not him. But he was not revealing what he knew, that it was his brother. Later, he revealed that, and then denied it, and then tossed all the cards in the air. And accused everyone else of being confused.

What is truly remarkable and diagnostic of the situation on RationalWiki is that what has become widely known is treated there as if it was some weird conspiracy theory. As if a thousand accounts was implausible. The fact is that a sock master running socks for years can easily accumulate that many accounts. In some bursts of impersonation socking, there might be ten accounts in a day. How long does it take to accumulate a thousand accounts that way? On Encyclopedia Dramatica, he’s often blocked quickly, so he just creates a new account, I’ve seen many in one day. He has admitted using RationalWiki as an attack site, but he retires the accounts and the RatWikians really don’t care. Anyone who points out what he’s been doing on RatWiki is immediately blocked for doxxing, though pointing out sock accounts is not doxxing. Yet when he claims that others are socking, it’s usually ignored. RatWiki is weird, and many RatWikians know it. And they give Oliver and Darryl Smith accounts sysop privileges readily and quickly.

There are other accounts to look at but I have Actual Useful Work to do . . . .

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