Trolls

Subpage of RationalWiki/Anglo Pyramidologist

This is a collection of accounts showing a kind of troll behavior characteristic of some AP socks. These accounts appear, often create pages with disruptive names, and are intended to be immediately blocked. Sometimes these accounts are intended to be seen as socks of someone else.

It is not impossible that some of these are themselves impersonations of AP. However, I find that explanation generally implausible. The particular interests and foci are those of AP. If impersonations, they succeed.

I’m starting this page August 20, 2018, showing recent examples. There are a large number of examples. As well, these are only on RationalWiki. I have sometimes documented these accounts. Where they edit covered RW articles, they have been listed there when noticed, or sometimes when impersonation was clear. Accounts are shown articles or edits, and content of articles. Analysis is in unindented italics.

EMIL_OW_KIRKEGAARD (impersonation) created

EMIL KIRKEGAARD DANISH POLYMATH SMEARED BY MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA AT RATIONALWIKIEMIL OW KIRKEGAARD (talk contribs) 12:06, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

The lack of a space between the comment and the signature is commonly seen with AP signatures.

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034

Media criticism •www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus •www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

Various large UK media has repeated some rather extreme claims about me. In particular, they claim that I’m a Nazi and pedophile apologist. Neither are true, and never were true. The main person behind the claims is a schizophrenic stalker who has a long history of obsessively stalking people.

What? Who?

There are various pictures of him, but they are all about equally unflattering.

To understand the situation, one has to learn about a certain person named Oliver and a website called Rationalwiki (RW). RW is a snarky version of Wikipedia with looser standards of evidence (often none), and a very heavy left-wing slant. The website looks like Wikipedia, so many people think it is Wikipedia, not realizing that there are many Wiki projects on the internet. Much of the content on RW is quite decent, but the site’s leadership gives free reigns to a small group of vicious individuals to basically use the website’s prominent Google position to defame people they dislike. At some point, an individual named Oliver started using this site, and creating pages on persons he dislikes. He is quite explicit about this strategy:

Oliver oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Some of the material copied to RW above was taken from the linked blog. But not all, and this practice of quoting exposés of AP, disruptively, is a known AP tactic. It actually works on RW, on occasion. Since the sock quotes X, RationalWikians may assume that the sock is X, increasing dedication to opposing any genuine X activity, and presenting the apparent target (here, Oliver Smith) as a victim. Generally, these prolific impersonations socks may be, not Oliver himself, but his brother, Darryl.

ElfredaTheCalm blocked 12:24, 4 August 2018 GrammarCommie for “spam” created

[[File:Emilkirkegaard Nazi salute.png]]

This file was uploaded by Dr. Witt, an obvious Oliver Smith sock.

RIGHTPEDIA.ORG EMIL KIRKEGAARD DANISH POLYMATH SMEARED BY MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA AT RATIONALWIKI

EMIL KIRKEGAARD DANISH POLYMATH SMEARED BY MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA AT RATIONALWIKI

EMIL KIRKEGAARD IS CLOSING RATIONALWIKI ANTIFA DOWN

 EMIL KIRKEGAARD CLOSING RATIONALWIKI ANTIFA DOWN U GEY

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034

Media criticism •www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus •www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

Various large UK media has repeated some rather extreme claims about me. In particular, they claim that I’m a Nazi and pedophile apologist. Neither are true, and never were true. The main person behind the claims is a schizophrenic stalker who has a long history of obsessively stalking people.

What? Who?

There are various pictures of him, but they are all about equally unflattering.

To understand the situation, one has to learn about a certain person named Oliver and a website called Rationalwiki (RW). RW is a snarky version of Wikipedia with looser standards of evidence (often none), and a very heavy left-wing slant. The website looks like Wikipedia, so many people think it is Wikipedia, not realizing that there are many Wiki projects on the internet. Much of the content on RW is quite decent, but the site’s leadership gives free reigns to a small group of vicious individuals to basically use the website’s prominent Google position to defame people they dislike. At some point, an individual named Oliver started using this site, and creating pages on persons he dislikes. He is quite explicit about this strategy:

David Gerard and Oliver Smith both antifa

Jump to: navigation, search

A sign of careless copying.

(aka oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia

Oliver has stated that he believes he can get away with defaming and abusing European dissidents, as they will be less likely to contact the authorities. This suggests he is motivated by psychotic behavior disorder rather than political views.

On his autobiography, he falsely claims in the D&D alignment he is “true neutral”. In reality, he is chaotic evil. Chaotic because he’s a schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder and he’s a pathological liar — he even constantly lies on the talk pages of his autobiography, such has here he lied and claimed Rightpedia said they were doing to dox all Rationalwiki Sysops and nobody said this. Evil because he cares not for right or wrong, but only power, and chaotic evil because he has no goals other than his emotions. And just look at his photo which he chose to upload for his autobiography; that’s clearly chaotic evil.

Other enemies of Oliver Carolyn Emerick – A European Pagan who teaches ancient folklore. She has never responded to him. She bought one of Evalion’s paintings, the one with the four seasons in Celtic mythology. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax – A based Muslim

This was partly based on the Kirkegaard blog with more AP raving. However, I’m a blogger and here is an opportunity for some eye candy. Sorry about the rest, but I can think of a medicinal use for it. So perhaps I have an opportunity to chat with one of two people: Carolyn Emerick or Oliver Smith.

from

OR

 

Tough call, eh? Politics? Who cares about politics? Presence is everything.

[[File:Kirkegaard.png|800px|thumb|Emil Kirkegaard]]

File uploaded by https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:CheeseburgerFace not an AP sock.

RationalWiki (nicknamed IrrationalWiki) and Wikis on politics tend to have a certain viewpoint, such as Wikipedia is mainstream US liberalism. Conservapedia is mainstream US conservatism. For IrrationalWiki, it is pro-neo-Marxism, pro-Globalism, and the hypocritical position that conspiracy theories are hoaxes. Although the viewpoint in its articles is often too extreme, it is run professionally. They prevent doxxing and have banned members that behave crazy like traditional Communist activists. Crazy viewpoints are fine, but behaving uncivil is not allowed.

For its pro-Neo-Marxist stance, the wiki supports things along the lines of secular humanism, cultural degeneracy, and old-fashioned Economic Communism, race denialism, New Atheism, anti-Christian, anti-Conservative, pro-sodomy, pro-gun restriction and basically that sort of thing. It even claims rape culture in white countries is only done by white people and the masses of rapy immigrants from African, Muslim and other countries that have a real rape culture aren’t the ones doing the raping. It’s the viewpoint that a man looking at pornography is “rape culture” while the common occurrence in Europe these days of a gang of foreign men gang-raping a small child and then the government imprisoning anyone who speaks against it on Facebook or Twitter is not rape culture.

For pro-Globalism, while that tends to conflict with old-fashioned economic Marxism, current Neo-Marxism is a modification that isn’t totally at odds with Globalism. Even people typically on the left oppose globalist things such as genetically modified foods, smart meters, fracking, Monsanto, Aspartame, cancer danger from cell phones and that sort of thing. Irrationalwiki is of the point of view that these conspiracies are pseudoscience and corporations in general can do no wrong.

The delusion that all conspiracy theories are hoaxes really just overlaps with the pro-Globalism viewpoint. The wiki holds that if it’s a conspiracy theory, it’s wrong. This can be conspiracy theories not related to Communism or Globalist corporations such as 9/11 conspiracies, water fluoridation, and DDT banning conspiracies. rightpedia.info/w/RationalWiki

This was material taken from http://en.rightpedia.info/w/RationalWiki

Also August 4, from the block log:

11:35, 4 August 2018 (deleted diff) . . Oliveratlantis
11:33, 4 August 2018 (deleted diff) . . Oliveratlantis

11:41, 4 August 2018 (diff. . (+1,414)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎ (Oliver (aka oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual: new section)

Oliver (aka oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual

Oliver (aka oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

A massive wikisperg, Oliver is infamous for going to extremes to remove websites or articles that he believes have offended, disparaged or merely criticized him; this includes accusing his opponents he has met online wikis (e.g. his arch-enemy) of various crimes, setting up attack blogs on them, hounding, stalking and impersonating them using sockpuppets, accusing his opponents of being his own impersonations, and even sending threats with the purpose of trying to coerce them into deleting everything written about him. In numerous cases this has worked. Emil OW Kirkegaard (talk) 11:41, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

1:39, 4 August 2018 (diff) . . (+185)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎

EXPOSING THIS MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA: emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034 Emil OW Kirkegaard (talk) 11:39, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

11:37, 4 August 2018 (diff) . . Talk:Oliveratlantis (Created page with “oliver is a traitor to the European people and should be shot. ~~~~”) [entire content shown in summary]

11:54, 4 August 2018 (diff. . (+2,064)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎ (emil kirkegaard is being stalked by a schizoid antifa: new section)

emil kirkegaard is being stalked by a schizoid antifa

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034

Media criticism •www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus •www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

Various large UK media has repeated some rather extreme claims about me. In particular, they claim that I’m a Nazi and pedophile apologist. Neither are true, and never were true. The main person behind the claims is a schizophrenic stalker who has a long history of obsessively stalking people.

What? Who?

There are various pictures of him, but they are all about equally unflattering.

To understand the situation, one has to learn about a certain person named Oliver and a website called Rationalwiki (RW). RW is a snarky version of Wikipedia with looser standards of evidence (often none), and a very heavy left-wing slant. The website looks like Wikipedia, so many people think it is Wikipedia, not realizing that there are many Wiki projects on the internet. Much of the content on RW is quite decent, but the site’s leadership gives free reigns to a small group of vicious individuals to basically use the website’s prominent Google position to defame people they dislike. At some point, an individual named Oliver started using this site, and creating pages on persons he dislikes. He is quite explicit about this strategy:

Oliver oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

11:56, 4 August 2018 (deleted diff ) . . Emil kirkegaard is being stalked by an antifa (Created page) 

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034

Media criticism •www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus •www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

Various large UK media has repeated some rather extreme claims about me. In particular, they claim that I’m a Nazi and pedophile apologist. Neither are true, and never were true. The main person behind the claims is a schizophrenic stalker who has a long history of obsessively stalking people.

What? Who?

There are various pictures of him, but they are all about equally unflattering.

To understand the situation, one has to learn about a certain person named Oliver and a website called Rationalwiki (RW). RW is a snarky version of Wikipedia with looser standards of evidence (often none), and a very heavy left-wing slant. The website looks like Wikipedia, so many people think it is Wikipedia, not realizing that there are many Wiki projects on the internet. Much of the content on RW is quite decent, but the site’s leadership gives free reigns to a small group of vicious individuals to basically use the website’s prominent Google position to defame people they dislike. At some point, an individual named Oliver started using this site, and creating pages on persons he dislikes. He is quite explicit about this strategy:

Oliver oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

12:00, 4 August 2018 (deleted diff) . . OLIVER SCHIZOPHRENIC ANTIFA (Created page) with 

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034

Media criticism •www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus •www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

Various large UK media has repeated some rather extreme claims about me. In particular, they claim that I’m a Nazi and pedophile apologist. Neither are true, and never were true. The main person behind the claims is a schizophrenic stalker who has a long history of obsessively stalking people.

What? Who?
[code block] There are various pictures of him, but they are all about equally unflattering.

To understand the situation, one has to learn about a certain person named Oliver and a website called Rationalwiki (RW). RW is a snarky version of Wikipedia with looser standards of evidence (often none), and a very heavy left-wing slant. The website looks like Wikipedia, so many people think it is Wikipedia, not realizing that there are many Wiki projects on the internet. Much of the content on RW is quite decent, but the site’s leadership gives free reigns to a small group of vicious individuals to basically use the website’s prominent Google position to defame people they dislike. At some point, an individual named Oliver started using this site, and creating pages on persons he dislikes. He is quite explicit about this strategy:

[code block] Oliver oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

12:14, 4 August 2018 (diff | hist. . (-2,173)‎ . . Michael A. Woodley of Menie ‎[replaced content with:]

THIS SMEAR ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY A MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA

11:31, 4 August 2018 (diff | deletion log | view) . . Oliveratlantis (Created page)

(aka oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia

11:29, 4 August 2018 (diff. . (+192)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎

EXPOSING THIS MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA: emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034 Emil Kirkegaard Real (talk) 11:29, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

  • 12:34, 4 August 2018 GrammarCommie  blocked Oliver boglins (contribs) with an expiration time of π×infinity! (account creation disabled, cannot edit own talk page) (Spam) [created 11:22, 4 August 2018]

11:25, 4 August 2018 (diff. . (+665)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎ (Impersonations)

oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica. Oliver boglins (talk) 11:25, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

12:09, 4 August 2018 (diff) . . Schizophrenic antifa oliver (Created page)

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?page_id=7034

Media criticism •www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus •www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

Various large UK media has repeated some rather extreme claims about me. In particular, they claim that I’m a Nazi and pedophile apologist. Neither are true, and never were true. The main person behind the claims is a schizophrenic stalker who has a long history of obsessively stalking people.

What? Who?

There are various pictures of him, but they are all about equally unflattering.

To understand the situation, one has to learn about a certain person named Oliver and a website called Rationalwiki (RW). RW is a snarky version of Wikipedia with looser standards of evidence (often none), and a very heavy left-wing slant. The website looks like Wikipedia, so many people think it is Wikipedia, not realizing that there are many Wiki projects on the internet. Much of the content on RW is quite decent, but the site’s leadership gives free reigns to a small group of vicious individuals to basically use the website’s prominent Google position to defame people they dislike. At some point, an individual named Oliver started using this site, and creating pages on persons he dislikes. He is quite explicit about this strategy:

Oliver oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

12:07, 4 August 2018 (diff) . . Talk:EMIL KIRKEGAARD DANISH POLYMATH SMEARED BY MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA AT RATIONALWIKI (Created page with “EMIL KIRKEGAARD DANISH POLYMATH SMEARED BY MENTALLY ILL ANTIFA AT RATIONALWIKI~~~~”) [all content in summary]

12:10, 4 August 2018 (diff) . . Michael a woodley of menie close down rationalwiki (Created page)

[[Image:Michael Woodley.png|thumb|2500px|U GEY]]

File uploaded by AP sock M87.

Reviewing M87 edits led me to Octo, created  09:25, 14 August 2018. Caught a fish! This is Oliver.

Back to the task at hand, troll accounts:

17:37, 8 August 2018 (deleted diff) . . User:MrSheen (Created page with “https://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_David_Smith_sockpuppets Hilariously the other socks are Oliver attempting to frame me.”) [text=summary]

17:01, 8 August 2018 (deleted diff) . . User:MrSheen (Created page with “https://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_David_Smith_sockpuppets”) [text=summary]

 User:MrSheen (shows deletion log)

Account renamed by LeftyGreenMario

16:00, 8 August 2018 (deleted diff. . (+686)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎ (Lol, how Kirkegaard sees his politics…) [revdel by Bongolian]

https://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_David_Smith_sockpuppetsEMILKIRKEGAARD (talk) 15:57, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Oliver oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica. EMILKIRKEGAARD (talk) 16:00, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

15:59, 8 August 2018 (deleted diff. . (+581)‎ . . User talk:MrSheen ‎[revdel by Bongolian]

Oliver oliveratlantis, Atlantid) (born 1990, claims April 22) is a psychotic, socially inept, misanthropic loner who is openly[1] asexual but if you call him that, he denies it. In his autobiography[1] admits being “pro-LGBTQIA”, which looks like the homosex acronym, but he added an I for incest and an A for animals. How progressive of him! Oliver David Smith is also a pathological liar, Antifa activist, and geekazoid (he blogs about Greek mythology) better known for his anti-pornography views and extensive harassment campaigns against Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

 15:58, 8 August 2018 (diff  . . (+161)‎ . . Talk:Emil Kirkegaard ‎ (edit summary removed) [by Kazitor]

Edit summary was content:

https://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_David_Smith_sockpuppetsEMILKIRKEGAARD (talk) 15:57, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

15:38, 8 August 2018 (diff. . (+182)‎ . . Talk:Michael Coombs

https://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_David_Smith_sockpuppets“)EmilOWKirkegaard1488 (talk) 15:38, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Geolocates to region for AP or Mikemikev.

Authentic Oliver on RWW

I happened to look at RW Talk:Abd ul-Rahman Lomax and found this:

RWW
I made an article on him. (font used does not copy to this blog, this was RW user Bigs) 01:27, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

The problem is he will probably now show up there on accounts & complain to wikia. He spends his life attacking people on his blog, but if someone merely spends 5 minutes writing something about him it’s unacceptable…Callimachus (talk) 01:51, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Anyway, what you wrote was good. I don’t think I will edit and leave it to others. You mentioned Lomax has 29 articles on RationalWiki; he has 51 on me. It’s done to abuse google traffic to my name, i.e. search my real name so the lies and smears show up on his blog.Callimachus (talk) 01:58, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

I changed my mind and wrote a little. Abd has been divorced 7 (!) times; not surprising is it. Callimachus (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Callimachus is admitting what was already obvious: He is Oliver D. Smith. However, it’s also misleading. I have a few pages on Oliver specifically, but my original contact was with Darryl L. Smith, his twin brother. Oliver was the original Anglo Pyramidologist, but it has been known — or claimed — since 2011 that accounts belonging to both brothers were investigated on Wikipedia under that name. I simply picked up that name for the “sock family.” I was not claiming, and do not believe, that all these were Oliver, and, very likely, the large majority were not. I have also consistently pointed to the possibility that he has been impersonated. There are certain confirmed cases where the Smiths have impersonated others, verified by checkuser, and there is a substantial series of socks impersonating me on RationalWiki. Could those, in turn, be double impersonations, i.e., someone else imitating Smiths impersonating me? It is not impossible, but it all begins to become a Rube Goldberg fantasy. There are far simpler explanations. Impersonation socking is illegal and there is a probability that this will be tested in court.

As to “lies and smears,” I have many times invited Smith to point out errors. He just keeps repeating “lies and smears.” Errors are not lies. However, simply describing what Smith has done will be considered a “smear” by him, even if done with caution and care. On the other hand, Smith and his brother routinely smear others, taking what others have written out of context and twisting it into real defamation.

Meanwhile, Oliver D. Smith’s activity on RationalWikiWiki is quite interesting. I have not complained to Wikia administration, not yet. That wiki is not nearly as damaging, as defamation, as the RationalWiki articles, because the public and some who should know better may treat RationalWiki as a serious site. Bigs is an “angsty teenager,” according to what he wrote about himself on RWW. He is a more or less typical RationalWikian: he likes the idea of rational skepticism but is far, far from actually practicing it. He believes total BS when it’s fed to him by someone he thinks is “on the right side.” That’s classic believer behavior.

To what is on RWW:

Oliver D. Smith sockpuppets

I’ve linked, but what shows now for that page is the deletion log:

00:37, May 26, 2018 Oliver D Smith (wall | contribs) deleted page Oliver D. Smith sockpuppets (moving to http://therationalarchives.wikia.com/wiki/Mikemikev_sockpuppets)
00:40, May 25, 2018 Oliver D Smith (wall | contribs) deleted page Oliver D. Smith sockpuppets (recreating to remove too many edits)

Oliver, especially, has often done this: he spills the beans, thinking he is defending himself, and then realizes and attempts to cover it up. “Recreating to remove too many edits” is BS. It is a fact that making many edits when a few would do is a Smith trait. But did he move the page where he claimed? No. He lied.

But the page was archived, so we have the content. Since the core is a list of alleged socks, taken from the Rightpedia list, with his indications of which ones were him, I reproduce it below.

Oliver D. Smith sockpuppets is a conspiracy-theory-esque article about RationalWiki filled with misinformation, written by the troll Mikemikev on the wiki Rightpedia.[1] The article lists 38 RationalWiki accounts and falsely states they are owned by Oliver D. Smith, furthermore that this is only 1% of the total… the absurd allegation is Smith owns 3800 accounts. In reality, Smith owns only a tiny fraction of the accounts; Mikemikev is known to impersonate Smith on sockpuppets and so some, or even many of these listed accounts are Mikemikev himself.
This is classic Oliver argumentation. He takes what someone has written literally and then turns it into what appears to be an absurdity. Writing to me about the accounts I had documented, he claimed that “99.9%” of them were not him, but his brother. Given how many accounts he has admitted, this would require a very large number of accounts be his brother. In a context like that, the numbers are hyperbole, not literal. When I invited him to identify which accounts were his, he declined, claiming it would be too much work. But he did that work on this page, and then deleted it. He is hiding, and in the end, in correspondence with me, claimed he had been lying about the brother since 2011, that “there is no brother,” and my conclusion is that this is simply One More Lie, which should not be surprising with someone who says he’s been lying to everyone for years, including Tim Farley, an apparent ally and possible supporter of his brother.
In May 2018 Smith contacted Mikemikev on Gab requesting him to remove the ridiculous article; Mikemikev said he isn’t interested in fact-checking who owns all these accounts and admitted to mistakes and lying; he also didn’t deny impersonating Smith, but that he will still blame them all on Smith to abuse Google searches of his name.
There are plenty of examples of where Smith has misrepresented what others wrote. From Smiths’ behavior with me, I can easily imagine that Mikemikev, as an example, said something like “There may  be errors in the list, and I don’t really care if it was you or your brother. Right now, you are very visible on Google and your brother is far less visible, so you can go jump in a lake.” All of that would then be likely to be interpreted by Smith as he has. He complained to me that Michaeldsuarez also didn’t care if it was him or his brother, which I explained to him as “collective responsibility,” which arises when people act in conspiracy and mutually support each other.
I do not agree with many of the identifications on Rightpedia as being Oliver himself. Many are his brother. I do rather doubt that Mikemikev would support the listing there of his own impersonations, if such exist. However, Darryl, Oliver’s brother has listed accounts on RationalWiki as being my socks, when none of the ones listed were me (other than “Abd”), and they were almost certainly created by Darryl (who was Debunking spiritualism and who knew my actual history and behavior and would in addition know that I would not behave as those socks behaved.) Oliver and Darryl are both trolls, who assign no value to honesty and integrity. Their goal is to attack and anger and harm anyone seen as an enemy, which is quite what they think about others, it is not at all surprising.

Account list

† = Smith. ₪ = Not Smith.
Notice how no evidence is presented Smith owns any of these accounts, but in numerous cases it is easy to prove accounts aren’t his, for example Georgie Enkoom is a practising Muslim from Canada and obviously isn’t Smith.[2]
On Wikipedia, they will say, blocking a suspected sock, “see contributions for evidence.”
Georgie Enkoom is, my view, an error, but this account did engage with certain articles, so the error is understandable. As well, Darryl often supports his brother’s positions, and so can look casually like an Oliver sock. On Wikipedia, they decided not to bother with the distinction, both are blocked and they don’t really care which is which. All of the acknowledged Oliver socks above had been identified by me. I generally review the entire edit history of an account, Smith socks show certain very familiar characteristics, and accounts that merely overlap in some way, on one or a few occasions, look quite different.
I will review all this when I have more time. An interesting listing is “–san” (Misnamed above, but the contributions link is accurate.)  –san created an alternate account, “Mike V.” It is easy to see how Mikemikev might think this is Oliver.  I had already seen and suspected Mike V, and on review, concluded that if this was a Smith sock, it was a “good hand” account, with most activity not being “Oliver Obvious.” RationalWiki users are in general snarky and provocative.
So I would not claim this was Oliver. There are other accounts with very few edits; they are disruptive, generally. When I have doubt about an account, I either don’t name it, or put a question mark after it. As well, Oliver has always been welcome to correct errors. I may or may not accept his claims, and Oliver has claimed, remarkably, to have been lying to everyone since 2011, but, regardless, if he denies something I’ve reported, his denial would be reported. This is standard journalism.
Putting this list together with Oliver’s prior claims to me, I can then review identifications and start to specify “Oliver” and “Darryl” and “Possible” more clearly. I have been deprecating Darryl L. Smith for search engines, but that reserve will pass. Darryl was actually, for me and my long-term interests, far more disruptive than Oliver. For others, particular Oliver targets, the reverse is true.
Mikemikev’s has a history of creating accounts impersonating ANTIFAs, or so-called SJWs; the accounts with ANTIFA/anti-fascist/Hope Not Hate in their usernames above are easy to identify as his for his sockpuppet history,[3] while others appear to be impersonating Smith more directly.
I will review those accounts with that possibility in mind, but I already know that in some cases, Mikemikev has been impersonated by Smith socks, and the Smiths have lied about Mikemikev’s public statements. He did not “admit” as they have claimed, that all the Wikipedia socks were him, he merely referred to the Sock Puppet Investigation page there as being “my SPI page” i.e., about him. And some of those socks were indeed him, but Smith claims that all were, when it’s actually preposterous.
With very few exceptions, Smith’s real accounts (†) usually have names related to classics (Aeschylus, Callimachus, Nemean) or video games he plays (Agent 47, i.e. Hitman), but at least one account (not listed above) is an impersonation based on this.[4]
There’s unfortunately no check-user tool on RationalWiki, like on Wikipedia; this means the only way to identify someone’s account is by behaviour (e.g. editing habits[5]) and not by technical evidence such as IP checks.
Right. However, impersonators imitate behaviors. Common for the socks impersonating me on RW: they take something I have written and copy it, then spam it all over the place, and add threats to it and attacks on individual users, accusing them, for example, of being Smith socks, when, in fact, if those users are mentioned on my blog, it would be incidental or as “supporters and enablers,” which explicitly denies that they are suspected socks.
One of the suspected Smith socks actually wrote, on his user page, that it was great that RW had no checkuser tool, because he had created 700 accounts and was basically running the place. Was that an exaggeration? Maybe. Maybe if transient attack socks and short-history impersonation socks are included, it was a rough estimate.
The term for a behavioral test is the “duck test,” and Smith socks actually accused a Wikiversity sysop of being my sock because he also used the term “duck test.” These guys are either idiots or insane or vicious — or all three — they know how to create disruption and confusion, because they often succeed in it.

[redacted]ns

Smith once atypically created a throwaway account with a name unlike all his others; he edited on this account for only a single day in February 2016. Rightpedia and Abd‘s blog claim this account name [redacted]ns was an impersonation of an individual named [redacted]nn, however it clearly wasn’t as the names are visibly different, Smith never claimed to be anyone else and even had no prior communication with the person he was supposed to have impersonated; Rightpedia/Abd are either lying or have a reading comprehension problem.
Smith made that argument to me. The names are visibly different, that’s true (though a casual reader might overlook the difference) but that does not show that the intention here was not impersonation or trolling. Further, not addressed is why Oliver keeps “retiring” but then creating new accounts. The practice is attempting to conceal long-term behavior. This would be blocked on Wikipedia, when it can be shown (i.e., within the checkuser window, assuming that open proxies or TOR nodes are not being used, and even then sometimes Wikipedia will conclude account identity, and the default there is that this is not legitimate, if the topic areas overlap.
When Oliver’s BS is not accepted, and the rejection is reported, Oliver then claims “lying” or “reading comprehension problem.” In fact, I have clearly acknowledged the argument, and rejected it. The effect of what he did was impersonation, and others have pointed to that account as connected with [redacted]nn, the real person. Darryl and Oliver believed that this person was a supporter of the extreme right. In fact, for a time, he was, but later admitted that he had been, let’s call it, “temporarily insane.” At that point, when he created the account, Oliver would have known him as right-wing and thus as a perfect name to use for trolling the right wing, and creating possible hostilities within it.
Other than this, I do not know any examples of “Oliver Smith” claiming to be someone else. (A claim with a small twist that then makes it plausibly deniable is still intended to deceive or troll). There are examples of blatant impersonations, but these may have been from Darryl, the brother, and I do know that Darryl claimed to be [redacted], and this is not deniable.
As well, an account recently appeared on Wikipedia claiming to be Emil Kirkegaard and another on RationalWiki with the same name. This was blatant impersonation in both places. Was it Mikemikev? I find it unlikely. The behavior is long-term Smith: wave a red flag saying “I am so-and-so,” be directly and obviously disruptive, and watch the fireworks as users assume the disclosure is honest.
On Wikipedia, the primary goal of sock puppet identification is deciding to block or not, and they would block an account either way if it claims to be a block evader, someone considered banned. So they often won’t bother with checkuser, and many of these get tagged with the wrong sock master, and that isn’t cleaned up even when later evidence appears that is far more clear.
The Smiths take full advantage of that sloppiness, and then claim that those socks were the target, proving how disruptive the person is, to sock so much. But there is no doubt that the Smiths have created at the very least hundreds of socks. The Encyclopedia Dramatica socks of Oliver have sometimes been several per day. Attack socks often appear as many, in rapid succession. They did on Wikiversity and the WMF meta wiki, they were attempting to intimidate WMF users, and these were all tagged by stewards as the same user (and then, through two accidentally caught Oliver accounts, were traced by me (and another) to RationalWiki and his account there, Welliver. Notice that the list of socks, alphabetical, does not get to Welliver.

Notes & References

  1.  http://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_D._Smith_sockpuppets
  2.  See user page.
  3.  List of Mikemikev (banned) socks
  4.  Raider Fan, see also the information about the impersonation on Wrongpedia.
  5.  However this is clearly a problem when someone is impersonated!

Providing links to current version of originals, as distinct from archive.is pages:

  1. http://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_David_Smith_sockpuppets
  2. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:Georgie_Enkoom (this is only evidence of what the user claims about [him]self, but I agree that Enkoom is unlikely to be a Smith sock.)
  3. The link is to a single Krom (Oliver) claim (i.e., Oliver). A link to an archive of the whole list, which I will show below) This list was removed as disruptive by an RW sysop. This was common for Oliver: he would start to experience blowback for his obessions from other users, and he would then retire the account and start a new one, to create confusion. (That is not considered a violation on RW, unless the account is a mob target). Note 3 does not support the claim in the text, at least not without extensive further research.
  4. This amounts to an admission that Oliver is active on Wrongpedia, a blatant attack site, in this case attacking Wyatt. The RW account is “RaiderFan,” not “Raider Fan.” Smith socks have been very active on RW attacking Merkel (“Wyatt”). The current active Oliver account on RW being Callimachus (acknowledged), who was blocked for harassing Merkel, while Debunking spiritualism (Darryl Smith) unblocked him and blocked Merkel, in a period when, they claim, the DS account was hacked, and Oliver claimed it was me. And that DS account attempted to hide many open admissions of identity, and also blocked old alleged impersonation accounts. It’s completely bonkers. More on RaiderFan below.
  5. Yes. RationalWiki has some level of pretense to be a serious site, but, in fact, the community is focused on “lulz,” they call it “snark,” or SPOV, a play on the usage of that term on Wikipedia, where it means an oxymoron, “Scientific Point of View” but on RW the S stands for “Snarky.” They really don’t care about any RW target, and targets are routinely blocked when they object, in spite of RW inviting criticism. Blatant attack socks are common blocked and blamed on a target, when the behavior is not target behavior, but Smith behavior. Or a very sophisticated and long-term dedicated impersonator. I know the world of major Smith “enemies,” and none are reasonable suspects for that level of impersonation. Occasional impersonation is not impossible. And then Smith will point to it, if he can show it, and claim that’s the whole show.

Oliver’s list of Mikemikev socks from 2015

See above. This begins with a list of IPs, all claimed to be Korean. At that point, Mikemikev was living in Korea, and I had already, studying possible sock puppetry in RW articles, noticed the Korean IPs and considered them very likely Mikemikev. It is possible, however, using open proxies, to select a Korean open proxy, so this is not absolute proof. However, it’s likely, and the abundance of these actually shows Mikemikev not routinely using open proxies, but rather, readily available local IP. The list is long. This is not account socking, and would not be impersonation without clearer evidence. I’m not looking at them. These are the accounts alleged, in addition to Mikemikev:

Mikemikev1
Kevin
FrankDickman
Sam Rainbow
Philphilpot
Social Justice Warrior
Social Justice Internet Scientist
Michael C

There’s plenty more that can be added to the list. He easily has 20+ more accounts. Krom (talk) 20:51, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

That’s a short list to cover years of activity. When users are blocked on RatWiki, they are sometimes told it’s not a big deal, and that one can always create a sock. From the extensive IP editing, as well, it looks like Mikemikev didn’t bother to do this very much. Remember, the supposed point of this is to show impersonation socking, and impersonation implies someone impersonated, who should be reasonably obvious from the name or from behavior. What do we see here?

Mikemikev1 is plainly claiming to be Mikemikev. Oliver is claiming this also. The account has two edits, this is basically irrelevant. The account was blocked, however, a year after the last edit, 14 November 2014. Weird. Not impersonation.

Kevin edited with apparent Mikemikev POV. See this version. Not impersonation.

FrankDickman Possible Mikemikev POV. No evidence of impersonation, certainly not of Oliver. This account resembles the next, and if not Mikemikev, could be the same user. Contrary to Oliver opinion, Mikemikev is not the only “race realist” active on the internet.

Sam Rainbow All contributions hidden. Disruptive user, revert warring. Not blocked! Contributions were hidden 2 May 2018 by Debunking spiritualism (Darryl Smith)  (in his deletion rampage,the whole page was deleted). Possible impersonation of Mikemikev ? but this was Mikemikev POV. Not impersonation of someone else.

PhilPhilpot (mispelled above, but link correct) Single edit No evidence this is Mikemikev other than POV, which for one edit, is generally inadequate. That edit linked to this display. Mikemikev (apparently) linked to the same display previously. This is about human biodiversity, and the apparent “race realists” participating on that RW discussion were making cogent arguments, faced with ad hominem arguments coming back, for the most part. (If we consider, on the matter of intelligence, hereditarianism and enviromentalism as extremes, I’m well toward the environmentalist side, but it is also obvious that there are genetic variations and it is possible that these could be associated with population genetics, sometimes called “race.” In any case, not impersonation.

Social_Justice_Warrior claims or pretends to be a Social Justice Warrior, but also attacks the term. It is true that the extreme right wing uses SJW as an epithet. I see nothing, however, to confirm that this account is Mikemikev. The five edits before being blocked amounted to a very small amount of text. (The user then reverted a removal of that text, and made a trolling comment on the talk page of that article), and was short-blocked. Then one edit to his own User talk page. That discussion ends with

Social Justice Warrior is Mikemikev, he has no life. He’s been creating these socks impersonating for years and is the clown.Arcticos (talk) 11:05, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Social Justice Warrior was then blocked as Mikemikev, not just once, but three times, and with no additional evidence. This is very much RW commonplace. Who was Arcticos? The user has only nine edits, in two sessions, 13 July 2015 (the above was his first edit — so why was he trusted?) and then 1-2 November 2016. From my list of RationalWiki AP socks already published, I had written “extremely likely.” With more careful review of the edits, many evidences, I am now completely convinced, Articos was Oliver, not his brother Darryl, and repeating the story of Mikemikev “impersonating,” so far not actually confirmed (even if SJW was a Mikemikev sock, this was ordinary trolling, not impersonation. But SJW doesn’t smell like Mikemikev. Not an impersonation (impersonation refers to actually creating the impression of being another specific person, not pretending a point of view, though that can also be offensive sometimes. Smith has been claiming that Mikemikev impersonated him, not some random SJW.

Social_Justice_Internet_Scientist  block log. How is it that a user with 7 edits, all within little more than an hour, 15 May 2015, is blocked three times, the last by Darryl Smith, on his rampage May 3, 2018? The first block was by WatcherIntheDark, 15 May 015. SJIS was unblocked by a regular as the  block was obviously excessive. Three months later, Krom accused SJIS of being Mikemikev and blocked. (See the next edit after SJIS’s first edit). Reviewing all the edits, I see no sign that SJIS was Mikemikev and quite a bit to contrary.  While WatcherIntheDark has some interest overlap, the user is very unlikely to be an AP sock. Not an impersonation.

Michael_C is a real-name account (i.e., with real name last initial. 2 edits, 6 September 2015. Plausible as Mikemikev. Not an impersonation.

I see several possible Mikemikev accounts, but most, probably not. Perhaps Mikemikev will have something to say about this. In any case, Oliver’s claims are not substantiated by what he cited, and, in fact, this shows Smith brother reactivity and obsession with Mikemikev.

Other Oliver D. Smith RWW articles

I will review these on separate pages.

Mikemikev_sockpuppets impressive list, but I see some accounts included that were likely Darryl Smith. Maybe many.

Oliver_D._Smith lies straightaway about no longer being active on RW. Uh, Callimachus? To be sure, Callimachus “retired” after his comments on the talk page of my article. So 4 days, no edits on RW, AFAIK, but furious activity on RWW.

Rome_Viharo Rome actually tangled with Darryl first

Abd Obviously Oliver’s first priority. (started by Bigs) (as of latest Oliver edit).

Mikemikev  of course.

http://therationalarchives.wikia.com/wiki/Emil_Kirkegaard

The common thread: Smith writes about those who were attacked by him or his brother and who fought back by telling the truth about what had happened. That doesn’t mean that they never made mistakes, they did. But the story of the “Smith brothers conspiracy theory,” so intensely ridiculed on RationalWiki, was fundamentally true, there is no longer any reasonable doubt, no matter how furiously Oliver and Darryl have been trying to cover it up.

Update

Oliver supposedly retired from RWW June 17, though he left an out.

No longer active on this wiki unless I have to block Mikemikev‘s sockpuppets.

JD Bigs announced this on The End of an era.

However, Oliver came back. His contributions. His logs (Obsessed user!)

Example of editing after “retiring”: Mikemikev sockpuppets. Almost all socks claimed to be Mikemikev are either Oliver,  or, more likely, his brother. (Rightpedia editors commonly think that there is no brother, or that the brother is completely inactive. I don’t think so. There are two personalities and sets of behaviors. As well, the brothers no longer live together, apparently, and thus they have been able to create support from independent IP, which made a difference in dealing with WMF stewards (who are not at all accustomed to this kind of coordinated socking).

The massive impersonation I found on Wikipedia, Wikiversity, and the meta wiki were not Oliver D. Smith (“Anglo Pyramidologist) but were the brother, Darryl L. Smith, and Oliver claimed that most socks were his brother in email to me (which has been published here).

Smith has lied about this, for sure, because he has made sourced claims that, when the source is examined, are not supported, such as claiming that Mikemikev admitted all the Wikipedia socks. That was actually preposterous. All he did was to call the Wikipedia Sock Puppet case as “his case.” Which it was, i.e., he was Mikemikev and he did, long ago, sock. He may also have socked more recently, that’s unclear. But that case is a confused mess, if one reads it. The Wikipedians have made gross errors, on occasion, it’s been shown conclusively, and they don’t correct them. Why should they care if some blocked user was impersonated?

(Because those cases get used as evidence elsewhere, that’s why! It also can make a difference if the user requests to be unblocked or unbanned.)

Or these edits to the article created on RWW about my RationalWiki account. Again, Smith would know that I did not create those RationalWiki sock accounts, and I did not “harass RationalWiki sysops.” I did document, originally, Anglo Pyramidologist, and the related accounts of his brother, and eventually, as attacks on me for exposing the impersonation socking escalated, I listed RationalWiki accounts of these two people, and they have often been sysops there (as was I when this started). These two trolls have been impersonating socking for many years, they are famous for it. The only accusations against me in this regard came from them.

I have described how RationalWiki sysops have enabled and encouraged Smith socking and disruption, but I have not doxxed them, for example, as I have been doxxed. The Smith brothers are real persons who have been libeling real people, and they are being held accountable, legally.

(Because they have been outed by others, years ago, as to real identity, and when I was still investigating the case, I did put up information from a directory giving names and addresses. However, I took that down except for general location, useful for administrators to compare with their own server logs. These guys are radically toxic, this is not mere skepticism or anti-pseudoscience, and they real-life harass, my family has been contacted by them.)

In this thread, Oliver D. Smith implies that a member of the RationalMedia Foundation board is stalking him, and then doxxes IP editors as being Mikemikev. The fact is that Oliver or his brother (more likely the brother) could be using the same service provider as Mikemikev, they live in the same general area.

The Wikipedia sock puppet investigation for Mikemikev is heavily contaminated with old socking that was not actually confirmed as Mikemikev, and there was definitely some impersonation there. This is a known Smith brother tactic, it is how I first encountered them. They find a target who is blocked and create impersonation socks, and then troll for response, then they use the response to prove that the user is highly disruptive. Checkusers on Wikipedia are not dedicated to discovering the truth about this: such impersonation socks are to be blocked no matter if they are impersonations or not!

RationalWiki is even more naive. Many impersonation socks there will quote material from their target, making it look to the naive like editing by the user impersonated. I created, several times, a disclosed sock. They then created a mass of accounts with similar names, and repeated what I’d written in many places, as if I were daring them to block me. Anyone who examined the behavior with care would have seen this. But . . . RationalWiki users rarely take such care. It’s too much work.

However, looking at the accounts he lists:

Could be Mikemikev. It is what Mikemikev might say, and it is pointing to reality, in fact. Mikemikev was being attacked, and so if this was him, he responded. One edit, blocked immediately by JD Bigs for “harassment.”  Essentially, Mikemikev and others were being libelled, and he responded, so that’s harassment. Very much like what happens on RationalWiki itself.

This account directly denies being mikemikev, and the only evidence that it is would be the very general, large internet service provider, that may or may not be actual Mikemikev IP. I do not make claims like that when I investigate accounts. I might say “possible.” (This is not “abusing multiple accounts.” It may be “block evasion,” but the Smith brothers do this routinely when blocked. They just start new accounts, and nobody on RationalWiki really cares about that. They tolerate it, and joke about it. If someone is libelled on the site, and defends themselves, and mention the very obvious use of sock puppets to create the libels, they block the user for “doxxing,” even when there is no real-name revelation, and then continue to block any and all attempts to clear the record.

While Mikemikev cannot be ruled out, this is looking less and less likely to be Mikemikev and more to be another RW user, familiar with the site and the history, saying what more and more RationalWiki users are starting to realize: RW and then RWW have been used as attack platforms, to go after anyone who has confronted the Smith brothers.

Right. What the IP wrote was simply true. So when the RMF board member pointed to what ODS was doing, that’s why ODS found him suspicious.

Obviously not Oliver. (Except that sometimes there are pretend impersonations, accounts pretending to attack Oliver and his brother, but I doubt that in this case.) Participated on the Emil Kirkegaard article and talk page. There were also impersonation socks of Kirkegaard. This account was blocked by CozmicDebris, who often supports Oliver/Darryl agenda. However, I’d have blocked the account also.

Account had no contributions. Obvious trolling. As is common, Oliver is obsessed by accounts with very minor contributions and disruption, compared to his own. This is funny. Yes, there were Kirkegaard impersonations, including the account Emil Kirkegaard, who wrote what naive RWikians would think was a Kirkegaard message, but wasn’t. The reference by MrSheen, who is rather obviously Oliver D. Smith, to Wikipedia is to an account blamed by Smith on Mikemikev, but very unlikely to be him; rather, these kinds of impersonations have been common, they popped up in massive quantities when I first confronted the Smith impersonation socking. They have been doing this for years, and it’s no wonder that people become confused. On Wikipedia, they didn’t believe the “two brothers” story because it’s a common excuse. But it was apparently true, and the most disruptive brother, by far, was Darryl. Oliver is merely crazy.

MrSheen is the only Smith sock I have seen editing RationalWiki after Callimachus, setting aside the impersonation socks, more likely to be Darryl. But Emil Kirkegaard would be a special target for Oliver, so it cannot be ruled out. (Oliver eventually admitted many socks, but blamed “most” on  his brother. — as I recall, he wrote “99.9%”)

The brother (as “Debunking spiritualism” — who had actually been outed by Oliver) stopped editing as a “good hand” account on RationalWiki and went on a deletion spree — clearly pursuing Smith agenda to cover up accusations and admissions — and then claimed the account had been hacked, and his brother (Oliver) then blamed it on me. Fun, aren’t they? (I have never hacked anyone’s account and was widely trusted on WMF wikis, making the recent global ban very, very strange, but I will address that through the courts. The Smiths file private complaints and recruit others to complain, and they lie, and some administrators fall for it.)

I’m not the only one to notice MrSheen. IPs edited the MrSheen user page today with a link to the Rightpedia page on Oliver Smith sockpuppets.

17:37, 8 August 2018 . . User:MrSheen (Created page with “https://en.rightpedia.info/w/Oliver_David_Smith_sockpuppets Hilariously the other socks are Oliver attempting to frame me.”)

He’s referring to the other edits on Talk:Emil Kirkegaard, I think.

Generally, once an account is confronted like this, it disappears.

 

 

 

And his brother, Darryl L. Smith

May 2-3, 2018, Darryl L. Smith, as Debunking spiritualism, thoroughly outed himself before retiring. He still does not reveal to the RationalWiki community, with this, what it would take to get his libels deleted, but the Smiths still have not figured out that the prime way to recover, from indiscretions that come to light, is full disclosure, not half-measures. He may still be active on Wikipedia, as he claimed, and may still be able to collect financial support for it, so … he’s attempting to limit damage. While guaranteeing that he will fail.

He retired, creating a new account to claim Debunking spiritualism had been hacked. He had unblocked an account of his brother (, wheel-warring with Spriggina, and taking other actions that would clearly be Smith agenda, mostly in an attempt to scrub references to the Smith brothers (mostly Oliver, including places where Oliver accounts admitted who he was) not some new strange initiative. But the RWikians are about as gullible a group as I have ever encountered, most of them are far from “rational.”

His deletion actions merged with contributions and the block log:

This speaks volumes. That page was started as a redirect by Dave1234, which was Darryl L. Smith. Oliver Smith was not lying when he denied being Dave1234. The article itself was started by Debunker, also Darryl.

For Darryl to link to the WWHP page was completely remarkable. However, he has enough experience with RationalWiki (and he tried also to fix the article on me), to know that the deceptive impressions that he spent years to create would not vanish just because he, on the face someone different, says that it was wrong. He engaged whole generations of RationalWiki editors in his crusade as retaliation for Rome Viharo documenting the “wikipedia problem,” which intimately involved him, certainly as Goblin Face and likely other accounts.

Notice that DS claims “author request.” That’s because he was the author!

(We can think that an impersonator wanted to establish this. For what audience? I know of no person who has investigated the AP/Krom/Atlantid/Gobling Face sock family who still thinks that it was one person (i.e. Oliver Smith). That opinion has been expressed in the past, but this was before there was serious investigation, using better evidence. In addition, I have the equivalent of checkuser evidence and I’m suspecting I’m going to see some interesting facts when I look — it takes time, I have no automated tool like Media Wiki checkuser, on the blog. In the past, commentary focused on Oliver Smith, because he has been public about his identity. I began, some time ago, to document Darryl L. Smith. There were reactions). They did not begin on May 3!)

So, naturally, his deletion was reversed, by Cozmicdebris.

admits it is about doxxing of his family. I.e., the Smith brothers.

and 12 more revision deletions on that page. These were all restored by Grammar Commie. What was he hiding? Until I saw this, I didn’t realize there was an early incarnation of “Racialism.” Some archives I found: Talk page history\

This was the second attempt to hide all that, see below for the first. Both failed.

Archive 1 history (notice edit by Gorgonite, attempting to hide discussion.) Gorgonite was blanking an edit by Windir, replying to IP (Mikemikev? Maybe). Archive1 was deleted by FuzzyCatPotato, with the summary “13:42, 25 October 2016 FuzzyCatPotato (talk | contribs deleted page Talk:Racial realism/Archive1 (content was: “{{talk archive}} == Stupidly One-sided == So stupidly one-sided. This page is a complete joke. Clearly written by a “race denying” crackpot.<sup>— Unsigned, by: 202.171.168.146 / User talk:202.171.168.1…”)

Did FCP know what he was doing? The only edit of that IP was to create the Talk page back in 2012. FCP was indeed scrubbing history. Gorgonite was an obvious Oliver sock. (These users only effectively hide from others who are paying little attention, a common problem on wikis.) RationalWiki does not, per se, sanction sock puppetry, unless the user is unpopular.

The edit that Gorgonite blanked was by Windir (contributions). Naturally, I look for hidden  contributions.

Nice. To Talk:Race as an additional comment after his comment of 18:12, 8 October 2014

Btw, this is the level of Mikemikev’s intelligence:>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Mikemikev

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:I_didn%27t_want_to_wear_purple_pants

User:Excuse Me I’m ON LSD

I don’t want to wear purple pants and “i’m on LSD” are listed among two of Mikemikev’s socks.

Maybe it was the LSD he takes that turned him into such a mental-case. Windir (talk) 13:31, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Classic trolling. The entire RW site is like this. Articles troll for outrage, and if the target shows up, he is harassed, sometimes impersonated, and commonly blocked.

The Talk archives for “Race” have been deleted. However, Talk:Race is still up, so I’m creating archives based on the page as archived by the bot or others, including extensively blanked text. The full page history.  These are snapshots of the page just before removals. They are not as convenient as normal Talk page archives, but edits can be found. Some of these already existed. Text in collapse is also shown.

Users and IPs were outed as Mikemikev. Doxxing is Bad when AP socks(Goody Guys!) are doxxed, Good when Bad Guys are doxxed. The difference between Good Guys and Bad Guys is that Bad Guys hide. Oh. Wait! That talk page was deleted. Lots of RationalWiki discussion has been, later, deleted, with no explanation. Who is hiding?

Removed an edit by Torch (Darryl!) about Mikemikev.  Reverted by Spud.

  • 01:33, 3 May 2018 Debunking spiritualism (talk | contribs) changed visibility of a revision on page Talk:Racial realism: content hidden and edit summary hidden (Inappropriate comment or personal information: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Saloon_bar#Deletion_of_Talk:racialism_and_Talk:race)

and 16 more. GrammarCommie restored 13. What revisions are still hidden? Three revisions were previously hidden, one by Skeptical (Darryl) 02:27, 31 October 2017.  (which would be three or more years after the edit. Skeptical did the same thing as DS did later, only not so extensively. There are a total of five hidden. discrepancy of one. Nothing particularly striking on the page. Some more AP socks.

removed edits by Jon Donniz, Saxton, and possible Mikemikev IP. The first two are likely AP socks.

why would Darryl block this IP 4 years later? To tag the IP with “Mikemikev” for anyone seeing this later. The IP is Korean, which could indicate mikemikev at that time, but it’s also possible to choose an open proxy there.

Oliver and Darryl have both supported this, eventually. But that article was created by ODS (Oliver) and Oliver there acknowledges that it was as revenge against me. (Darryl, DS, created the article on me.)

The page was created by an AP sock, that’s clear. Which one, I’m not entirely sure. This is a common tactic: ridicule reality, call it a “conspiracy theory.” The creator comments, MrOrganic (possibly Oliver). The article on me was created by Marky (DS). While MrOrganic created that page, it gets blamed on Rome Viharo by Marky, and David Gerard bought that. The fact is that the “Smith brothers” theory is not a “conspiracy theory,” it is that there are two brothers, Oliver and Darryl Smith. The Oliver half of that is far beyond proven. “Darryl” remains somewhat circumstantial. There really is a brother, that’s clear, but Oliver recently claimed it was all him and that he’d been lying for hears about the “brother.”  So lying then or lying now, how much does it matter? This will get sorted legally, I strongly suspect.

Schizophrenic was Oliver. I found the edit and documented it, so Darryl is trying to cover it up.

 

Callimachus is Oliver D. Smith.

Archived 2 May 2018 19:45:01 UT.

Socks found in this review (these could be Oliver or Darryl). A few listed could be impersonations.

September 5, 2013 see archive. Fraudulently signs IP edit “Eveshi.”
May 23, 2014 hidden edit to Talk:Racial realism (remove libellous illegal doxing from the sockpuppet troll mikemikev/MU.) Content blanked: “Jon Donniz/Saxton is the mentally ill troll Atlantid/Pyramidologist/Oliver Smith. He specialises in accusing people of being his socks. http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/5299104/1/ 123.254.239.5 (talk) 08:49, 23 May 2014 (UTC) “(link is live, but archived). This material would have saved a lot of time. There are conclusions in it that I’m not prepared to support, but … Mikemikev did a lot of research, and reported it relatively soberly. Considering how early this was, it was quite good. Of course this was hidden on RationalWiki! (It would routinely be hidden because of the doxxing of Oliver Smith, for sure, but also mentioning Atlantid or Pyramidologist — known and admitted Oliver socks (i.e., Oliver was the original Wikipedia Anglo Pyramidologist, effectively banned in 2011– has also resulted in blocks and revision hiding.)

 Skeptic Jon 5-7 September, 2013 & 2 April 2014, last edit, hidden, to Talk:Racial realism.: “123.140.240.40 is troll Mikemikev. He’s been on this page for years.” likely Darryl

Hot edits! Hidden revisions.
Eveshi 31 May 2013 – 5 June 2013 Possibly Darryl but is claimed to be Chung. defiantly blocked by Forests. Investigate other sites.
Prince Emmanuel. 12 February 2013 – 3 June 2013 at first exposes Forests as “darryl.” later signs “Max”. Accused of being Forests. Hypocrite claims 13 years old. Max is clearly in direct communication with Forests, see this conversation. notice the dino_crisis email for Forests.
Other site: An account “Forests” refers to eveshi and signs Darryl Forests.

Schizophrenic, Oliver D. Smith

DRAFT, INCOMPLETE, If you are reading this in an archive site, be sure to check the original URL for updates, corrections, retractions, etc.

A page here covered an admission by RationalWiki user Schizophrenic (contributions) that he was Oliver D. Smith. Schizophrenic edited from 29 January, 2016 to 20 September, 2016, and the admission was on 11 July 2016 (archive of that admission).

The account clearly expressed, in detail, Oliver Smith’s point of view. See this edit, by Schizophrenic, to his User page, August 7, 2016:

One of the few Rationalwiki editors who wants to stop the left-wing political bias on this site.

Oliver’s prior account (acknowledged elsewhere) was Krom, who expressed agreement with RW on pseudoscience and racism) — but not on other “left-wing” issues.

The admission edit had been hidden by Skeptical, clearly an AP sock, 31 October, 2017, as heat rose on the “Smith brothers” — by their own actions.

So I documented that page on the page linked at the beginning of this page. And today, I noticed:

19:54, 2 May 2018 Debunking spiritualism (talk | contribs blocked Schizophrenic (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of π×infinity! (account creation disabled) (Harassment: Impersonation, not real “Oliver” now Abd using the impersonator on his blog: http://archive.is/ydies)

This was nothing short of astonishing. Schizophrenic was clearly Oliver D. Smith, there is no likely impersonators, and this came two years after the edit. Looking at DS contributions, there was a frenzied flurry of attempts to cover up evidence — some of which I had not seen before. Always a bad idea to directly confront “outing,” it can confirm it, Rome Viharo made that mistake on Wikipedia.

After this frenzy, in which Darryl — there is no longer any reasonable doubt about his identity– revealed much and also threatened Grammar Commie with cooping — I’ll get to that! — he retired. On the subpage I look at his contributions and logs. Let’s look at his contributions and logs.

 

Oliver here

The title of this page is the section title created by Schizophrenic, for Talk:Rome Viharo, in response to a comment that was allegedly from Viharo (but that may have been an impersonation, I have not checked with Viharo). The edits creating this section were (much later) hidden, but not the content. (and archived)

Schizophrenic was responding to material copied onto the Talk page by a sysop, taken from the Saloon bar. That material included the real name of Schizophrenic. Before that, an IP edit was redacted, see the archive.

“[REDACTED]” there replaced “Oliver D. Smith”, except that the second reference in the first paragraph referred to “David1234” as the creator of the Rome Viharo article, which he was. That account was an AP sock, all right, but not Oliver; rather it was Darryl. For Darryl’s identity we have only circumstantial evidence, and the testimony of an admitted liar, his brother Oliver. That two brothers were involved, not simply one person, has caused massive confusion, thoroughly exploited by the brothers, for Oliver can then say that someone like Viharo — if that was Viharo — is “lying,” when he is merely mistaken, and the substance of his claims remains cogent. There was definitely harassment.

What Schizophrenic wrote:

Viharo has confused identities of two people, Tim Farley and Oliver Smith (i’m the latter). He thinks Farley is Manul from Wikipedia, when he isn’t. Secondly he thinks i’m Goblin Face/Dan Skeptic from Wikipedia, when i’m not. A lot of this confusion is down to the banned RW user and troll Michaeldsuarez (an ED sysop) posting misinformation about me. I’ve now blocked the libellous ED page he created using my name where he says i’m Goblin Face etc.

Viharo does speculate that Manul (formerly vzaak, who definitely harassed Viharo on Wikipedia, while Farley is alleged to have harassed him elsewhere — I have not verified this) is a sock of Farley. I rather doubt it, but the more reasonable suspicion is that there is off-wiki communication and cooperation between “skeptics.” That’s a long story. Goblin Face was Dan Skeptic, that’s open. However, Goblin Face was eventually checkusered as an AP sock, so if Viharo thinks they are “AP” he would have some substantial basis.

However, Wikipedia gave up attempting to distinguish the brothers, they are both defacto banned as AP. The ascription of this to MDS is classic AP smokescreen. Many, many people have figured this out (and some think that the brother story is fake, and Oliver just asserted that himself, that he had lied for years. Yeah, right. I find it highly implausible that all the activity I have tagged as AP is one person, it creates more mysteries than it resolves. I won’t say “impossible.” But that’s not my operating assumption. Two aspects of one person, possibly “schizophrenic,” or two persons who sometimes access the internet from the same location, makes little difference, in fact, since both are highly disruptive, but it can confuse the hell out of checkusers.

Defamation Complaint to Google https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/12535607

See this page for a longer list of complaints. Smith also harasses by email, may have made harassing phone calls, files complaints with service providers and administrators, and is quite proud of the results — and misrepresents them.

Viharo was also involved in posting slander about me on my ED page, so its rather amusing to see him here moaning about “harassment”. Google has looked, seen the defamation, and taken action by blocking the page.

Google acts under a process that does not determine the fact of defamation. That action only blocks listing search results for users accessing Google from the UK (or maybe the EU).

As for the schizophrenia claim, it traces back to Encylopedia Dramatica (again Michaeldsuarez) which is not a reliable source at all; there’s other nonsense there such as i’m a holocaust denier or muslim extremist. I simply at first went along with it for a joke, hence I’ve used this name. Bizarrely though Viharo thinks its all genuine, and is now posting i’m “mentally ill” on his website, and Suarez who originated all of this misinformation and know he made it up – is now going around trying to portray me as a real schizoid.Schizophrenic (talk) 14:49, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

So Oliver went along with the “joke,” and then attacks others for repeating it. The account Schizophrenic’s contributions show many Oliver Smith interests, and this was long-term, unlikely to be an imposter. In fact, the admission of schizophrenia came from a comment by Atlantid, a well-known sock of Oliver (and he’s admitted that was him), and there have also been other clues, including quite erratic behavior.

http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2016/02/what-will-wikipedia-editor-goblin-faceatlantid-do-next/

Pretty much everything on the above link is false, e.g. “After I was banned on Wikipedia, this individual was also ‘David1234’ who created the Rational Wiki article on me” Yet. I never created Rome Viharo’s Rationalwiki entry; “David1234” is not me. He also accuses me of sending him a “threatening email”. I’ve never emailed Rome Viharo. The only source saying I do is Encylopedia Dramatica (tracing back specifically to michaeldsuarez who makes up these lies). Schizophrenic (talk) 15:32, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

David1234 would be Darryl Smith. Oliver is telling the truth on this point, but not the whole truth, and for others to become confused would be normal. I’ve known MDS for many years, he’s not a liar. Ever. I”ve disagreed with him, but he wasn’t lying.

But ED is a parody site, full of satire, not everything there is to be taken literally. The information that I and others have published, however, does not depend on MDS. The source for email to Rome Viharo would be Rome Viharo, obviously, not someone else.

A copy of the mail.

It appears that Viharo assumed that this mail would be from Oliver (“Atlantid”). I doubt it. Both brothers have been known to threaten retaliation for documentation, though, and Oliver admittedly harassed Joshua Connor Moon, by sending an email to his mother’s employer. The interest here would not be Oliver, but Darryl (“Goblin Face/Dan Skeptic”), but, then, Oliver becomes interested if he is named. I received similar threats from socks that originally were promoting the interests of Darryl L. Smith, but also defending his brother, claiming that “Anglo Pyramidologist” — i.e., Oliver — was not involved.

Retaliation through impersonation is very much a Smith brother activity.

The brothers have created a cloud of confusion and a web of deception. As well, they have been strangely protected by some. Why? I find that a question of substantial interest.

Some people keep and use attack dogs. Others are merely naive.

If not for the admission, which was difficult to find, Schizophrenic would have looked like many AP socks, and was, in fact, suspected from contributions. The strange revision-hiding more than  year later confirms the connection to Skeptical, who could be Oliver or Darryl, and Skeptical was already clearly an AP sock.

It was Skeptical who blocked me on RationalWiki for “doxxing” that was not doxxing, I did not name real names, only suspected accounts of being “AP.” RW users, and especially the Smith brothers, do that with others routinely (and they use real names in accusing suspected socks.)

Total breakdown

If you are reading this on an archive site, be sure to check the original URL for updates, corrections, retractions, etc.

If Oliver Smith had, as a goal, thoroughly exposing the idiocy of RationalWiki — and to a lesser degree, also the WMF wikis — he couldn’t have done a better job.

From his own emails and comments on RationalWiki:

Oliver Smith claims

  • He made up the brother story years ago to get unblocked on Wikipedia.
  • He fed the story to many, fooling them. It was a joke, and funny as hell.
  • He lied to Tim Farley.
  • His real brother’s name is now being published. [It is!]
  • Yet his real brother isn’t involved at all. [Is he?]
  • Nobody is paid, that was all his deception.
  • He’s the victim of massive harassment.
  • And Lomax is crazy for declaring as possible the story that Oliver made up and repeated for many years.

Let’s take a look!

His emails to me — and my recent replies — are here.

A few days ago, I protected most pages dealing with Anglo Pyramidologist, requiring a password, which, for the time being ,will be revealed to those with a need to know.

Then, April 4, 2018,  I received an email from  Oliver Smith, from the known and verified email address for him, offering a “truce,” he would fix the RationalWiki article on me if I removed mention of him on my blog (and he sent the exact same oemail to Rome Viharo). I responded as can be seen there. I thanked Oliver for certain things and pointed out that improvement he proposed on RationalWiki would not address many of the problems created by the Smith brothers’ history, including perhaps the most serious (a massive sock and then cross-wiki canvassed attack on Wikiversity and Wikiversity users). I suggested simply telling the truth.

April 5, Debunking spiritualism attempted to edit the RW article on me to make it more about substantial subjects, but was — as I’d have predicted — promptly reverted.  He then wrote on the Talk page (archive copy of the page):

Proposed re-write

I re-wrote some sections, but they got reverted. I’ve spoken to Lomax by email, and he says he will no longer disrupt or make more articles on RationalWiki on his blog etc., if we just focus more on his cold fusion and try to more neutrally present his research on this. The problem is his page has been a battleground and much drama over his activities on wikis that are mostly irrelevant to RationalWiki – its main purpose is to document pseudoscience. I just think its sensible if we rewrite his article and the drama will end.Debunking spiritualism (talk) 21:46, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Wait? Who spoke to me by email? I was communicating with Oliver D. Smith, who was, until recently, ODS on RationalWiki. Many evidences from ODS pointed to his brother, Darryl L. Smith, as “DS.” Second problem, here, I never did disrupt RationalWiki, this was done by a series of impersonation socks. The user with an extensive history of similar impersonation would be DS, and it was almost certainly a sock of DS who wrote the article, and DS had been obsessively editing it. The page had not been a battleground except, briefly, impersonation socks vandalized it, pretending to be me.

While I have never ruled out the possibility of a third party impersonator, the impersonation patterns were those of the sock master I confronted on WMF wikis as “Anglo Pyramidologist,” and, with evidence and claims from Oliver, almost certainly his twin brother, Darryl. (AP, there, is both brothers — or Oliver Smith lied from the beginning, which he has now claimed.) The other possible troll would have had no interest at that time, and there was no cooperation from the Smiths that would have exposed the impersonations. No, Darryl was the impersonator. Or there is another possibility that arises here, and it’s remarkable. The whole thing was a lie and harassment targets were not the only ones impersonated.

This possibility aligns with the opinion of another critic of the Smiths: there is no brother, this is all one person, pretending to be two. To deal with what has been published, this requires one of two possibilities: (1) there is literally no brother, and the public record that purported to show that was fake, created by Oliver as a red herring, or (2) Darryl is silent, uninvolved.

The appearance here, given the emails to me, is that Oliver is Debunking spiritualism, who has carried on conversations with ODS and other Oliver socks, and this was all fake, deception. There is a more likely scenario, I’ll get to that. GrammarCommie, obviously believing in the tissue of lies created by the impersonator and the Smith editing, continues with

RationalWiki is objective not neutral. Furthermore this sounds like extortion to me, i.e. “do what I say or else I’ll harass you.” ☭Comrade GC☭Ministry of Praise 21:49, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

What “sounds like extortion” is a story made up by DS. I have not threatened anyone with harassment. I have pointed out the obvious: what one writes on a wiki is public and open to examination and critique. I would not attempt to coerce anyone, and have not. But someone has done this, through the impersonation socks, pretending to be me. I have circumstantial evidence — not proof — that the harassment socks were “Anglo Pyramidologist.” Yet the RatWikians who show up in this present discussion obviously assume they were me. In fact, they were designed that way. They copied text from me, using names that someone naive might think I would use — I have no history of disruptive account socking — and then tacking in threats and accusations, or simple vandalism.

I actually proposed to re-write some of it. At the very least there’s been lots of mistakes & errors on the article. What I wrote was actually a lot more objective. I would invite Lomax here to correct things he has a problem with, but he’s already published a response on his blog and I went over it. He’s mostly telling the truth about his cold fusion research. It is misrepresented by the original article creator. Of course I’m not defending Lomax’s antics on wikis and other sites (he recently got blocked on the RW reddit section), but I think the article should more accurately present his cold fusion stuff.Debunking spiritualism (talk) 21:58, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I invited @Bongolian and a few others to discuss my edit.Debunking spiritualism (talk) 23:21, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Remarkable. “He’s mostly telling the truth about his cold fusion research.” Who was the original article creator? That creator complained about me and I was promoted (sysop tools removed) as a result. Then another obviously related user indef blocked me for “doxxing,” when I had not doxxed, another sock had, I had merely responded. This was all someone with long experience manipulating wiki communities, preying on the naive, ready to make knee-jerk assumptions that involve primitive models of human behavior.

The “response on my blog” that I wrote was months ago and the article changed a lot since then. What I suggested, with a declared sock, was that I be unblocked and I could then make suggestions on the Talk page. What DS proposes here — and that unblock — would be more or less standard for RW, as to how RW presents itself to the world on the Main Page. But the problem is far, far deeper than my article.

DS knows how and why I was blocked on the “RW Reddit section.” He complained to David Gerard, and it was immediately actioned. There, I had responded to a few blatant attack posts, by users who showed up only to make them, referring to RW articles of which they were likely the author. Someone has been abusing RW, for a long time, as a personal attack platform. (Looking at that now, I wondered how DS knows. Reddit does not show who is banned. I logged out, and a comment I made, visible when logged in,  now shows as “Removed.” This is the thread. My response was

RationalWiki is run by people apparently terrified of real discussion, believing in a mission that involves suppressing whatever they think is wrong and anyone not a true believer in their brand of skepticism. They pretened to be about rejecting authoritarianism. They lie.

If it’s a matter of correcting errors on RW, then, yes, this should be done. We should not however be put in a position of tone policing ourselves because of Lomax. I don’t think that Lomax is a trustworthy actor based on his past documented history here and elsewhere, and we should not cater to his whims. There is no possible guarantee that he could make that he will not continue his harassment on or off of RW. Bongolian (talk) 00:13, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

That “documented” history is full of misrepresentations and deceptions, most recently the massive impersonation socking on RW. Generally, aside from his acceptance of a load of deception, I’d agree with his position. However, there need be no binding guarantee, were I proposing some quid pro quo. Suppose, for simplicity, that the article were deleted. (That is not the most inspiring possibility!). And I committed to not writing about RationalWiki. Not that I would, mind you, I’m a journalist, but I do have choices about where to focus. If I violated my commitment, the article could simply be restored. If the agreement were public, there would be some actual misbehavior — a lack of integrity — to point to. It would take a minute to undelete the article.

These guys have little or no business experience or imagination. It’s hard to find good help. But this was all actually irrelevant, since I was not making or offering any guarantee, this was a Smith initiative, and the question arises, “Why now?”

Lomax wants some kind of deal where his lead is edited, and the cyber-harasser and troll is removed and the article accurately reflects his cold fusion research. 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.

I personally would have his RW article deleted, I actually voted delete in the deletion discussion. The whole thing has caused too much trouble here and these petty internet feuds with Lomax are messing with peoples lives. It would be better for everyone if this was all to just end. Obviously many people voted to keep his article so it will not be deleted but I don’t know if it is worth inviting him here to comment on what he wants changed on his article. Debunking spiritualism (talk) 00:28, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

How does he know what I want? Telepathy? He’d be evidence it doesn’t exist. But, yes, a focus on cold fusion would not be a problem, if that’s considered worthy of an article.  The only “dox” was, eventually, long after being “banned” for doxxing, the names of the Smith brothers. RW articles, written by the brothers, routinely dox targets…. Oliver apparently just created an article on Michael Coombs on Wrongpedia that gives the address of Coombs’ mother, with no excuse other than a suggestion she could be harassed because he visits home sometimes.

DS showed up to comment in that deletion discussion months after it closed. It was pointed out how odd it was for him to show up and vote delete for an article that he was obviously obsessively editing. At a certain point I began to emphasize “Darryl L. Smith,” because I was realizing that it was likely that most actual damage, in many areas, was coming from that brother. Maybe he was realizing that he had attempted character assassination on a target who can defend himself. And there is more.

If Lomax permanently removed and deletes all the negative commentary about Rationalwiki on his cold fusion community blog and decides to move on with his life, is it possible his article could be deleted? This might not be policy but is it not possible to arrange some kind of deal like this? Both parties would win at the end of the day and people could move on with their lives. Several users have been doxed by Lomax on his blog so all this is having real life consequences. Debunking spiritualism (talk) 00:34, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
@Rimuru Tempest, @Readymade, @Christopher @David Gerard your thoughts about the above? Debunking spiritualism (talk) 00:39, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I know RationalWiki reasonably well. This proposal had no chance of success as stated.

First of all, who is feeling “real life consequences?” There would be one class of such: the targets of many articles created by the crazy duo, and fewer by articles created by other RatWikians. Almost all RatWiki users are fully anonymous. Oliver and Darryl Smith are only not anonymous because they were so massively disruptive in so many fora that they attracted a great deal of attention. The first three pinged are anonymous, to my knowledge, and would not care personally about this. David Gerard probably believes he is completely secure. He might be, the legal theory on which I might sue him is thin. But it doesn’t really cost a lot to try. RW is a more inviting target, and RW actually has raised money on the idea that they need it for legal defense. RW, however, is not yet on the hook, there is due process that remains first.

The only two actually feeling consequences — or simply fearing them — would be Oliver and Darryl Smith. But they are not appealing based on the truth. I’m not sure what the point of this exercise was. It seems that DS wants to maintain the myth of “Abd harassing multitudes all over the internet,” while shutting down attention on himself and his brother. They created that myth, creating evidence for it (such as the Reddit ban, simply a decision probably by Gerard — though there is another moderator), just as they created the WMF ban by canvassing for complaints, all visible if anyone looks.

Let me put it this way: Fuck no!!! We will not cave in to every halfassed crank that suddenly decides that they’ve “reformed”. that is the very definition of whitewashing. ☭Comrade GC☭Ministry of Praise 00:43, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Sure. But what “halfassed crank” has “suddenly decided” that he has “reformed”? The DS narrative, backed as it is by several months of bombarding RW with impersonation socks, is accepted, whole hog.

I think he has delusions of self-grandeur if he thinks “the media” will be interested in his petty squabbles and persecution complex. Password-protecting his doxing is not a particularly conciliatory action in my view: this is basically an admission that he has been a harasser. I invite other moderators @CheeseburgerFace, @Christopher, @CowHouse, @DiamondDisc1, @LeftyGreenMario, as well as the semi-active: @David Gerard to comment. Bongolian (talk) 00:48, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

The story as they would imagine it would not be of interest to the media. Did I mention the media? If I file an action, I would probably create a press release, and an organization might be involved. The main show would be an action against the WikiMedia Foundation, with RationalWiki being a minor player.

I never indicated the password protection as “conciliatory.” It was explained here.

Until this point, all my work was public, my research notes were public. “Going dark” means creating access security, as I work with legal issues, counsel, and develop necessary resources, until a final report is created and action taken. It is tempting to explain more thoroughly, but I’m resisting that. They can guess but they won’t know until this hits them.

The ordinary RW users probably have nothing to fear, it’s not worth going after useless basement-dwellers and twits and anti-crank cranks (and a handful of sincere and perhaps genuine skeptics), but RW itself might see some action, that depends on how they respond to challenges. This is a matter for RMF legal, not ordinary users, and they need not consider it.

I don’t think we should whitewash his past. If he shows signs of a changed man for over 5 years, we can add that to the article and perhaps give him a nicer writeup.—♥€h33s3βurg3rF@€3♥ Spinning-Burger.gif (talk • stalk) 03:15, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I think he’s clueless. I have not suggested, nor would I suggest, “whitewashing” my past. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, but he and RatWiki in general have no clue what that is. They have believed a story invented by the Smith brothers, and intensely marketed through impersonation socking. Even as it becomes completely obvious that these brothers are liars and highly deceptive. To accept that, they would need to become skeptical of their own ideas and reactions. Which would make them genuine skeptics. Some of them would rather die first.

On second thought, why are we even covering Internet drama? We care about woo. I was under the impression that we don’t cover Internet drama for anyone on this website.—♥€h33s3βurg3rF@€3♥ Spinning-Burger.gif (talk • stalk) 03:18, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. My answer for him: RW is covering internet drama because it allowed the Twin Queens of Internet Drama to create hundreds of sock puppets on RationalWiki (probably an understatement) to create articles that were intrinsically attack and revenge and fanaticism, it enabled them and protected them against exposure, opped them and encouraged them, because those who are loudest rueing Teh Drama often do the most to create it and enjoy it. DS here was proposing to focus on woo and alleged pseudoscience, which was, indeed, missional. But the Mob loves Drama! And it cares nothing about truth and careful and thorough research, but only wants to react to the latest hue and cry.

It is the opposite of rational thinking, so RW has a foundational contradiction. Snark is an appeal to quick reaction, and snark is policy on RW. It appeals to the immature. It’s fun. RW is not my problem. However, where the site and its defacto policies create an “attractive nuisance,” there can be consequences.

Honestly, after looking into all of this stuff I’m not so sure we can just throw it under the rug. I agree with Cheeseburger on this, let him show he decided to change through his actions and others will begin to see better of him. Let us not forget what we do here at RW.
Our purpose here at RationalWiki includes:
1.Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement;
2.Documenting the full range of crank ideas;
3.Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism;
4.Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.Rimuru TempestRimuru Slime.png 03:40, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

What I notice is a massive confusion of conflicting ideas. If the article were objective, there would simply be no question. If facts alleged in the article were backed by sources that actually confirm the claim, or that are not simply cherry-picked from a vast corpus of work, if conclusions stated in the article could be challenged and discussed with someone knowledgeable (i.e., the article subject if the subject is willing), the issue of “change” would be irrelevant. The thinking here is high-school, as if I were some juvenile critically concerned about how people see me, and whining “But I’ve changed.” If I did any such whining, please point it out, so I can stomp on it. I change all the time, I hope I will continue to change until I die, but I am responsible for all of it.

All this discussion was based on the thinking of a deranged Smith brother, his imaginary presentation of what I supposedly wrote to him, that I didn’t. The full emails are on that page from the recent correspondence.

focusing on each and every crank rather than the ideas they espouse is such a waste of time and energy. Anyways, if this Lomax fellow is vandalizing the article, just lock it down–“Shut upBrx.”02:33, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

That’s RatWiki. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. Especially on RatWiki. “If this Lomax fellow is vandalizing . . . .” Well, is he? Brx is two clicks away from seeing the history, but the RW cry is “Don’t confuse me with facts!” I never vandalized the article. I edited the article once only, in October 2017. The edit stuck. The short period of editing by socks with my name on them were not me. It’s reasonably obvious who they were, because the behavior is quite old, oft-repeated, long before I was ever involved, and only one person would be interested at that point.

I stumbled across his site at one point, didn’t think much of it, I kept scrolling down and I saw my name of his “Enablers and Supporter” claiming he was working on a draft of me. Idk what he is or was going to write (as he seems to have password blocked it) but after reading a few things of his I think now see him in a worse light than I did at first. I don’t know why he put me on one of his pages and made it seem like I told him “The Christian God is the real God and not Allah” but seeing what he said about everyone I wont really believe him unless he actually shows a change and apologized to those who he attacked. I’m not going to hold a grudge with him but he needs to show we can trust him.リムルテンペストRimuru Slime.png 04:01, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Enablers and Supporters is a page to describe how the AP socks have managed to effectively abuse wikis and sites, and RationalWiki in particular. He doesn’t say what I wrote, it wasn’t anything like what I wrote. He was attacked by impersonation socks and believed they were me. He didn’t ask me. But he did respond to my question about a sock who impersonated him here.

To apologize for an “attack,” I’ll need to have a reference to the attack. Documenting what an account has done is not an attack. If it is, then is Rimuru  acknowledging that RationalWiki articles are “attacks”? Does he and other RatWikians believe that anyone on the internet is fair game for documentation, but RatWikians? “Supporters and Enablers” would actually  be a compliment if what was supported and enabled is laudable!

His report is weird. The main page shows blog posts, but all the AP and related documentation is pages, used for information and studies. There is a sidebar with Pages, which lists all of them. He would see the page hierarchy, which is RationalWiki/Anglo Pyramidologist/Supporters and Enablers, and the subpages with certain people where there are notes. All my page work is “studies.” If he was able to see the S&E page, he’d have seen, in the TOC,

Rimuru Tempest subpage (draft, not yet published)

Some of the above have been added from a narrow suspicion, and S&E may be inadvertent or ignorant or otherwise

Further down the page, there was his name and a link to his RW contributions. That was all. What does this have to do with “Christian God” and “Allah”? In any case, I looked at the draft page and published it so that Rimuru Tempest may comment on it if he chooses. It is just some notes with a little speculation. Nothing to call a lawyer over, in fact, calling that page an “attack” would be just plain crazy. Perhaps I might flesh out the subpage, except I have a hundred things to do more worthwhile at this point.

An apology and even a website wipe won’t be enough to have us remove what he has done with the past. He remains responsible for any harm he has done and he will learn the consequences of being a little less than an unpleasant piece of work. I’m not holding any grudges, but this person will have to do quite a bit to make up for all the the trouble he has caused. –It’s-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 05:41, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

The issue here is belief not founded in fact. What trouble did I cause and how? I did not create the AP sock farm, I didn’t even hear about it until September, 2017. 200 socks on Wikipedia, and then, I began to discover, many more even there that aren’t documented, they are quietly blocked. At one point an AP sock claimed to be running RatWiki, having created 700 socks. That might not actually be an exaggeration.

What harm have I done? Any specifics? I can say exactly what harm has been done by AP socks, and it will become far more visible over the next few months. The waste of time on RatWiki from the impersonation socks I certainly did not create. But RatWiki is not actually that important to me.

You have two users lying to you, here on this RW Talk page, and it’s easy to see if you look, and you don’t care. You win the prize, you have to live with the mess.

Any actual inaccuracies should obviously be removed, but don’t cave in to his threats and don’t remove information about what he’s done in the past just because he claims to have changed. Christopher (talk) 08:15, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Again, all this discussion was founded on claims from DS. Nobody seems to suspect the accuracy of his report. This was all radically confused. I have not claimed to have “changed.” I shifted tactics, that’s all.

Since this affair began, AP socks called the studies I was doing — merely listing accounts on Wikipedia, Wikiversity, and meta (mostly checkuser-identified) — “Lies,” but never pointed to any specifics. If I have erred, I always appreciate correction, and I don’t hide my past. I learn from it.

I have made no threats. There were threats made by impersonation socks. By “cave in,” Christopher would be referring to threats of harm if one doesn’t do what is demanded, i.e., coercion. I hate coercion. What was demanded by me? (There were demands by impersonation socks.)

I would appreciate making the changes Debunking spiritualism made to the article. I’m someone Lomax smeared and doxed on his blog. He’s since removed nearly everything and is happy to stop this feud if we make amendments. There are clearly inaccuracies, just like Lomax writing lies and hearsay about people on his blog, so it would help to correct/remove the misrepresentations, errors, poorly sourced content and mistakes from Lomax’s article. Agent47 (talk) 22:43, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Agent47 is obviously Oliver D. Smith. Early on, the AP message was that documentation of AP socking was a “vendetta” or “feud.” It was Oliver who actually emailed me, not DS … if they are different. I did hide material, and I didn’t reject Oliver’s offer, but thought that he would not be able to deliver unless he revealed the truth about the history. His comments here show that he was keeping up the story that I was lying, even while pretending to advocate some reasonable action to do what he imagined would “settle the feud.” I have some sympathy, because the truly vicious behavior was probably not him, probably his brother … but he’s completely insane, this comes out. He demonstrates that no matter how we slices it, he lied or he is lying. Why? That’s what gets interesting.

Perhaps @Debunking spiritualism could write a short synopsis here of each correction along with a supporting reference for each correction, then we can move forward. Bongolian (talk) 23:11, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Sensible. There is actually a better way, I saw used on Wikipedia. A rewrite in user space, to be then compared with the standing article. May the better article win! and then the better might still have some content merged from the old. But it might all be a waste if I demand take-down from the RMF, which is under consideration. If the article were actually improved with a plan for keeping it that way, I might not demand take-down. Criticism of cold fusion research is normal, expected, and actually appreciated. However, I just looked at the article. It is heavily designed to defame, full of appeals to knee-jerk assumptions, single incidents conflated to an alleged long-term pattern, and other niceties that afflict far too many RW articles.

RW is full of articles created by this team. One of them has claimed the other is paid (“to the best of his knowledge”) by a major skeptical organization. It’s plausible, and the other has hinted at the same, and then this all starts to get very ugly.

And then this, together with the actual emails, takes the cake:

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:

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.

I basically retract my claims above. There are no inaccuracies on the article, its just that Lomax has threatened us and doxed our family members etc, that people want a way out of this dispute and some of us were prepared to give in to his demands and whitewash the article. I’ve changed my mind and won’t be further doing this. I don’t see this guy stopping his harassment, he’ll probably end up getting a restraining order against him, or sectioned under a mental health act. Agent47 (talk) 02:02, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

What claims is he retracting? His lies and misrepresentations? Who is “us”? The documentation has all been about Oliver D. and Darryl L. Smith, twin brothers, long ago (2011) tagged and blocked on Wikipedia as “Anglo Pyramidologist.” Oliver was much better known outside of Wikipedia, and many of those confronting this monster sock drawer have focused on him. Even where Darryl was mentioned, it was almost as a footnote. What shifted with my involvement was shining the disinfectant light on Darryl.

Because of this claim above, I have published the entire email set. What I wrote was not sent to Oliver D. Smith to harass him, at all. It was a response to his mail.

It was assertive, not aggressive. It did not threaten. Oliver Smith published, on RationalWiki, the WMF response to his complaint, so I know he complained. From what he has written about me and others, and from what I know I was actually doing, I can reasonably suspect that he misrepresented the truth (and he has done this with many others, getting web sites taken down, he got the mother of an enemy fired with a harassing email to her employer, and the only thing keeping him out of a U.K. prison is police inertia, which then takes coordinated action to move. Tim Farley, years ago, showed how it was done. And, by the way, I do not consider Tim Farley an enemy, and attacks on Tim Farley on RW were by impersonation socks. The Smith brothers attempt to stir up enmity, to get supposed enemies of their targets angry and to arouse them to attack their target. It’s really an amazing strategy, particularly considering how well it worked in various venues.

So I’m warning him that more lying isn’t going to help. His response: more lies — or, amazingly, his claim that he was lying previously, as if somehow that’s going to prove that those exposing him are wrong. Look how he fooled them with his lies! The stupids!

Will RationalWikians see this and realize how they have been taken for fools? I’m not betting either way. But there is more. He didn’t quote, of course, his own claims, though he refers to them with his “smith brothers conspiracy theory” rant. I will not be so shy. Quoting from his last email to me.

Ask Rome Viharo to see the last email I sent him. There is no brother. I’ve just had fun misleading people, like yourself stalking me as have other RW sysops who have tried to protect their identities. It’s a problem though that you would target and dox an innocent family member of mine, based on this. Ask Viharo to see the full email, or I can post it here later. The ” smith brother” conspiracy theory is a joke.

No, if he is not lying, he created the theory as a joke, and now is disliking the consequences. But does he claim up by telling the truth, the whole truth? No. And what he says is internally contradictory and requires a long-term conspiracy, and, in particular, a compliant brother who doesn’t blow the whistle on this. There are only two “family members” involved in what has been published by me (and by Rome Viharo): Oliver and Darryl. If there is no brother, who, then, is the “innocent family member”?

He has extensively attacked Mikemikev for publishing a page, apparently from a public record, showing the names of inhabitants for a certain house in the U.K., as doxxing his family, giving the “address,” which is a road, with no street number (apparently a rural road, so mail would go to the name on that road). As it was, technically.

Doxxing at that level, per se, is not necessarily illegal, but if it can be considered harassment, it can be subject to prosecution. Briefly, I had the text from that public record on the Identity page here. I redacted that immediately, but the Smith brothers continued to insist that I was doxxing the family. Here, Oliver Smith is claiming that he was lying back in 2011, and then further in his edits to RW referring to DS as his brother, and in prior emails to me (where he blamed “most of the socks” on his brother.” (Those are published on that same page.)

Just a little joke! Heh! Whatsa matta? Can’t take a joke?

Debunking spiritualism is, on the face, an anti-parapsychology fanatic (not actually a skeptic, “fanatic skeptic” is actually an oxymoron), easily identified by his editing patterns and interests, as what I, for a time, called AP/D, probably also Goblin Face on Wikipedia, and others. But this is all called into question by Oliver’s new claims. I do not assume that someone is lying, in any particular instance, because even liars tell the truth on occasion.

I’m not really interested in you complaining about lies, since all you’ve done is lie about me. You’re currently writing all sorts of nonsense and smears about me on Wikipedia sucks on the bizarre mikemikev section on your blog. I’ve never in my life been to Birkbeck college, I never studied at London University and never have been a “white nationalist”. Also, I don’t live close to Birkbeck. None of the accounts you claim are me are mine, but mikemikev.

I wasn’t “complaining about lies.” I was telling him that his lies have consequences. Oliver is either simply lying, or incapable of understanding the difference between a statement of suspicion and allegation. I never claimed he had been to Birkbeck college. It was simply a suspicion, and it would only take one trip, a little outing, on one day, to then create an impression that anyone editing from Birkbeck on certain topics was Mikemikev. Read the SPI reports!

“White nationalist,” a term which Oliver tosses around casually about others, is not a fact but an interpretation, a judgment, and Oliver was a supporter of the BNP, it’s easy to see his Metapedia comments. He claims that those were impersonations of him. Fine. Did he let those impersonations stand, or did he document and disclaim them? Those are matters of fact or evidence.

He is calling “lies” what arises from his own interpretations. The “mikemikev” section is a subpage of a review of a blog post on Hatewatch, where the RW article on Mikemikev was used as a source to make claims about problems with Wikipedia socking.  So I looked at the Mikemikev Wikipedia Sock puppet investigations page and reviewed it. It’s quite long, and my impression is — unverified — that Mikemikev did sock extensively on Wikipedia, originally, but that, later, impersonation socks appeared, and that is a known AP pattern, to take a blocked target and impersonate them, to ramp up enmity toward the target, and that is exactly what has been done with me on RationalWiki: many disruptive socks, using my names or ready associations.

Someone is impersonating me. Who? Default hypothesis: the same person as the one who impersonated a user on Wikipedia in order to arouse attack on his work on Wikiversity. I had assumed the brother Darryl, the one with a long-term declared interest in “spiritualism,” etc., whereas Oliver had settled on other topic areas, such as racism and fascism. Now Oliver is claiming that it’s all him. There is an obvious suspicion to report.

Also the impersonation claims are bizarre, considering Mikemikev has impersonated me all over the internet including at Metapedia. I closed my account, it was then reopened to impersonate me with a false accusation of having schizophrenia. This is proven if you bothered to actually view the logs.

I’m not sure how one “closes an account” on a wiki. I think Oliver claimed to have spiked the password, and if you do this with email turned off, access is lost. Very much, this is not recommended! Anyone with a sufficiently high privilege level can “fix” the problem. Oliver has just set up an extensive task which would take hours. I did review his Metapedia contributions, and some, at least, of the logs. On the face, he would be claiming that there is evidence for what he is now claiming. It should, then, take a few minutes at most for him to point to the logs that I could allegedly examine. I’m not going to go digging through ancient refuse for something that actually matters very little. His Metapedia history is merely ironic, at most. I pointed out that he disclaimed it.

The claim of schizophrenia appears in a number of places. Given what I have seen of his behavior, by email, it’s plausible. Certainly something is radically off in what he is displaying, in the emails and on RationalWiki and elsewhere.

“Proven” is language used by believers, not by genuine skeptics, outside of narrow circumstances. There is a lost performative. Something is “proven” by a claimant to the satisfaction of a judge, an observer. It does not exist in the evidence itself. Evidence is used in a proof. Language around this can be sloppy, though. In this case, the claim and the proof exist only in Oliver’s mind. He could change that, with clear communication, but he doesn’t do “clear communication.” He just makes wild claims, asserted as fact, even when the evidence which he sometimes cites is more contradictory than confirming, when read carefully.

He depends on wiki users not caring to undertake that careful examination, but, too often, reasoning from conclusions, i.e., the conclusions stated match their own assumptions or prejudices, so they accept the claims.

I also find it mind boggling that you dispute Mikemikev is an online nazi.

I haven’t. Smith’s inability to interpret sane text is remarkably poor. He is probably referring to my comment a few days earlier, referring to what he had written that Mikemikev had written to him.

Mikemikev is cute, eh? I have little problem with his being called a racist, he may qualify, but … I just found a bio of him and I will be reviewing it. I have had no communication with Mikemikev. However, your brother is lying about him admitting to all those socks. That was obviously not what he meant.

The Wrongpedia attack on Mikemikev and his mother is beyond the pale. So you are continuing your rampage. Or is someone deviously impersonating you on RatWiki?

Where does this “dispute” the claim? Smith apparently sees everything as a dispute or argument or feud. and lack of agreement — or in this case, weak agreement — is seen as crazy opposition, as if it is necessary for me to believe what he believes or I am the enemy. Whoever has been behind all the AP mess for many years does apparently think like that. They are intellectual fascists, who is not loyal to the Cause is an enemy.

your emails are being ignored by the RationalWiki foundation, I was told this.

Far out. Told by whom? In this affair, what has appeared is something long obvious to many, but denied by some. There is a cabal. In my attempt to raise the attention of the Arbitration Committe to the issue of de-facto coordinated editing by a faction — which was actually obvious from the evidence I presented — the Committee reprimanded me by claiming I had not presented evidence of policy violations. But the problem was that this did not violate policy, unless there was off-wiki coordination. It happens through watchlist patterns. However, what has become much more visible since is that there is off-wiki coordination, so policy is being violated. And that is tolerated, and why? I find that an interesting question.

(My solution to the “cabal” problem  would be not to ban cabals, but to actually encourage and identify them and to then regulate activity. It is a soluble problem, but not if the very existence of the problem is denied. Wikipedia got stuck in the idea that it could and should ban “POV-pushing,” which is what cabals do. That then made the attainment of genuine consensus probably impossible. To find consensus — which is powerful and self-maintaining — requires all parties to be at the table. This is all basic organizational understanding that was unclear to a naive Wikipedia community, mostly composed, early on, of computer techies. Not academics.)

So Oliver suggested that I contact Rome Viharo. He provided me with his correspondence with Oliver, so I added it to the Oliver D. Smith email archive here. The story is mind-Boglin.

The emails of

To repeat what I wrote above: Oliver Smith claims

  • He made up the brother story years ago to get unblocked on Wikipedia.
  • He fed the story to many, fooling them. It was a joke, and funny as hell.
  • He lied to Tim Farley.
  • His real brother’s name is now being published.
  • Yet his real brother isn’t involved at all.
  • Nobody is paid, that was all his deception.
  • He’s the victim of massive harassment.
  • And Lomax is crazy for declaring as possible the story that Oliver made up and repeated for many years.

Sometimes the truth, when it is incomplete, can appear implausible. However, Occam’s razor, here, indicates that he is now lying through his teeth, but why?

It’s obvious: His brother is pissed, Oliver shot off his mouth far too much, and his actual family is putting pressure on him, because it is indeed a possibility that the brother could be harmed.

Someone did the impersonation socking on Wikipedia, which was illegal, and Darryl might be in hot water over that, or might fear it. So Oliver, who was not being paid to engage in all this crap, and could more readily walk away, decides to take the rap, but without admitting what was illegal (the impersonation socking, for starters). Nice. Will he perjure himself if deposed? Inquiring minds want to know.

If the brother is actually “innocent,” my advice for him would be the same as I gave Oliver months ago when he was claiming his brother had been the sock master: tell the truth, the whole truth, reveal what you know, or stand as equally responsible. At that point he denied knowing what his brother was up to, even though any warm body could see it from miles away, if it simply looked.

Defamation may be remediated by full disclosure, sometimes. Legally, it’s their best shot.

 

 

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impersonation books

These books, on lulu.com, impersonate favorite-target authors and attack other favorite targets of the Smiths.

The first to be seen by me was Abd Ul Rahman Lomax Internet Troll, archived  19 Mar 2018 23:22:40 UTC. The promotional image was a photoshop of an obese man, almost naked, with my face pasted on. Content was the RationalWiki article on me. The author was an impersonation of a long-term target of Darryl L. Smith, but also occasionally attacked by Oliver D. Smith.

Tim Farley and Wikipedia War (first archived ) author impersonates Rome Viharo, with a photoshop of a naked obese man given the face of Tim Farley (well-known skeptic), suspected by Rome Viharo of involvement with paid editing on Wikipedia. (I have not seen anything more than weak circumstantial evidence of this, and Tim Farley is not a target for my investigations.) Content is the RationalWiki article on Rome Viharo. Obviously Rome Viharo would not write and post this. A fake reviewer shows up to blame the book on me, pretending to be “Bill Connors,” a RationalWiki syop [sic] .

Rome Viharo Pseudoscience Crank author impersonates Craig Weiler as author, with a photoshop of Rome Viharo into cartoon of Donald Trump. Content is RationalWiki article on Rome Viharo. (Craig Weiler is a long-time target of Darryl L. Smith.) Same fake sysop showed up.

On RationalWiki yesterday, a troll appeared, Stop this now. The edits:

A page was also created by this user, Http://www.lulu.com/shop/craig-weiler/rome-viharo-pseudoscience-crank/ebook/product-23567980.html (Bongolian deleted)

The sock master has been focusing on Readymade, GrammarCommie, Cosmikdebris, and RoninMachbeth, see impersonations commenting on the Supporters and Enablers page and Comments (where most comments were moved). He is harassing those users in the apparent belief that they will then think it is me. And trying to harass me because he may think I will be angry with them. He’d have to be really stupid or insane. Probably the latter, there is plenty of evidence for this.

Stop this now accused Readymade, GrammarCommieCosmikdebris, and RoninMacbeth of creating the books, which is contradictory and preposterous to boot. On the Saloon bar, Stop this now pointed to the Craig Weiler impersonation and that “Rome Viharo and abd are being targeted by Rationalwiki users.”

That is the Darryl Smith talking point, the standard straw man argument. A number of RationalWiki users have been, at times, complicit (“Supporters and Enablers“) but only two users are suspected of “targeting” people, and that would be Oliver D. Smith (most recent identified sock, ODS) and his twin brother (this is openly confirmed by Oliver), Darryl L. Smith, current account: Debunking spiritualism. While there is still Oliver Smith involvement (the photoshopping of me in the first book was taken from a comment he posted on forum.encyclopediadramatica.rs, archived within a minute and posted by ODS on RatWiki within a couple of minutes), the massive, over-the-top socking, including impersonation socking, has been a long-term Darryl Smith device.

This has become completely and totally obvious. I do reserve as an alternate hypothesis that someone else is attempting to defame the Smiths and RationalWiki here. There have been sock allegations here that it was mikemikev. However, those same allegations were made before, by a checkusered sock that was certainly Darryl. Implausible.

If some RationalWiki users want to keep their heads in the sand, I’d suggest shutting up about this. They’ll get sand in your mouth.

Pseudoskeptics are classically lazy. They want to make snarky conclusions about anomalies, unusual phenomena, without actually doing the work. In this case, I have heavily documented what eventually led me to my conclusions about Oliver D. and Darryl L. Smith. It’s verifiable, and if any part of it is not, I’m available for questions. Many genuine skeptics have complained about the infection of the skeptical movement by “debunkers,” who are more interested in ad hominem arguments than science.

I never before encountered aggressive and abusive socking like this. But then again, I didn’t know about Dennis Markuze which was linked by a sock impersonating him here. (Totally preposterous, like all these impersonations. But preposterous socking worked on Wikipedia to get the targets attacked.) There is a page by Tim Farley that tells the story of how he was busted. Lots of complaints finally got the police to act. The Smith brothers have been depending on police inaction.

That page by Farley was fascinating. He did what I’m now doing, documented the activity … and then filed complaints and worked with others filing complaints. The only difference: Markuze was a religious fanatic, and the Smiths became fanatic “skeptics” and “anti-fascists.” The behavior is essentially hatred, acted out.

Finding more books:

Eleonóra Dubiczki Rightpedia author impersonates Junius Thaddeus, harassment target of Oliver D. Smith. First archived 17 Mar 2018 19:17:24 UTC

Mikemikev Rightpedia Neo Nazi author impersonates Junius Thaddeus, harassment target of Oliver D. Smith. First archived 

I may write an actual book on this affair…. Why not?

Meanwhile, there is a list of favorite targets. Taking a look:

 

Wikilegal libel study

If you see this on an archive site, be sure to check the original URL for updates and possible corrections. These are research notes, as are many pages on this blog.

I have been libelled by the WikiMedia Foundation, by the issuance of a global ban with no foundation in fact, apparently based on private complaints considered valid without any opportunity to respond. The WMF appears to think that issuing a global ban with no explanation protects them from liability for libel. However, they have claimed that global bans are issued only rarely, for exceptional cases, to protect the community. The fact of the ban is being used as an element in a series of defamations, by a person known to be one of the complainers. I believe that I have sufficient cause, based on this, for action to require the WMF to lift the ban or to provide evidence, and specifically the complaint mails or other evidence and arguments considered by them. I need not prove libel to file an action, as long as the legal theory on which the filing is based is possibly valid. Here, I’m looking at information sites and cases that might relate to this issue.

As to the WMF, the primary claim would be for libel, from the global ban issuance. For a libel claim, the restrictions of the TOS on the liability, and court jurisdiction for action against the WMF may not apply.

As to the RationalWiki Foundation, a different legal theory might apply, it’s more difficult. My sense from what I have seen is that the RWF will take down defamatory material on demand, unless they see it as mission-critical. I did already email them, they ignored it. (and there is a claim from Oliver D. Smith that he was told this was deliberate. So the next step would be a certified demand letter to the registered agent.)

In all cases, as I understand the matter, communications from users of these web sites are not privileged and would be subject to discovery, and users are not protected from defamation for actions they take, the protections of Section 230 are for removal of material, not for provision of it.

Libel_case_against_Wikimedia_Foundation_dismissed

As a minor point, the Wikinews article has, at the very end:

The Register has a long history of denigrating Wikimedia projects.

That is an obvious neutrality violation. The preceding text fails to distinguish between reporting and editorializing. The Register source was an editorial by Cade Metz, not “the Register.” This what you get when amateurs are given collective control. They play at journalism. In any case, the Register article is excellent.

Memorandum of law in support of motion to dismiss

47 U.S. Code § 230 – Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material

isp-liability-for-internet-defamation looks good. (those who post defamation may be held liable. The liability of the ISP may vary with context and conditions. It’s looking to me like it might take a court order to force this, if the ISP is merely inactive. But if it takes a positive step that has the effect of defamation, it could become liable.

the-decline-and-fall-of-section-230/ is a gold mine to be carefully studied.

At this point, this is the bottom line. There is sufficient case law that it may be possible for an action for libel to survive a motion to dismiss, and a motion to dismiss will still require expenditure by the defendant. That would not allow the filing of a frivolous suit without associated hazards. If the cause of action is reasonably plausible, it need not be bulletproof to be effective for remediation purposes.

Further, the law does not protect the individuals who defamed, nor is the WMF or the RWF likely to defend them. The impersonation socking I have been describing has known individuals as perpetrators, very likely, and I do have evidence that can be used, and more evidence can be obtained lawfully. I will continue to study the case law and analysis.

(The issues with involved individuals, the WMF, and the RMF, are distinct and different.)

https://law.stackexchange.com/a/6822 confirms user liability, and site owner is protected if they take the libel down. That’s my understanding of Section 230. They cannot maintain the defense of “the community did it” in the face of a specific claim of defamation, unless they take it down. By taking an action on their own judgment, they become liable for defamation, if the action defames. I expect the WMF will argue that the action was needed for user protection, but that argument, given the facts, is false, and, more directly, the defamation involved in a global ban is unnecessary for protection. If they formally notified the user that they are prohibited from editing, and the user violates that, this would be a TOS violation, and it would then allow the use of the global lock tool and public announcement. The banned user would still have a right to see defamatory claims (the evidence considered), for possible action against those who  may have defamed.

At this point, I don’t know if this has been tested anywhere. Untested legal theories, if plausible, can make for actions that will survive summary judgment.

http://www.adlexsolicitors.co.uk/internet-defamation.htm focuses on UK law (some actions related to the issues may be filed in U.K. courts). They suggest a first response is a “lawyer letter.” Legally, a demand letter does not require a lawyer, in my opinion, but such a letter is more likely to be taken seriously. My interest will be that such letters be legally sufficient to put a site operator — or an individual — on notice that their behavior is defamatory, so that they may take remedial action, and if such action is reasonably prompt, it may allow, then, the “service provider” protection to be effective.

https://seqlegal.com/blog/10-things-you-should-know-about-libel again focuses on the UK.

This is handy.

Wikimedia Foundation
c/o CT Corporation System
818 West Seventh Street
Los Angeles, California 90017
legal@wikimedia.org

and then

Business ID#: 4330247 Status: Active
Entity Name: THE RATIONALWIKI FOUNDATION, INC. Standing: Good Standing
Entity Type: Domestic Nonprofit Corporation Domestic State: New Mexico
Statute Law Code: 53-8-1 to 53-8-99
Mailing Address:
122 GIRARD SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
Principal Place of Business in New Mexico:
122 GIRARD SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106

Character Of Affairs: Operating sites RationalWiki.org and EvolutionWiki.org and related.

Director Information

  • David Gerard: 122 Girard Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
  • Aidan Bissell-Siders, 122 Girard Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
  • Eric Doe 122 Girard Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
  • Simon Peter Hughes 122 Girard Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106

Officer Information

  • Chief Operating Officer:Trent Toulouse 122 Girard Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
  • Chief Executive Officer:Huw Powell 122 Girard Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106

08/04/2010 Certificate Of Incorporation THE RATIONALWIKI FOUNDATION, INC. 3 PAGES PERPETUAL 08/05/2010 893489

The RationalWiki article on the Foundation lists current directors as:

Below is mostly dicta.

There is a discrepancy. Huw Powell (RW User:Human) is not listed by New Mexico as a Director, but as the CEO. Openly real name. Human’s  edits to the John Fuerst article seemed designed to improve it (toward objectivity). As a board member, does Powell know about the deliberate lack of response to a complaint email, as claimed by Oliver Smith? Maybe I’ll ask him. Not the most urgent task on my list. Human has almost entirely stopped editing RW for the last six months.

David Gerard is, of course, David Gerard. Interesting that someone who has supported the libellers — generally indirectly and possibly maintaining plausible deniability , but quickly actioning requests — is on the Board. The claim of the RMF is that it does not make content decisions, but if Board members are active members with high privilege, and use that privilege, this is disingenuous. The RMF does, in fact, make content decisions, I’ve seen at least one page deletion made as official, with warnings to users not to restore the page. My guess: someone didn’t just send a complaining email, they took more substantial action. The WikiMedia Foundation not uncommonly does that with some kinds of complaints. The protections of Section 230 do not extend to the maintenance of alleged defamatory material or other illegal material after notice provided.

Simon Peter Hughes is openly Spud. As they say on RW, seems sane.

Aidan Bissel-Siders is probably this nice kid, who wrote this RW-interest paper, serious work addressing (actually taking the piss out of) a stupid claim. Fun. I’ve done a fair amount of that kind of writing, though not normally so sarcastic. However, that kind of sarcasm is so common on RW that I don’t yet see a clue as to which user Bissel-Siders might be. So far, the candidates are FuzzyCatPotato and Reverend Black Percy.

Eric Doe I could find nothing on with a quick search. However, Rev. Black Percy has not edited for over six months, but I’d expect Bissel-Siders to remain active (given his research paper and age). I vote for the latter as being FuzzyCatPotato.

From prior history, I expect I may see complaints on RationalWiki that I am “attacking” RW users here. Yet what I am actually doing is showing who is responsible for RationalWiki, the real people involved. Board members are presumably covered by errors and omissions insurance. This actually makes them attractive targets. However, the only board member where some liability might be imputed, so far, is David Gerard. (Basically, his action to support defamation would be asserted. It is not necessary to have proof to assert a claim; proof may not exist until discovery.

My guess is that the RMF will settle relatively easily, if pushed. With the WMF, I’ll be challenging a process they have used for a few years. I have no crystal ball.

http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/civil-litigation/demand-letter-defamation-case.html
https://jux.law/cease-desist-defamation-of-character-template-example-sample-form/

Pro Se filing in US District Court

Protected: Christopher

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ODS

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

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

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

ODS contributions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheeseburger face had [https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:ODS&diff=prev&oldid=1931620 pointed out that the alleged doxxing above] wasn’t. (That is one reason I reached out to him, but … too bad. So far, he is either actively enabling AP socks or he has his head firmly wedged in the sand. I had actually been careful, but AP socks call any identification of their accounts “doxxing.” Whereas the freely identify the accounts of others … and practically nothing is done about it.)

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

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

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

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

How is ED treating you?

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

You are sick!

Temple OldKnight Oedipus Stesichorus Corinna Anoncreon Run Herodotus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t see how anyone could miss it, if they look. This is the infamous Oliver D. Smith. The possible problem is that ODS is a serious troll and will use the ability to edit protected pages. How much difference this will make, I don’t know. (None of my comments anywhere should be construed as defending Rightpedia, which is beyond racialist and deep into racism, unapologetically. They do have a copy of a public record showing the former home residence for Oliver and Darryl, and, in addition, the names and ages of other residents. Contrary to frequently claims, I did show the data from that briefly, but quickly redacted it, it now shows only the two names — as highly relevant to the socking — and the UK postal code. The street name has been removed, but AP socks continue to claim, long after it was removed, that I their home address is no this blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 13, Oliver was putting together this edit.

Reviews

 

RationalWiki had a wide reputation as a joke wiki, where skeptics and atheists — and adolescents — fully engaged in unrestrained snark. There are many reviews, but start with the Wikipedia article. It will be fun to compare that article to the favorite targets of the RatWikians and their allies, the Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. Any socks there? Some much to research, so little time…. That one is for later. I immediately see POV-pushing in the editing….

This was reasonable, on the face, this was not, it involves synthesis, unless there is reliable source for the claim that criticism is because “beliefs” are challenged. That kind of claim is difficult even when reliable source can be found for it, it should be attributed … unless there was a formal study!

Lets start with a list of reviews. First, from Wikipedia:

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5597/4652

At first glance, this source is misrepresented in the article. (note 13). What the article has is synthesis from the source. The source does not actually say that.

  •  Smith, Jonathan C. Critical Thinking: Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. John Wiley & Sons, 2017, pp 77. 9781119029489
  • Shvets, Alexander (October 2, 2014). Filev, D.; Jabłkowski, J.; Kacprzyk, J.; et al., eds. Intelligent Systems’2014: Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference Intelligent Systems IS’2014, September 24–26, 2014, Warsaw, Poland, Volume 2: Tools, Architectures, Systems, Applications. Series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, Vol. 323Springer Publishing. A Method of Automatic Detection of Pseudoscientific Publications, page 533 et seq. ISBN 978-3-319-11310-4.

This is a conference paper, such are often not carefully reviewed. This is the sourced text:

In Intelligent Systems’2014, Alexander Shvets stated that RationalWiki is one of the few online resources that “provide some information about pseudoscientific theories” and notes that it attempts to “organize and categorize knowledge about pseudoscientific theories, personalities, and organizations”.

What RationalWiki does is to organize, not knowledge (Wikipedia does that), but snark, loosely based on very irregularly collected sources, often terminally weak.

This is a conference paper as well. The mention of RationalWiki is shallow, the authors do not appear to have done more than look at the stated purposes, and a hosted essay by Carl Sagan. The impression one would get from reading the article is not the impression I would see from the source.

  • https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/rationalwiki_emamerican_thinkerem_is_a_wingnut_publication.html
  • https://www.cato.org/blog/ten-things-every-economist-should-know-about-gold-standard
  • Einspruch, Franklin (September 6, 2016). “Cultural Marxists Are Actually Pomofascists”The Federalist. Retrieved August 14, 2017

These are sources that mention a specific RationalWiki article to expose it or argue against it. No source so far is actually a review of the site, anything more than a passing mention. I’ll keep looking.

Dissertations are not generally considered reliable source, they would be primary sources. This dissertation simply mentions an idea taken from RationalWiki, and it describes the purpose of the site, with no analysis of whether or not the site actually accomplishes that purpose.

This went on with links showing that someone referenced RationalWiki in some way. Actual reviews? None (neither positive nor negative.)

Okay, I know to look at history. Did anyone attempt to add actual reviews? Wikipedia does not make it easy to search history. While that could easily be done from the database, no priority has been given it. Someone might take advantage of that and create a site with full-database search access. It would make certain kinds of wiki studies far easier!

I found a brief review that had been added and immediately removed, as it was a “blog” and thus “not reliable source.” This was only a superficial analysis of “site bias,” not actually controversial and not very informative.

There was an Articles for deletion discussion on RationalWiki. I find no assertion of source sufficient to establish notability. Passing mentions don’t count. It was kept, though there was much opinion to keep it as a redirect to the Conservapedia article. In the discussion I found these sources:

  • http://blastmagazine.com/2007/09/03/thoughts-on-a-conservapedia/
  • http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/19/nation/na-schlafly19/2 (page 2 is important. I couldn’t find this at first.)

Those are passing mention, really about Conservapedia. This was weak, but that’s Wikipedia. An admin takes a glance at a discussion, makes a snap decision, and unless someone cares enough to appeal it, there it goes, enshrined as a community decision (which it didn’t look like to me! Most wanted to see better sources. My own opinion as an inclusionist would do something very different…. )

https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/the-rationalwiki-foundation/albuquerque-new-mexico-87106/the-rationalwiki-foundation-rationalwiki-rational-wiki-rw-rationalwikiorg-rationalwi-1143383

Not considered reliable source, but an actual review! With details! This report describes RatWiki as it was when I was active there. Some of that atmosphere is still there. the report was by “Rational Wiki Exposed,” not exactly an encouraging author if one is looking for neutrality. But it was fairly sober.

Okay, I found a genuine revert war, starting with [ this edit], adding a review.  The user, an SPA, was warned for edit warring and disappeared. The source:

RationalWiki guts a reader’s attempt to correct its article on female genital mutilation

This is another source that is based on “RationalWiki is wrong on X.” This happens to be a topic I know a great deal about. Many sources misrepresent the position of Islam on the topic. What upsets people so much is not what is allowed or approved, and the majority opinion is that the extreme practices are prohibited. But this is not our topic here. The RatWiki article on this topic is far from the worst there.

I round a reference to the RW article where they brag report about mentions.

That quotes from many mentions. Indeed, it quotes from the book mentioned above:

Smith, Jonathan. Critical Thinking: Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, 2nd Ed. John Wiley & Sons, 2017. 9781119029489. Lists RationalWiki as a logical fallacy library.

This is hilarious. I’m not really sure what the author intended. The instructions are to “select an example of a logical fallacy.” So RatWiki is a place to find the expression of logical fallacies. The training that I can imagine is to teach students how to spot logical fallacies. If a site is merely a list of logical fallacies with examples given, there would be little or no challenge. Rather, each of those sites, it is highly likely, expresses logical fallacies. The Nizkor.org site is not about logical fallacies, as such, it is political. If one’s political beliefs align with the beliefs of a source, one is far less likely to spot the fallacies.

Sound training will practice identifying logical fallacies in our own thinking or argument, or in the arguments and thinking of those we might agree with. I generally agree with the substance of what is on the Nizkor site. But there is at least one blatant logical fallacy on the home page. Can you spot one?

5.4 Group Exercise: Identify the FallacyIn this exercise, divide into two teams. Each team selects an example of a logical fallacy (from this chapter) from one of these websites:

Team 1 presents its example to Team 2. Team 2 has five minutes to identify it and explain it. If the explanation is acceptable to the moderator, Team 2 gets a point. Repeat for Team 2. Complete until each team has a chance to identify five logical fallacies. The team correctly identifying the most fallacies wins.

I have created a link for each site. How the exercise would be done is unclear. There is a form of logical fallacy, “straw man,” where one presents an argument that is allegedly the argument of another, but it is not actually what the other says, thinks, or believes. So if students pick a description of someone else’s argument, they would be explaining a fantasy. Much more interesting, I’d think, to identify logical fallacies presented as factual or logical, and RatWiki is full of those, it is practically the norm in some articles.  For extra credit, identify logical errors in the thinking of people you agree with, and for a doctorate, identify them in your own thinking, because everyone does this (at least until it is distinguished). A loglcal fallacy does not mean that the conclusion is wrong, set that right/wrong mess aside. It merely means that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. Something may be missing.

from other sources:

This refers to the RW article, Michael Prescott

(If Mr. Prescott sees this and requests that the link be removed, I’ll do it. Links raise Google ranking. Unfortunately, to study RationalWiki and create something verifiable, I need to place links, but I can find less convenient ways to do it, on request. I have not yet studied the Prescott article, but I’ve certainly seen worse on RatWiki!)

The public comments are interesting…. I decided to look at who created this article.

This then led me to more socks…. another day, another set of socks documented. There are certain red flags, easy to see, sometimes. Some identifications are not so easy, and there are probably some errors. The Smiths have no monopoly on snarky defamation.

to be continued ….

Supporters and enablers

Oliver and Darryl Smith (“Anglo Pyramidologist” and see RationalWiki/Anglo Pyramidologist) would not be able to user or abuse RationalWiki as they have without the the support or enabling of some active in that community. The RationalWiki community was always difficult. It was what one might expect from a collection of rowdy “skeptical” teenagers, though some were older, to be sure. I had edited there for a time, and was given sysop privileges, but ultimately scaled far back on my contributions because I concluded that the community was impossible. The last straw was when a user told me to “go fuck your kids,” and the “moderators” thought there was no problem with that. Just ordinary banter, eh? Not to a parent!

The list

Some of the above have been added from a narrow suspicion, and S&E may be inadvertent or ignorant or otherwise. 

David Gerard and another had attempted to remove my sysop privileges, and that had been reversed. My user rights log.

As can be seen in the log, permanent removal of rights required a vote. That would normally be done on the “Chicken coop.” However, David Gerard had grown in power, as often happens with “techies.” So when an article was created on me on RationalWiki as retaliation for my documentation on the WMF meta wiki of the Anglo Pyramidologist socks, I showed up and commented. And David Gerard removed my rights. Did anyone notice? I don’t know. I was then blocked for “doxxing,” but I had not mentioned the Smith — except as Smith socks did.

Still, there was a possibility of taking the issue to the Chicken coop. I didn’t do that, waiting. There was eventually a discussion raised on the coop, by the major active Darryl Smith sock, and it was quickly closed. I was not allowed to participate, violating coop rules. However, by now it is apparent to me that nobody is willing to stand for the older traditions, which at least allowed the targets of articles a fair opportunity to argue for correcting errors. Researching the AP sock activity, I saw again and again that article targets were impersonated and harassed, and were blocked based on the activities of impersonators. They were also blocked for “doxxing,” when they didn’t name names.

I now hold the entire community responsible for the situation at RationalWiki. RationalWiki is an enemy of genuine skepticism and, as well, of academic freedom. So this page will document the users involved, which I’d avoided, only, until now, documenting suspected AP socks. Some of the people I will describe here might indeed be AP socks. he creates sleepers that only move to his favorite topics later. But being listed here is not an accusation of being a Smith brother. Most probably are not.

Some may be listed simply as those who had an opportunity to recognize what was going on, but who turned away from it (example: CheeseburgerFace).

Some of these simply repeated the claims of AP socks as if fact, even when grossly and obviously incorrect. Others appear to have assumed that impersonation socks were me. That’s a stupidity that many have fallen for, including Wikipedia administrators — and that is how I became involved in the AP mess, I requested steward checkuser, which, insanely, is not normally done with impersonation socks, because they “self-identify” as a blocked user. So who needs checkuser, they are blocked, end of topic. But these “sock puppet investigations” and blocks are then used to defame the impersonation target, and it worked, many times.

If any user named here wishes to contest this claim, comment and verify the comment on RatWiki as the user, and I will review and I will, at least, show the protest.

The list of users

(These are not claimed to be socks or sock masters, in spite of what was claimed on User talk:Readymade.)

David Gerard Long-term involvement as mentioned above.

Bongolian to be documented.

CheeseburgerFace This was unfortunate. I thought this user might be willing to consider evidence and reason, including the massive and unnecessary disruption shown on his talk page. But it was not to be.  CheeseburgerFace did not merely hide revisions, he suppressed them, so that even sysops cannot see them. What was in them? A note that an edit to his talk page had been an impersonation sock. So he acted to protect the sock master and not to actually communicate with the one impersonated, who offered verification of identity. If he believed that the edits doxxed (that claim has often been made when it was false), he still could have established communication. No, he is responsible for continued disruption. (The disruption long predates my involvement, and will continue, I predict, unless the real causes are addressed.) See also, this edit from the real Emil Kirkegaard removed by CF.

Cosmikdebris many actions.

GrammarCommie see many edits suppressing communication, such as blanking of the edit to User talk:ReadyMade — and many more. Trolls when he blocks or deletes.  Suspected, on evidence, of being  terminally incompetent … or radically immature, lacking sysop skills. Not uncommon for RW sysops. See the comments on his user talk page. This is the kind of person who, when you say, “Have a nice day,” reply “Fuck off! You can’t make me, asshole!”

Readymade see archived user talk (as this is written, Readymade has not responded. Response may shift this characterization. Otherwise it is quite clear.) Readymade did respond. See the subpage.

There was also a new development with Readymade, who is showing some sanity. I’ll expand on this later.

Christopher to be documented. Collection of notes on Christopher.

Leuders to be documented.

Others will be added as cause appears (and names may be removed if they smell the coffee and act). Remember, inaction when faced with clear evidence of abuse can be considered cause for listing, when a reasonable person would recognize the issue. They also serve (abuse) who only watch.

The discussion on User talk:Readymade, linked above, shows how this works, when it is most clear. Readymade lied about a page here. Why? I don’t know, but anyone can verify it if they care. When a community tolerates lies like that — and RatWiki has been doing this for a long time, crossing the line between sarcasm and snark and lying — the community has lost coherence, unless lies and deception are the goal. Are they? How would we know?

Rimuru Tempest

User:EmilOWK

If you see this on an archive site, be sure to check the original URL for possible changes.

EmilOWK is the only rationalwiki account used by Emil Kirkegaard. Many other accounts have impersonated him.

The following content was deleted by Skeptical from the RationalWiki User page for EmilOWK (Emil Kirkegaard.) It allegedly contained a “real name.” That name would be [redacted], and, as mentioned, was very likely an impersonation account — and AP (the Smith brothers) had heavily impersonated [redacted], and the RW article on Kirkegaard was created by “[redacted version of name].”

Later, an AP sock created an article on [redacted], attacking the real person — who is not notable (unlike Kirkegaard).

I add a Comment at the end.

The content:


Impersonators and harassment

I have been impersonated on Rational Wiki, once getting banned because someone made a legal threat in my name. Thus, it makes sense to keep a list of these incidents, so that I don’t have to dig them up every time the point is mentioned. Here’s a list of impersonating accounts:

  1. User:EmilOWK2 https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Saloon_bar#can_you_unblock_my_EmilOWK1_account.3F
  2. User:E. O. W. Kirkegaard https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Emil_O._W._Kirkegaard&diff=1861798&oldid=1861784 http://archive.li/sHsgq
  3. User:Emil Kirkegaard https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Race_(human_classification)&diff=prev&oldid=805832810

There is at least one particular individual who likes to create a bunch of sockpuppet accounts and use them to add hostile content to my article or related articles (say, OpenPsychJohn Fuerst, or some of the alt-right talk women (Tara McCarthy et al), also recently moved on to Laird Shaw, and has had a long time obsession with Rome Viharo). Essentially all of these are single-purpose accounts, i.e. they have no other contributions and were usually created just before the person(s) needed a new user so as to seem like multiple people.

  1. User:Asgardian
  2. User:Aza
  3. User:Skeptical
  4. User:Welliver
  5. User:Antifa Ireland
  6. User:[redacted]
  7. User:OldSword

(these were the ones I found doing a 15 mins search, there’s probably more socks)

There’s also a number of IP users:

  1. 166.88.193.38
  2. 166.88.123.112
  3. 162.217.31.43
  4. 86.14.2.77

Since I don’t have IP data etc. the users here are identified based on certain patterns, i.e.:

  1. Exclusive edit history/interest in race related topics and persons, mostly persons.
  2. Very brief profile texts, e.g one of the above just has “Hello.”, most of them have nothing. Genuine editors usually take some pride in their work, people who create many socks just need another name to post under.
  3. Uses many insults, especially racist, pedophile. E.g. “tying to tone down or remove the fact this sicko is a pedophile apologist is itself a defence for pedophilia. stop.”

Besides posting on RW, the same person often makes posts on other sites, usually with near-copy pasta content:


Comment

For creating this, EmilOWK was blocked by Skeptical. It is clear that there was no intention to doxx here, but to defend himself. He’s been impersonated, that is conclusive. He may have had no idea, it appears, that there might be a real [redacted] who was himself impersonated, all he knew is that he was attacked by an account with that name.

His current user page claims he is “banned.” That notice was placed by CheeseburgerFace, who is an RW moderator. It’s a template and refers to the Chicken Coop. In theory, RW bans (and desysopping, other than temporary) require a discussion on the Coop.  I could find no trace of such a discussion. This is one more sign that AP has been specially protected. Does CheeseburgerFace realize what he did? I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll ask him at some point.

This comment from AP reveals a great deal. The IP geolocates as possible AP, and admits to being Welliver. This is classic AP fog:

Its the crank Rome Viharo spreading misinformation and trying to create drama here, again. And the impersonations are always by him, that he then tries to pin on me, or others; I’m well familiar with his internet antics and his RW article logs his shenanigans. If someone actually bothers to look: the user “[redacted]” has zero actual contributions to the article since the article was re-written by two sysops. So where is the “hit piece”? Oops… I also said “Welliver” was a temporary account for editing on separate IP I don’t own (since I was editing from a different location.), hence “Once I get back home in a few days I will edit from my public IP” — as I am now.

This is the on the Talk page for the RW article on Kirkegaard. Oliver D. Smith has publicly acknowledged having created the articles on Kirkegaard and Fuerst. [redacted] literally created both articles. [Kirkegaard], [Fuerst]. The Kirkegaard article was edited by a number of sysops (“sysop” is not a particular distinction on RW), what stands out as extensive editing before the comment by the IP would be Welliver, an obvious AP sock (and one that I connected the recent socking on WMF wikis with the full AP panalopy, who was a sysop. He screwed up. (And the edit has been totally vaporized, it’s not in the record any more. That takes high-level tools, one more sign of special protection for AP.)

It was Welliver who added the “pedophile” or “pedophile apologist” material, which took massive and obsessive stalking of Kirkegaard, since he had only rarely discussed the topic, and many years ago,– and, as is typical for AP, the sources AP found are then twisted and exaggerated, ignoring context that would create a different impression.

I don’t own sock-puppets, that’s more lies from Viharo who actually is the user with dozens of banned socks and who shows up on a new account every month trying to cause trouble.

That’s a double lie. Viharo has done some socking, but it is trivial compared with the massive effort by the Smith brothers. In his email to me, Oliver Smith claimed that “99.9%” of the socks were his brother. He did not claim Viharo impersonation. In the known corpus, in many edits, Oliver Smith has admitted many socks. Were the bulk of the socks his brother? I don’t know.

From one person, the one who emailed me, I saw more than one personality, he went from relatively calm and communicative to blithering hysteric. (There have been claims of mental illness, both from “enemies” but also from apparent AP socks.)

There are two brothers, that’s well-established, but … the one living at home is apparently Oliver, though earlier he was attending college. Attacking Viharo has been an AP pastime since Wikipedia, when an AP sock (later checkuser-identified) outed tumbleman as Rome Viharo, claiming it was not outing because it was based on an accidental edit. Outing (or “doxxing”) on a wiki is revealing private information, even if it was obtained from some public source. Often wiki administration dislikes this, but it is not necessarily illegal. Defamation is illegal, and AP routinely defames. Rome Viharo rather promptly acknowledged his relatively few socks. The Smith brothers denied them for years, even as it became completely obvious.

Viharo above claims to have “contacted Emil today”, hence I already see Emil attacking me on twitter. This is Viharo’s main MO, he tries to side with people to attack me – he’s been cyberstalking for the past 2 years.

The obvious question: who is “me,” such that Rome Viharo and Emil are “attacking” him? I saw this paradox many times in the WMF sequence. AP would claim that it was all nonsense, and at the same time that he was being attacked. (He also claimed that other “skeptical editors” were attacked, but never pointed to an example — there were none. Some editors who had been involved in certain actions were mentioned, but simply factually without anything like “attack.” The dramatic response of AP socks convinced me that I was on the right track.

Viharo was stalked and did some research in return. More recently, AP has attempted to blame people tagging him on me, but this was all open on the internet before I ever heard of “Anglo Pyramidologist.” What I’ve done is to document what is quite visible, though often buried in the loud noise of massive wiki contribution flow.

And a final point: this article was inactive for well over a year. Why all the drama now? Suddenly all these people show up. If they had really cared about their RW pages and thought they were being “defamed” they would have should up over 500 days ago. We never heard anything in all that time. This Emil person has only showed up now because Viharo impersonated him then emailed him. This fool has been tricked and now blames me for the impersonation, along with some other wild allegations on his twitter. 86.14.2.77 (talk) 14:35, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

AP socks seem to be dropping by my blog every few days to claim I have been tricked. It is usually “tricked by mikemikev.” I have had no contact with mikemikev, as far as I know, and when I came to a conclusion about AP identity, it was based on my own research — but, to be sure, I looked at some facts that had been pointed out. Mikemikev had put up a directory listing for the family, claiming that someone had sent it to him. I was not willing to pay for such. However, I confirmed enough to toss a pebble in the pond to see if it splashed. It splashed massively. The AP response demonstrated beyond any doubt that what I published was completely correct. I have now removed the home address, because it is not necessary, that was only needed transiently to establish the family make-up, confirming that the “brothers” are twins and, at one time, lived together. The original information (widely published) included the names of all family members (the mother, father, and an older brother.) I have removed that, again, because it is not needed.

(The claim is made that the information was from behind a paywall, 192.com, as if that would make it “private.” “Paywall” is completely irrelevant.)

AP is Oliver D. Smith. He has also implicated his brother, Darryl Smith. And he is routinely libelling his targets, he libelled Emil Kirkegaard in his email to me, calling him a “neo-Nazi pedophile.”

The libels are continuing.

And Skeptical was a Smith brother. Oliver? I don’t know. Probably.

The kicker is really that he vanished as soon as he was persistently called “Oliver.” Simply from being called that, he said that Abd’s conspiracy theory was getting old. But I had not, at that point, claimed he was Oliver Smith. Just that he was probably an AP sock. He then proved it by his extreme behavior.

There are many evidences the brothers have created. In attempting to get the AP studies taken down, the socks have claimed that it was about them. I.e., confirming that they were AP, socking. (But some claimed that the original Anglo Pyramidologist had not edited for a long time, so the taggings were “wrong.”) The IP sock here — geolocating correctly for known AP location — says that others are attempting to blame “him.” So he must be AngloPyramidologist or Atlantid — same user as Oliver D. Smith. — or his brother.

Draft RW AP sock study

Red x.svg An editor believes that this user page should be deleted. The reason given is Abd ul-Rahman Lomax‘s personal vendetta against a Wikipedia user. Not relevant to Rationalwiki. Off-mission.”
Please discuss this assassination attempt on this article’s entry on the Articles for deletion page.

Because a mangled version of the name (a common AP trait) — and many false accusations about what I have found — has been posted, I am creating this study on RationalWiki. A foundation of this study is found on meta, you can see my contributions there, I’m [1] there. That study, however, is only of WMF socks, beginning with those found in w:Suspected sock puppets/Anglo Pyramidologist/, and adding in new socks identified on Wikiversity and meta, checkusered as “Michael skater” socks (many reports), that being the earliest then-identified account, and found (by me) to be connected with AP socks by private evidence, as well as obvious behavioral traits and claims of the socks, there are more than 200 of them, since 2011 (with one account going back to about 2008, as I recall (but not named as the puppet master).

Since the most recent sock creation here, at this writing, admitted to being a returning user familiar with my account here, and another, clearly having done an obsessive level of research into my internet history (which is extensive, going back into the 1980s, pre-web), and claimed to have 700 socks here (a “joke,” later claimed), I’ve decided to study the RW activity. This page will list suspected AP socks on RationalWiki. Because the identifying behavior could also happen independently, there is no claim here that all listed are AP socks, but most will likely be, from 100% success at identifying them on the meta wiki.

Whether or not RationalWiki wants to do anything about this is not up to me. I am an observer and watcher, reporting what I see and, then, after I have seen much, perhaps some analysis.

One of the characteristics of these socks is impersonation of others, so it is always possible, as well, that some enemy creates an impersonation sock for them. The AP “family” may also literally be a family, early edits claimed that the disruptive sock master was “my brother,” being identified with him by coincident IP. Thus when AP/X claims not to be AP/Y, it might be true. So one of the current aspects of my study on meta has been looking for other behavioral traits, to be able to classify these accounts as one brother or another, and there is also a claim of a sister being blocked as well, for the same reason. There is one clear candidate for that; but the problem is that the interest area of this account was identical to that of another brother, she was merely better behaved. As pointed out on Wikipedia, in the SPI case, this could also be a “good hand” account. Still in violation of policy. Block in spite of apparent positive contributions. A Wikipedia problem, Wikipedia became inflexible and hyper-reactive, it was not always like that.

Many of the account names found in WMF history also show up on RationalWiki. Because of impersonation (or, more rarely, coincidence), no “proof” is claimed that these are the same user (or user family), but it’s an obvious working hypothesis.

To be added to this list: reg date, first edit, total visible contributions as of listing, last edit as of listing, and other qualities.

At this point, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are major AP targets that I have not looked at yet, this is just from a few pages and recent activity.

List of accounts

  1. Abd (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) Not an SPA, but focus on Abd, recently.
  2. Boredatwork (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA. interest in Abd, betrays long-term RW.
  3. Asgardian (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA, interest in Abd. Waves sign, “Sock.” See also AP interest
  4. Marky (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA, interest in Abd.
  5. EmilOWK (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) not AP, but AP interest area, probably the real Emil O. W. Kirkegaard, could be verified if needed. Probably harmless sock of User:E. O. W. Kirkegaard
Disclosure: I do not know and had zero familiarity with Emil O. W. Kirkegaard.
  1. EmilOWK2 (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) impersonation of EmilOWK[2]
  2. BenSteigmans (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA for AP interests, started the Kirkegaard article. Many AP socks impersonate Ben Steigmann.
  3. Igobymanynames (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) long-term but still SPA, AP interests, name is a sock admission
  4. OldSword (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA, AP interests, “Sword” is common among AP socks.
  5. Welliver (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) still SPA, many AP interests.
  6. Waller Joel from Florida (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA interest in Abd
  7. Waller MU Joel Abd (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA, “Abd” in username an AP trait, trolling for approval of spiritualism
  8. 86.14.2.77 (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) long term, AP interests, persistent ISP matches prior WP SPI for AP
  9. Michael_Coombs_heyguy (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA, probable impersonation sock, attempts to impugn EmilOWK
  10. Wing Street (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename)
  11. Skeptical (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA, AP interests, but just got sysop rights. This requires some serious caution.
  • See [3] where Skeptical blocks a gaggle of socks and deletes harassment article contributions by likely AP socks — or impersonators.
  • On the other hand, AP, to create the appearance of being someone else, has been known to “oppose” himself. He has nothing invested in those socks and pages, knows from the start that they will probably be blocked and pages deleted.
  • I still want to list Skeptical here. This is not a list of proven socks, merely possible suspects. This would be done on Wikipedia, though, hopefully, with more behavioral study; this is not a request, just a study and before it becomes any request (which may or may not happen here), it would be cleaned up. The same is true of the studies on meta that also triggered a firestorm of burning socks, and the same on Wikiversity, when ever anyone openly starts to look at AP behavior, he unleashes an army of toy soldiers. His hope, I suspect, is that administrators will then blame me for “provoking” him.
  • Meanwhile, assuming that Skeptical is not AP, my condolences. AP has been creating conflict between “believers” (or claimed believers) and “skeptics” for a long time. He has claimed or implied affiliation with Guerilla Skeptics and well-known skeptical figures. He is a false friend of skepticism, giving it a very bad name in some circles.
  1. Heyguy 2 (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) SPA, probable trolling for attack on EmilOWK
  2. Kirkegaard (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) ditto
  3. Antifa_Ireland (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) Recent socks elsewhere used “Antifa”
  4. Heyguy 3 (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) again
  5. Heyguy 4 (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) and over and over
  6. Maybe”Chuck” (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename) or maybe not
  7. Muslim (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename)
  8. Abd is my hero (talk · contribs · block  · rights  · rename)

and now a huge pile, created possibly in response to the first version of this page — which did not name anyone except “Anglo Pyramidologist” — simply the Wikipedia name for the sock family — and me. The extreme reaction to something that, in itself, is harmless, (but that is defying AP threats) is an AP trait.


When I was blocked on RationalWiki and this page was deleted — by Skeptical — I created the version here, which has been greatly expanded. The original page had no “doxxing,” i.e., revelation of a real name for an account or other personal information, only suspected socks (which are quite obvious, most of them, when one knows what to look for. It is not, as AP has often claimed, merely being “skeptical.” )

Anglo Pyramidologist

This was the original page here: List of articles edited on RationalWiki.

When this study began, I was aware of claims that behind the Anglo Pyramidologist socks was Oliver D. Smith, and some sources included his twin brother Darryl Smith. I did not mention those claims because I had not verified them. Eventually, I found enough evidence to assert it. It is not necessary to have absolute proof to state a position or assert a claim

One of the factors that weighed in favor of asserting it was that there was no contrary evidence. That is, there was no sign of the real Oliver D. Smith appearing and denying the claims. As well, some of the people making the claim were reasonably reliable. (Some were not, or at least did not appear so..)

I had identified the real Oliver D. Smith through his interest in Atlantis. He had published a peer-reviewed paper on that topic and all this was detailed on . He had a public email address, he responded to what I wrote, and I quoted and covered that response on Emails.

(Later, he claimed that I harassed him by email, but he wrote me, and when he stopped writing, so did I. Oliver Smith is either a liar or insane. Toss a coin.)

In those emails, he said he was writing a blog post to answer the claims of Emil Kirkegaard, and that post did appear. As was easily anticipated, the post was taken down, but was archived: http://archive.is/afNnI

These sources are from Oliver, not from some impersonator. (I have always allowed the possibility that some posts that appeared to be Anglo Pyramidologist were actually impersonators. And AP socks commonly impersonate, as well).

However, Oliver has a twin brother, this is reasonably verified. Otherwise it would be possible that the brother story, which was revealed on Wikipedia by an IP sock in 2011, was itself just one more lie. Most commentary on Oliver D. Smith says little about the brother, but it would appear that the strong interest in “pseudoscience” and parapsychology and the paranormal, was the brother. I find it reasonably likely that the Wikipedia and Wikiversity activity that originally triggered my investigation was by Darryl. However, there is much cross-over. Oliver claimed that “99.9%” of the identified socks were his brother, but that was obviously an exaggeration — because I have not identified a thousand socks. Not yet, anyway!

[Note added May 3, 2018: Oliver claimed, in April, that the “brother” story was a lie, beginning with the AngloPyramidologist Sock puppet investigation on Wikipedia. I conclude that this is just one more lie. There is a brother, that’s apparently public record, Oliver previously indicated the brother was being paid by an organization, and in his “confession,” he claimed that he had lied to Tim Farley, who is connected with two major skeptic organizations, which is pointed out for that fact, to connect the dots, not to accuse Farley of anything.

Recently, a new AP sock has been repeating the claims that the “RationalWiki Smith brothers conspiracy theory” is a paranoid fantasy. Nobody on RationalWiki seems to be checking these claims. In general RationalWiki users have supported AP socks — though sometimes they revert and block them, especially but not exclusively impersonation socks. It still remains the case that the article on Oliver D. Smith has been salted on RationalWiki — without any article having been attempted. He is being protected. Protection also has been seen on Wikipedia, Wikiversity, and meta.wikimedia.org.

(To notice the protection on RW, not logged in, try to create an article with a nonsense name on RationalWiki. I just did this, and I get an option: Create the page “[nonsense name]” on this wiki! Trying that with Oliver D. Smith, no name. This is why:

JorisEnter protected “Oliver D. Smith” 3 November 2016

Following up on this, looking at JorisEnter’s talk page to see a request (I didn’t find one), I do find:

a comment by one HamiticResistance. This would be a Smith brother, very likely Oliver. That comment was waving a big red flag, “Oliver Smith.” It links to a blog devoted to Mikemikev, with the name “Oliver D. Smith.” The blog is pure AP attack and misrepresentation (including “pedophile,” about which it is internally contradictory.) Looking up the user mentioned, Thorwald C. Franke, I find many likely Smith socks. The article on Franke, deleted by discussion (Smith had over-reached with that article), was archived. It is an obvious AP obsession.

HamiticResistance contributions were quacking like an AP duck, of the Oliver type. The talk page for Thorwald C. Franke has a conversation with Oliver (as user Gorgonite). Naturally, Franke is blocked, blamed on Mikemikev. Franke thus joins a substantial list of people who knew that AP socks — attacking him — were Oliver and who were blocked for mentioning it. Notice: not warned. Blocked.

In spite of all the cats being totally out of the bag, the most recent sock I’ve identified [when this was written, there are many more now, in March, 2018) is EvilGremlin (a typical AP username). I would not ordinarily be notable for an article on the London Conference on Intelligence; however, Smith is attempting damage control:

Internet troll and conspiracy theorist Abd ul-Rahman Lomax published a blog post in February 2018 defending Emil Kirkegaard and the London Conference on Intelligence.[87] Lomax posts a bizarre claim that a single individual named Oliver Smith is responsible for all of the news sources and RationalWiki articles that document the UCL conferences:

The tragedy of this is that “mainstream media” repeated accusations from RationalWiki, which then cites those repetitions and highly biased analysis — not mentioning where the newspapers got the information, which is obvious. RationalWiki. So Oliver Smith created a media nightmare and then cites it as proof that the nightmare is true. Nice trick. Not.

However, there’s no proof newspapers relied or quoted from RationalWiki, nor that a single individual was responsible for all mainstream news sources hearing about the London Conference on Intelligence. Contrary to Lomax’s delusions, the sequence of events that led to newspapers and the media to discover the London Conference on Intelligence:

Smith tells stories that omit relevant facts, including what he has previously admitted or even bragged about, and says “there’s no proof,” even when there is overwhelming evidence. That’s a characteristic of believers and pseudoskeptics (not genuine skeptics) and liars. (The real world runs on preponderance of evidence, not exactly “proof.”)

The issue is not “hearing about the LCI,” but, for me, the wild, misleading, and exaggerated claims about Kirkegaard, often conclusory, with very thin circumstantial evidence,

His tactics include exaggerating or misrepresenting the claims of another, which then he can shoot down more easily. What I actually claimed was that the original stories in Private Eye and London Student were largely taken, in certain aspects, from the RationalWiki article on Emil Kirkegaard, and I have most specifically in mind the accusations that Kirkegaard is a “pedophile” — a common AP claim about enemies, for which there is zero evidence that I’ve seen — or a “child rape apologist,” which is based on a totally obscure blog post of Kirkegaard years ago, which was only as described if one neglected the context. And that is what an unskilled and immature reporter will do. Quick and shallow research, and for Private Eye, looking for scandal. The same language was used in the stories as on RationalWiki. I will cover details below.

And Oliver D. Smith acknowledged having written those articles, and a sock bragged about it. From his email to me:

Someone informed me about the allegations about myself on your website. I’m not the person leaving messages on your website, and they read stupid. I have a new blog where I will cover my side of the story to Emil Kirkegaard; hopefully this post will be up in the next few days. The problem is explaining myself in more detail or clearing myself of other allegations, because this will take a longer period of time. The reason I am focusing on Kirkegaard is because he was in the newspaper headlines recently, and some journalists contacted me, and I may be of help to the UCL inquiry. All will be explained in my post.

As I replied, he might be telling the truth about those trolling comments. It might be his brother — or even someone else. However, he ends up, in the sequence of emails, repeating the same claims. I found him unwilling to be specific about his claims. This is all circular. Why was Kirkegaard in headlines recently? Maybe his brother contacted the newspapers. Remember, AP is not one person, it is at least two. But he knows what his brother is doing, reasonably well. He ends up, in the emails, defending his brother’s totally outrageous actions. If they were the brother’s actions. Nothing any AP sock writes can be fully trusted. They lie. This is not ordinary disagreement, it is deliberate and willful deception, there are voluminous — and common and frequent — examples.

Most telling, and the basis for what I wrote, was this comment by a recent and very obvious AP sock, SkepticDave (contributions). First the comment header:

RationalWiki to thank for shutting down conference attended by racists and paedophiles

RationalWiki allows AP to make accusations of being a pedophile. More often, AP backs off from that some with “pedophile apologist” which is a label often applied by hysterics about anyone who points out the definition of pedophilia or asserts that pedophiles or suspected pedophiles might have civil rights. So here the text is:

Lots of stuff in both national and local papers today about Emil Kirkegaard and John Fuerst who RationalWiki first documented and exposed as far-right extremists and paedophile-apologists: [and then a list of sources] . . .

The person who wrote those RationalWiki articles sent a tip-off to some newspapers. The story now has national coverage. SkepticDave (talk) 23:07, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

The Emil Kirkegaard article and John Fuerst articles were started by Ben Steigmans (contributions) and are among the Favorite Topics that identify AP socks, see the RW article sock list for Kirkegaard and Fuerst. (And Ben Steigmann is a favorite target.)

Toby Young at the beginning of January 2018 made news headlines for sending sexist and other inappropriate tweets.[88][89] On 9 January 2018 he resigned his position on the Office for Students regulator for making the offensive comments and apologized.[90][91][92]

Immediately after resigning, journalists looked into Young’s Twitter history and discovered he had mentioned in December 2017 his attendance to the London Conference on Intelligence, that he was told to keep silent about: “[I was] asked not to share the information with anyone else…”[93]

On 10 January 2018, the magazine Private EyeWikipedia's W.svg published an article[94] that mentions: “What he [Young] kept to himself was why the conference he attended was so secretive” and names a few of the white supremacistseugenicists and sexists (including Richard Lynn) who were speakers at the UCL conferences.

After the publication of the Private Eye article, London Student the same day published a more detailed exposure of the far-right extremists and racists who had attended the conferences.[95]London Student informed UCL and the university responded they were investigating.[96]

On 11 January 2018, mainstream newspapers and other news sources reported the story; some of these credit Private Eye and London Student.[97][98][99][100][101]

Developments

“ODS”, the first open RationalWiki account for Oliver D. Smith, claimed that Google had de-listed Kirkegaard’s blog. I saw nothing of the kind, but an IP user on RationalWiki, accessing google.uk from UK IP, saw the existence of filtered results and pointed to them and to descriptions of the requests, which are documented on this page.

A day in the life of a troll

All times are CUT, i.e., AP’s home time zone.

04:13 January 21 2018 I  posted a page with real-life identity information for Anglo Pyramidologist.

04:35, 21 January 2018  the AP sock AstroPhysics replaced an old alias of mine (Daniel Lomax, under which I’d written much), with my birth name, and then gave some relatively correct information, on the Rational Wiki hit piece on me (written entirely by AP socks, with only a few edits by others)

06:38 21 January 2018 “Tron,” an AP sock, commented here about AP evidence. Basic message: “There is no evidence and there is no proof.” I had just spent over three months compiling raw evidence with few conclusions and only began drawing conclusions about AP identity several days ago. I did not find this identity, others had found it, as reported on that page and the page above it, but at this point I took the time to confirm the information. Even the day before, I was calling the identity “alleged.”

04:56, 21 January 2018 In a Fort on the Street (an obvious APsock) added a category “Batshit Crazy” to the RW article. It is common for AP to send messages with account names. In this case, he’s pointing out that he knows the street I live on. As if I’d be surprised.

I used to get bomb threats from fanatics. A personal friend of mine was famously assassinated by fanatics in Tucson. It can be a dangerous world. From my point of view, though, it would be better to die than to live in fear.

16:25 21 January 2018  I replied to Tron.

17:15, 21 January 2018 Nick_Lowles_Fan , an account I had not noticed, added a pile of lies to an already ridiculous article. As can easily be seen from the linked contributions, this is an AP sock, specifically Oliver Smith. He wrote:

… disgruntled he then uses his blog to defame his forum debate opponents or admins who banned him, including targeting their families: even going as far as doxing underage children who are relatives of who he is harassing…. In January 2018, he started doxing home addresses of RationalWiki sysops, including targeting their family members, including minors. Although an elderly man in his 70s, Lomax stalks and doxes young teenagers on his blog.

  • One of the AP traits has been that he sometimes loses it, starts raving, and doing so, essentially admits what is being claimed. The comment is dense with misrepresentations. Nothing remotely like the doxxing of “underage children” has been done. One home address (not a specific house, a rural road without number, probably a mailing address, using the family name) was given, on the Identity subpage, , and I redacted that information entirely at 21 Jan @ 17:14, probably before I saw the edit above.  I restored the information 30 Jan @ 20:17. The next day I redacted the names of the mother, father, and older brother. 9 Feb,  I redacted the name of the road as well, leaving only the town and postal code.
  • I’m not focused on “debate.” Rather, I present evidence and discuss. I sometimes report on events on fora. No examples have been shown of “defaming,” but the RW article has often called simple and straight reporting of events, for study, such as a list of contributions to an article, intended for an eventual study of an editor’s positions, an “attack.” The article is full of these imputations. They might as well be called lies.
  • On most wikis, such as RationalWiki or WMF wikis, an admin cannot ban, they can only block. One RW admin blocked me, and it was an AP sock, and I’ve documented him (Skeptical, and he was obviously AP, and disappeared when someone outed him — not me). The problem with that is?
  • There is only one “family” that has been mentioned; last year the family was described by the socks themselves on Wikipedia. The “family” has not been “targeted.” Rather, the identity of Anglo Pyramidologist, very long-term internet abuser and sock master, two brothers, needed confirmation, and part of that confirmation involved knowing his original residence address, thus correlating tightly with extensive IP information. No underage children have been mentioned, let alone targeted. The page in question is archived here. As anyone can see, the youngest person mentioned was 27 years old (and could now be older). So this was the usual usual, an AP sock lying his pants off.
  • So how do I know that this user is an AP sock? The style of writing and the subject telegraphs it, but I then looked at his contributions. I would have tagged this as an AP sock without his commenting on the attack article on me, from the subjects alone. That’s how they do it on Wikipedia. The duck test.
  • Most remarkable, Nick is admitting that the page documented the “home addresses of RationalWiki sysops.” Indeed. Oliver Smith and Darryl Smith are Rational Wiki sysops, under many account names, and Nick would know, because he is one of those two persons.  But it is only one address, and that is, again, another troll tactic: take a single example and make many out of it. Any other persons whose home addresses have been given?

22:09 21 Jan 2018, I archived the identity page and stubbed it. My work is in research, I don’t need to host that page (which creates additional possible complications.) I remain responsible for writing it. if that were defamation or libel, I could be sued. I’m a real person!

23:03, 21 January 2018 http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/AstroPhysics removed the material Nick Lowles Fan had added, summarizing (he has removed the personal addresses and dox.) This troll is obsessed, following my blog closely. Maybe he didn’t look all that closely, though. The material was archived. Cat Out of Bag. How does it feel, Oliver, to be so easily found by a Google search with material you don’t want to be seen? You’ve been doing it to many others, for years.

My suggestion: come out, be open, take responsibility for what you do (and have done). It’s the only way to be happy, tell the truth.

[note, 1/27/2017, the real Oliver Smith has emailed me, and we are discussing the way forward. I’m not publishing that correspondence at this point, beyond what I state here, and Smith has claimed he will be responding on a blog he just created. I will link to that when it has content. He’s promised that within a day. I’ve warned him, by the way, that what he plans could be reputation suicide. This is territory he has never entered, commenting on controversies as a real person with a real name. But he has the right — as do I, with freedom comes responsibility and vice versa.]

[note: Later, Oliver became extremely hostile, and has claimed that I harassed him by email (though he emailed me!), so I have published the emails..]

[I later found that an Oliver sock had disclosed his real name on RationalWiki, and it was hidden by Skeptical much later.  Was he Skeptical, clearly AP, or was it his brother? In a number of places, recently, Oliver, clearly him (such as the account ODS), identified Debunking spiritualism (DS) as his brother, but more recently, again, he claimed that all the “brother” talk was lies and deception, “there is no brother.” But there obviously is a brother and the “all lies” story is implausible, given the massive evidence. So remarkable is that post that I’m creating a subpage, “Oliver here.”]

I don’t rush into something like this. It was one step at a time. There are many more steps to take. Wait until this is cited on Quora, where I have over 1600 followers and 3.3 million page views! (But I don’t yet see relevance there…. unless someone asks me a question… )

23:19 21 January 2018  “Skeptic from Texas,” a likely AP sock, using a probable proxy server (not in Texas), made a not-so-subtle threat to dox my children. Not-Texas Skeptic also gave me silly legal advice, but it’s the thought that counts.

I have some research to do, I may come back with more on this sequence.

Parapsychologist

(This was written over a year ago and not published . . . )

Reviewing some RationalWiki articles, I see a common trope that is a fundamental error. Articles on persons interested in the paranormal call them “parapsychologists,” even if they are not engaged in scientific study. Simply being a student of the paranormal or even of parapsychology does not make one a “parapsychologist.” Those with a strong political agenda play fast and loose with definitions, …. so:

Paranormal: 

not scientifically explainable supernatural

Supernatural then has:

1 : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature
b : attributed to an invisible agent (such as a ghost or spirit)

Wikipedia has, in the lede on Paranormal:

Paranormal events are phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described to lie beyond normal experience or scientific explanation.[1][2][3][4]

Severe ontological difficulties abound. Phenomena, if objectively described, are “what happened.” Then there is interpretation of what happened. Perhaps a cause is ascribed; this is inferred, not necessarily directly observed. The wikipedia article does not distinguish between experiential phenomena (“I saw such and so,” perhaps lights in the sky) and interpretation (“I saw a UFO,” which assumes that there was an object there, not merely an appearance of lights.)

So there is a general meaning for paranormal, as being phenomena — actual experience — that are not understood through ordinary scientific nowledge (testable and tested) k.

Unless we believe that science has understood everything, we must accept that there are such phenomena. We might “explain” the UFO as an atmospheric phenomenon rather than an actual “unidentified flying object,” but even if we manage to show, at some point, that a particular incidence was such, we could never rationally claim that this proves that all such incidents involve no object. But the “explanation” might personally satisfy us. Or not. Genuine skepticism will cut both ways; and there is pragmaticism to contend with.

However, the “paranormal” often is used more specifically, to refer to a class of phenomena loosely called “spiritual,” another quite problematic word. Again from the Wikipedia article:

The most notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to ghostsextraterrestrial lifeunidentified flying objectspsychic abilities or extrasensory perception, and cryptids.[6]

Before even clearly defining “paranormal,” the article is talking about “beliefs.” What is a “psychic ability”? “Psychic” refers, at origin, to the mind. (“relating to the soul or mind”). However, in usage, it comes to mean mental abilities that have no apparent physical modality. Again, we return to the problem of appearance. That is, there “appears” to be no “physical explanation.”

What is “belief”? We have operating assumptions that might be called “beliefs.” I get out of bed and put my weight on the floor and “believe” that it will support me. However, the Wikipedia article is talking about something else. Someone may say, “I believe in ghosts.”

I.e., perhaps, “spirits of the dead.” Feynman famously was being interviewed for a draft physical and was asked if he ever heard voices. Yes, he replied, because he could remember the very distinctive voice of a certain scientist. It was like he was actually hearing it. So if I experience some phenomenon that I interpret as being some manifestation of someone who died, is that a “ghost”?

How would I distinguish between a phenomenon that is “only in my mind” and one that exists “out in the world.”

And what difference does that make in my life?

The ontologically unsophisticated typically believe in a reality that is “out there,” not merely in the mind. I do, too, but I’m aware — and have been trained to be aware — that this “belief” is an invention, a tool, something that has a function, it is not, in itself, “truth.” Tools work or they don’t work.

Thus there may be “beliefs” that are not “true,” but that still have a life-enhancing function. They are “myth.” Pseudoskeptics dismiss “myth” as contrary to “critical thinking,” apparently not realizing that the creation of myth is a nearly universal human phenomenon. As such, it must have evolved for a purpose, or it would not have been maintained. At least that is my understanding based on my training in science.

(How the hell did “cryptids” get in there? Humans tend to believe the results of their own investigation or interpretation, and may variously assign credibility to reports, or not, depending on many, many factors. If some unknown species exists, how is this outside of the normal, since we have not necessarily discovered all species?)

Setting aside the “paranormal,” and allowing it to have a more restricted meaning, limiting it to “psychic phenomena,” we can turn to “parapsychology.” From the Wikipedia lede,

Parapsychology is a field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena which include telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and other paranormal claims. It is identified as pseudoscience by a majority of mainstream scientists.[1][2]

Does this belong in the lede, and is it true? There have been revert wars over this, for a long time. There are claims in reliable source that “parapsychology” is so identified. What is the balance? The problem is that “parapsychology is defined as scientific investigation, but a casual respondent to a survey may confuse parapsychology with the claims investigated, those “paranormal beliefs,” and if those were accepted by the majority, they would not be paranormal! So parapsychology must always be “fringe,” but that does not make it a pseudoscience. Ah, pseudoscience:

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be scientific and factual, in the absence of evidence gathered and constrained by appropriate scientific methods.[1][Note 1] Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; and absence of systematic practices when developing theories. The term pseudoscience is often considered pejorative[4]because it suggests something is being presented as science inaccurately or even deceptively. Those described as practicing or advocating pseudoscience often dispute the characterization.[2]

The demarcation between science and pseudoscience has philosophical and scientific implications.[5] Differentiating science from pseudoscience has practical implications in the case of health careexpert testimonyenvironmental policies, and science education.[6] Distinguishing scientific facts and theories from pseudoscientific beliefs, such as those found in astrologyalchemymedical quackeryoccult beliefs, and creation science, is part of science education and scientific literacy.[6][7]

It may be fun to track down the sources, but this article has, again, been a battleground. Notice the division is between “scientific facts and theories” and “pseudoscientific beliefs.” Key is “beliefs” and “scientific theories.” In the ideal, a scientific “theory” is not merely a belief held for emotional or similar reasons, but has been rigorously tested through the scientific method; it is useful for prediction, often very accurate predictions.

Unfortunately, for the pseudoskeptics, “scientific” is equated with “mainstream,” but not mainstream in the sense of the general population, it is “mainstream” in the sense of “most scientists,” and this often completely neglects whether or not these people are experts in the field they are judging. Many scientists rely on information cascades, to use the sociological term and, indeed, do those who claim to be skeptics study that science? There are some very clear examples of widespread belief among scientists that was rooted in an information cascade, rather than in actual scientific testing of the ideas. Scientists tend to believe what their friends believe, the same as everyone else.

What is an “occult belief”? Wikipedia again:

The occult (from the Latin word occultus “clandestine, hidden, secret”) is “knowledge of the hidden”.[1] In common English usage, occult refers to “knowledge of the paranormal“, as opposed to “knowledge of the measurable“,[2] usually referred to as science. The term is sometimes taken to mean knowledge that “is meant only for certain people” or that “must be kept hidden”, but for most practicing occultists it is simply the study of a deeper spiritual reality that extends beyond pure reason and the physical sciences.[3]The terms esoteric and arcane can also be used to describe the occult,[4][5] in addition to their meanings unrelated to the supernatural.

Again by definition, the “occult” will be unknown and not understood by most. However, the operative term here is “knowledge.” Occult belief is practically an oxymoron. That is, if it is not rooted in experience, the most reliable source of knowledge (that issue was largely resolved centuries ago, and experience is the basis of science, not “satisfying explanations.” Explanations are models, useful for prediction, but without experience, it is not actually knowledge of reality, but of ideas. Hence training in science includes laboratory work, not merely absorbing the conclusions of centuries of scientific work, such that we not only know a thing, we know how we know it. We cannot test everything — there isn’t time — but, collectively, we can test everything over and over. Unless some idiot locks the doors, prohibiting re-investigation, which is exactly what pseudoskeptical fanatics want to do!

We are largely programmed to ignore much of our sense experience. I’ve been having a lot of fun lately, observing entoptic phenomena. These are things we can see that are not “out in the world,” unless we want to think of the eye as “out there.” They are ubiquitous, but we learned as very small children, probably before language, to ignore them. Years ago, as a young man interested in music, I learned to hear partialtones. I remember reading a music dictionary that described them as “faintly heard.” That was written by someone who had little or no experience! Without hearing partialtones, we cannot tell the difference between the vowels, but we were never taught to consciously discriminate them. One who does that can tune instruments perfectly, it is not merely a guess as to what “sounds good.” Musical harmony is based on coincident partialtones.

And then there are countless human phenomena that we mostly ignore and overlook, beyond a few who study them — and who profit from them. What makes us happy? Is it possible to live life so that we die smiling? There are ancient “secrets” that are not secret, they are quite open, but which are hidden by lack of attention. Much of this shows up in religion, which pseudoskeptics commonly deny as “pseudoscientific.” The demarcation would theoretically be “can it be tested?” So how do we test these things?

I know one thing clearly: we will not deepen our understanding through lying, about ourselves and about others. Our ideas that others are wrong will never, in themselves, make us either wise or happy.

So … pseudoscience would be “fake science,” not merely something we think is “wrong,” which is how pseudoskeptics often use the term. Does something pretend to be science, but actually is something else?

Parapsychology is an old field. From the Wikipedia article:

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882. Its formation was the first systematic effort to organize scientists and scholars to investigate paranormal phenomena. Early membership included philosophers, scholars, scientists, educators and politicians, such as Henry SidgwickArthur BalfourWilliam CrookesRufus Osgood Mason and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet.[20] Presidents of the Society included, in addition to Richet, Eleanor Sidgwick and William James, and subsequently Nobel Laureates Henri Bergson and Lord Rayleigh, and philosopher C. D. Broad.[21]

Was this “pseudoscience”? What is the “fake science” involved? Does a scientific investigation become pseudoscience if some errors are involved (such as, perhaps, unrecognized fraud)?  More traditionally, if the methods of science are used, and if some error is made resulting in erroneous conclusions, this is called “pathological science,” perhaps, though Bauer (a sociologist of science) points out that there can be little practical difference between the “pathological” and simply the ordinary process of science — which can involve error, and later correction of error.

The first steps in scientific investigation is the collection of data, not the identification of “claims.” That is, I saw those lights. I might claim I saw a “flying saucer.” Normally, in human society, we accept reports of experience as true unless controverted. So if I say I saw lights, most will agree, I saw lights. They might even be entoptic phenomena, but … I saw them! The phenomena are distinct from the interpretation. This is basic social understanding and is a principle at law as well.

The Society for Psychical Research has this prominently featured:

THE SOCIETY for Psychical Research was set up in London in 1882, the first scientific organisation ever to examine claims of psychic and paranormal phenomena. We hold no corporate view about their existence or meaning; rather, our purpose is to gather information and foster understanding through research and education.

I look at this and wonder: do such claims exist? Of course they do. So what are they talking about? Ah, the meaning! That is, the interpretation or explanation.

What question were “scientists” asked such that the following could be claimed?

[Parapsychology] is identified as pseudoscience by a majority of mainstream scientists.[1][2]

This is stated as a bald fact? Is it verifiable? It should be well-known that because some alleged fact is stated in a reliable source, it is not necessarily balanced and verifiable as fact, but rather it is a claim or statement which is verifiable if the existence of the claim can be verified. Otherwise we get into the issue of whether what is in reliable source is truth, well-known as unresolvable.

[1] refers to a series of sources

  • Gross, Paul R; Levitt, Norman; Lewis, Martin W (1996), The Flight from Science and Reason, New York Academy of Sciences, p. 565, ISBN 978-0801856761The overwhelming majority of scientists consider parapsychology, by whatever name, to be pseudoscience.

That is an offhand comment, made in response to what appears, in the brief excerpt Googlebooks presented, to be a critique of some specific claims made by a non-parapsychologist. There is no clue how the author knows what he knows; rather it would appear to be common knowledge. I.e., sloppy as hell, not substantiated by evidence (such as a survey, and an examination of the pesky question of who qualifies as a “scientist” for purposes of the question. Such as being a software engineer and professional skeptic (i.e., Tim Farley)?

Mind you, I’m not denying that “most scientists” might reject claims of the paranormal. but I don’t actually know that. Answers depend on questions. I don’t see that the authors actually asked any questions, they merely made a statement off the top of their heads, and were so allowed by the publisher, which made it reliable source. But this isn’t science, it’s popular writing.

  • Friedlander, Michael W (1998), At the Fringes of Science, Westview Press, p. 119, ISBN 0-8133-2200-6Parapsychology has failed to gain general scientific acceptance even for its improved methods and claimed successes, and it is still treated with a lopsided ambivalence among the scientific community. Most scientists write it off as pseudoscience unworthy of their time.

What I notice is that the term “pseudoscience” here is used as a synonym for “not worthy of their time.” Is parapsychology treated with a “lopsided ambivalence”? What does that mean? Does it use “improved methods”? Are there “successes”? The book is stating, it appears to me, that even though there have been such developments, most scientists won’t look at the evidence. I’ve certainly seen this in other fields. Everyone has the right to decide where to invest their time, and I’m not investing mine to find out if I can predict coin tosses. Except in a small experiment for fun!

This was not intended, it appears, to establish  that parapsychology is “identified by most scientists as pseudoscience.” It’s making a comment about difficulties the field faces in attracting the attention of “most scientists.” However, what was the context of the quotation? On Googlebooks, the paragraph before is talking about CSICOP. It’s about skeptics! (CSICOP became a debunking organization rather than the original intention of parapsychological research:  Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. I.e, it might as well have been named Committee for Parapsychology.)

  • Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (2013), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, University Of Chicago Press, p. 158, hdl:1854/LU-3161824ISBN 978-0-226-05196-3Many observers refer to the field as a ‘pseudoscience’. When mainstream scientists say that the field of parapsychology is not scientific, they mean that no satisfying naturalistic cause-and-effect explanation for these supposed effects has yet been proposed and that the field’s experiments cannot be consistently replicated.

That is, when they refer to parapsychology as a pseudoscience, they are not actually claiming it is pseudoscience, they mean something else, which is then stated. This is, then, a reference to results, not to the practice of a science. I am not sure what “naturalistic” means. It would probably be “fitting within my understanding of nature.” But the paranormal, by definition, appears to be outside that.

Is it true that “the field’s experiments cannot be consistently replicated”? That is odd. Suppose I want to find out if saying Heads before I toss a coin affects the result. I suppose this would be, allegedly, telekinesis. So I do this a hundred times. I get results. Can they be consistently replicated?

Here is what I expect: I may get some result that seems “significant,” but if I repeat the experiment many times, that result may not be found any more than would be statistically expected with no influence, only random chance. That would be a result! If I’m not satisfied, I continue to repeat the experiment until I am.

And if there is a biased coin, this would discover it. I would do control experiments saying “Tails.”

So what  are Pigliucci et al talking about? It seems as if scientific investigation, in the minds of these unidentified critics, is only “scientific” if it produces some confirmed result that is expected under some theory. Scientific investigation, however, is carefully structured, when it is real science, to not be biased toward “positive results.”

Let’s say that parapsychologists study the paranormal so that others don’t have to. That works for human society, there are obvious survival benefits for some minority maintaining investigation of the fringes. Once in a while it pays off, and, by definition, the overall cost is low.

The occasion for this post was the identification of certain people on RationalWiki as “parapsychologists,” when they are not scientists and are not engaged in scientific investigation, but merely have studied sources , or have expressed beliefs.

Brian Inglis (1916-1993) was an Irish journalist, parapsychologistspiritualist; and pseudoscience author.

Neither this article on RationalWiki nor the Wikipedia article on Inglis show that Inglis was a parapsychologist, i.e., someone engaged in scientific investigation.  Wikipedia has, as a detail:

He also had interests in the paranormal, and alternative medicine.

And, indeed, he compiled The Paranormal: An Encyclopedia of Psychic Phenomena (London: Paladin 1986). But this doesn’t make him a parapsychologist, it makes him a writer and editor. An Irish one, perhaps, and the author wants to make sure we know what “Irish” means. I’m not looking at the other terms.

The sloppiness is common for RationalWiki and especially common for Anglo Pyramidologist socks, as the original author of the Inglis article was.

And then we have Ben Steigmann:

Benjamin Steigmann (born 1991) is a [list of alleged political positions equivalent on RationalWiki to “clubs baby seals” or “is a Donald Trump supporter” — and I have no idea if he is or is not] he is also a parapsychologist and promoter of paranormal pseudoscience.

Steigmann is, again, not a parapsychologist at all. He decided to do a source review on parapsychology, on Wikiversity, which makes him a student, not a scientist. He is utterly non-notable, except for being a long-term target of Anglo Pyramidologist (specifically Darryl Smith, probably, less so his twin brother, Oliver Smith), so if you want to see an AP sock, it’s easy, look at who created the article (and look at the accounts created impersonating Steigmann, shown in the Anglo Pyramidologist studies with checkuser evidence on Wikipedia and the Obvious Obvious on RationalWiki.)

More:

Craig Weiler is not a parapsychologist. He is a blogger and became a target when he wrote about the situation of some on Wikipedia.

Geraldine Cummins is not a parapsychologist but a medium.

Princess Märtha Louise is not a parapsychologist. See the Wikipedia article.

Now I have some more places to look for AP socks!

 
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