User:BostonMA/Mediation/Sathya Sai Baba/www.saisathyasai.com

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This page was created as part of the mediation process for the Sathya Sai Baba and related articles. The page is specifically devoted to discussion of www.saisathyasai.com as it relates to Wikipedia articles.

Claims regarding Marijuana.com and assault-weapon.com[edit]

The issue has been raised in the mediation for SSB and related articles, that one editor, SSS108, has published on his site material which is alleged to be defamatory to another editor Andries. Although this disupte has at times spilled over into talk and mediation pages of Wikipedia, the mediator recognizes that this dispute is about content outside of Wikipedia. The mediator is reluctant to set a precedent of mediating disputes over content outside Wikipedia, and wishes to make it absolutely clear that in offering his opinions here, he is in no way obligating himself, or anyone else in wikipedia, to address such disputes in the future. With that caveat, the mediator notes that he believes that he has some insight into the dispute, and only because he believes that he can be of help in this particular instance, is he involving himself with the dispute.

User:SSS108 is associated with the website www.saisathyasai.com. This website contains a page largely devoted to discussion of editor Andries in relationship to controversies related to Sathya Sai Baba. [The allegations of an association between User:Andries and the websites marijuana.com and assault-weapon.com have been removed from this website, as of today --BostonMA 22:08, 23 March 2006 (UTC)]

User:SSS108 has stated that he will correct factual mistakes that may appear on the website [citation needed]. User:Andries has stated that the material on the site associating him with marijuana.com and assault-weapon.com is incorrect.

I stated twice that the association with marijuana.com and assault-weapon is incorrect. The first time on Talk:Sathya_Sai_Baba/archive2#I_suggest_a_seperate_section_about_SSB.27s_miracles
"Some high ranking prominent followers of SSB have been criticized by former followers because of their refusal to investigate the very serious charges against SSB and their unquestioning continuing promotion of SSB. That is very different from writing or suggesting, as you do of me, that I am a hash user. The latter is completely unrelated to the SSB controversy and can hence be classified as an ad hominem attack. And an untrue one too, because it was just a copy of my Wikipedia user page that was automatically copied on a regular basis. Andries 23:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)"
The second time on User_talk:SSS108
"I had already stated that the comments about Hashish/Marihuana are completely untrue. Andries 17:49, 18 March 2006 (UTC) "
Andries 20:41, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


The allegations that User:Andries was associated with marijuana.com and assault-weapons.com are reproduced in a subsection below.

The mediator has reviewed the screen shots as well as done some independent investigation.

According to Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Mno, marijuana.com copied Wikipedia from May 23 2005 and appears to have kept all namespaces. As of 28 December 2005 it was found that it was redirecting to Wikipedia itself.

According to Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Abc is also a mirror of Wikipedia, although a check shows that this site also now just redirects to Wikipedia.

User:Andries' user page on wikipedia as of 12 May 2005 matches the "before" screen shot taken from assault-weapon.com.

User:Andries' user page on wikipedia as of 3 February 2005 matches the cached google version of assault-weapon.com cached on March 1, 2005, except that www.marijuana.com has been substituted for en.wikipedia.org.

The before and after screen shots from assault-weapon.com are identical to the Wikipedia versions of User:Andries' user page of 3 February 2005 and of 12 May 2005.

The mediator believes that the observed screen shots from marijuana.com, assault-weapon.com and the google cache are all consistant with the assault-weapon.com and marijuana.com acting as mirrors of Wikipedia.

Because of the large amounts of data which need to be transferred to mirror Wikipedia, it is to be expected that re-mirroring will not occur in real time, but rather happen only now and again. It is thus to be expected that changes on mirrors appear to lag behind changes on Wikipedia.

It is also to be expected that links to Wikipedia within articles that are mirrored will have been mass replaced with links to the local mirror.

The two mirrors in question eventually gave up mirroring, and this would explain the disappearance of User:Andries user page. It would not be necessary for Andries to delete his user page from the mirror site.

The mediator believes that SSS108 drew conclusions according to his understanding at the time. Nevertheless, the mediator believes that these conclusions are unfounded, and cannot be inferred from the evidence provided. --BostonMA 23:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Please comment:

  • Andries: The analysis by BostonMA is correct. Andries 06:26, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • SSS108: BostonMA, I disagree. First of all, assault-weapon.com (henceforth referred to as Site1) and marijuana.com (henceforth referred to as Site2) were 2 different sites. Now, however, Site1 redirects to Site2. Those who had their profile on Site1 were allowed to edit/add/delete their Wikipedia profile through a side menu User Control Panel: Reference If you place your cursor over the User Control Panel link, you will see that it reads: www.assault-weapon.com/wiki/User:Andries#usercptools1 (meaning that Andries had an account there). This explains why his wikipedia profile was updated the same day I published it on my site. This also explains how the userpage remained intact even though all content was removed. Due to whatever reasons, Site1 now redirects to the main and original Site2 and neither sites are wiki-mirrors. If you want, I will update my personal website with this information to make my case clearer. SSS108 talk-email 02:20, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
As far as I am able to tell, the link www.assault-weapon.com/wiki/User:Andries#usercptools1 was to a drop down menu on the same page. I don't see how one can conclude from that link that Andries had an account on that site. --BostonMA 02:56, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

When the site was active, I clicked on the User Control Panel and it opened a drop-down java User Control Panel for user:Andries, with an empty profile. Also, as I already said, the very same day I published that information on my site, the article was updated. Then, the content was deleted, although the user-page was still visible (no redirects, nothing). Since the site no longer has that function, I cannot show it to you, however, it was very much akin to the current User Control Panel on the current marijuana.com site Ref (scroll down to User Control Panel and click).

I provided this information for your immediate perusal. However, as I already stated to you on your talk page Ref, it is my intention to answer mediation questions only after Andries has finished answering his outstanding questions. I feel that I have been forthcoming with responses and Andries has not. Since you feel that Andries delay in answering these questions is not very important, then I don't think you will mind if I withhold further responses until Andries has answered his outstanding mediation questions. Sincerely SSS108 talk-email 04:17, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

SSS108, the original page including the drop down menu is still available in google cache. If you look at your saved version, on the 4th line of the google header is a line that reads:
Click here for the full cached page with images included.
If you click in the appropriate place, a full version of the page should appear in your browser. Clicking the User Control Panel link will then open the menu. I don't see what in this menu would lead you to believe that it is not the same menu that would appear on any user page on that site, whether the users had ever logged in or not. --BostonMA 11:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to mention that I looked through my screencap archives and found the screencap of the page when Andries removed his profile (although the username was still showing in the link). This could only have been done by someone who had an account there. Since Andries never removed his profile from Wikipedia, the site never "mirrored" a blank profile. This leaves me to rightly suspect that it was done through an account. I will create the page later with the relevant screencap. I also want to mention that there is a familiar trend. During the entire time I had this information on my site, Andries never commented on or denied anything about my marijuana profile comments. Only after the page was deleted, redirected and 2 months later did he deny involvement with the site. This is exactly the modus operandi he utilized when he denied his webmaster status on the hetnet.nl site, a title he held for 3 years. Regarding the control panel, most control panels do not have the username in the link to it. Most control panels just go to a log-in page. The control panel link in question, has Andries user name in it. SSS108 talk-email 15:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Selection from http://www.saisathyasai.com/baba/Ex-Baba.com/sathya-sai-baba-wikipedia-bias.html[edit]

Andriès L. Krugers Dagneaux: Incapable Of Neutrality:

Click Here to view a screen capture to a Pro-Marijuana site that Andries posted his wikipedia information on. Andries article was listed under the wikipedia page for "cannabis" at: http://www.assault-weapon.com/ (mirror site to marijuana.com) on the following page: http://www.assault-weapon.com/wiki/User:Andries (Click Here To View The Google Cache). Now why did Andries post his Wikipedia article on a Pro-marijuana site that sells marijuana seeds, seeks its legalization and provides information on how to grow and use it?

Update: August 8th - November 15th 2005:

After bringing Andries Pro-Marijuana Profile to the attention of the general public, Andries made several major changes to his Pro-Marijuana Profile. First of all, on August 8th 2005 the cannabis page that was located at http://www.assault-weapon.com/wiki/ was removed. The very same day (August 8th 2005), Andries edited his Pro-Marijuana Profile (meaning that he was still active on it), and deleted the following section: "I may make some small mistakes in English, especially in punctuation. My Dutch is excellent but I care more about the English version of wikipedia than the Dutch version. I have become a complete skeptic due to an unfortunate experience with an Indian guru called Sathya Sai Baba. I think Wikipedia is a great project. Same user as Omniscient". Andries also deleted his "Sathya Sai Baba" and "Hinduism" links. Why did Andries remove this content? Surely, he had nothing to hide? Right? Click Here to compare version one with version two.

Secondly, on September 28th 2005, Andries tried to cover his tracks and do damage control by deleting (in its entirety) his Pro-Marijuana Profile. Click Here to view the screencapture.

Lastly, on November 15th 2005, Andries requested the Pro-Marijuana Site to redirect his Pro-Marijuana Profile to his Original Wikipedia Profile. The following link located at http://www.assault-weapon.com/wiki/User:Andries now redirects to Andries Original Wikipedia Profile. Also, the cannabis page located at http://www.assault-weapon.com/wiki/ now redirects to Wikipedia's main page. These two redirects happened at the same time and both can be traced back directly to Andries. Obviously, Andries Krugers Dagneaux doesn't want people to know about his Pro-Marijuana Profile. One can only wonder why?

Many Cached User pages from assault-weapon.com etc.[edit]

Hi SSS108. Google has many cached user pages from assault-weapon.com and marijuana.com. You may see some of them from this link. This is of course only the first page. The search is for "user" on the site assault-weapon.com. A large number of the results are not for user pages, but for wiki pages with the word user in them. Nevertheless, there are still quite a few user pages that are cached. (Some of the cached pages don't work, but the majority that I've tried, do work). Repeats of the same search on google may give different results, both because one does not always get the same server, and because the google's database changes over time. However, when I searched, the following user pages showed up in the first few pages of results. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10].

I am trying to understand your argument. It would help to understand if you would clarify for me the following questions. --BostonMA 18:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Do you believe that the all of the users named on these pages at one time had accounts on marijuana.com or assault-weapon.com?
  • If not, what is the difference between these user pages, and that of Andries, that leads you to believe that Andries had an account?

BostonMA, actually I found many of the pages you just listed this morning while researching this issue. Consequently, some of my comments on my talk page are incorrect. I already stated earlier why I feel Andries had an account on the marijuana site. His profile was deleted, even though the user page remained. This would not have been possible because the site could not "mirror" a blank profile page when Andries profile page was never blank on wikipedia. I also found some users who linked back to the marijuana.com site. An example Ref. I guess if there is a way to contact this person, one could verify whether or not he created an account and ask for details about it. So the primary reason I believe Andries had an account there was for the reason just cited and because Andries never refuted or denied this claim (until after the site was taken offline). Also, as stated before, the page on the marijuana site was updated the exact same day FreeLanceResearch brought it to Andries' attention: Ref Anyone can call these "coincidences", etc. I believe differently. When I create the new page with a screencap to the deleted profile, I will let you know. SSS108 talk-email 19:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Here is the screencap I was referring to that shows the deleted profile (although the user page is still showing): Ref1 Compare this with the profile that was updated on August 8th Ref2 and the before and after screencaps Ref3 Since Andries Wikipedia profile was never blank, the marijuana site could not mirror a blank page. It was deleted. By whom? Considering the arguments I made in the previous paragraph, it is my opinion that it was deleted by Andries. He could only have done this if he had an account there (which he never denied from July '05 to January '06, although he had plenty of time to refute it to both FreeLanceResearch on August 8th '05: Ref & Culver's complaint on August 19th '05: Ref). I also updated my page, on saisathyasai, with the correct link to the screencap that shows the deleted profile. SSS108 talk-email 03:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
SSS108, why didn't you ask me whether I had a profile there before posting it online? That would have been the normal and decent way of doing things. One of the problems is that I do not feel like e-mailing you, because you post everything that I write on your website, interspersed with your suggestive and sometimes incorrect comments. I never edited the marijuana website. I consider your website strong in details and nitpicking but with ofen glaring misinterpretations and an amazing lack of common sense. Your completely erroneous comments about me is an example of both the strong and weak points of your website. I want to thank BostonMA for doing this detective work. I would have found it tedious and exhausting if I had to do it myself. Andries 20:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Andries, you were informed by Freelanceresearch and Culver about the page. You had every opportunity to email me and deny it. You had every opportunity to deny it on the talk pages. You did not. You only denied it after the entire site was taken offline and redirected to marijuana.com. You only brought up this issue 6 months after the fact. You had 6 months to research it and bring your concerns to my attention and you did absolutely nothing about it. I have given what I believe are valid reasons to support my opinions about the marijuana site. If you did the research for yourself and brought it to my attention, I would have removed it because it is, quite frankly, not very important. Especially when you live(d) in Amsterdam, where marijuana is legal. SSS108 talk-email 04:42, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I cannot argue with you about every mistake on your website. Then I would have no time do do anything else: the discussion of on this page shows how tedious and time-consuming it is to convince you of having made mistake. And besides I cannot e-mail you for stated reasons. I do not have to research anything when I did not do anything. For example, if somebody states that I was this year in China then I do not have to ask China airlines whether my name was on the passenger list, because I know that I did not go to China. Andries 17:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Andries, you example is laughable. It is funny how you take unrelated examples, formulate an argument, pigeonhole that argument and try to apply it to a completely different topic. This is not about whether or not you went to China. It is about a claim I made about you having a Pro-Marijuana profile. It would have been far easier for you to make your case against my comments when the site was online. If you had such a problem with it, you should have promptly addressed it. You chose not to address it. I address all criticism, published against me, through your site and other Anti-Sai sites. I do not ignore what I consider defamatory comments and wait half a year to say something about it. This is exactly what you did, feeding the impression that you did have a Pro-Marijuana profile. If you don't deny it, then this gives the impression that you have something to hide. I am deleting my comments, about the Pro-Marijuana profile, from my site despite what I consider extraordinary coincidences. I suggest you focus on the many mistakes on your own website. I have an open policy where I correct my mistakes. You and your coterie of Anti-Sai friends do not. SSS108 talk-email 23:21, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Comments From Outside Parties[edit]

As User:BostonMA requested on my talk page, I am here to say whether or not I have ever personally "logged into assault-weapon.com and/or marijuana.com." The answer is: no, I haven't. --Lukobe 21:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Lukobe, then can you kindly explain why you provided Wiki-links to marijuana.com (instead of the main Wikipedia site) on your page? SSS108 talk-email 03:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think I found the answer to my previous question. The site automatically redirected wiki links to the marijuana.com site. SSS108 talk-email

More Thoughts From the Mediator[edit]

SSS108, I am not sure that I understand your position. Also, it may well be that your position has changed as a result of this discussion, but you have not yet let us know that your position has changed. What I think is your postion is as follows.

  1. The page www.marijuana.com/wiki/user:Andries was editable by Andries either through marijuana.com, or assault-weapon.com or through some other means outside of wikipedia.
  2. The page www.marijuana.com/wiki/user:Andries at one point contained a copy of Andries wikipedia page framed with marijuana.com's menus, adverts, etc.. At a later point, in Sept. 2005, the page appeared with only marijuana.com's menus, adverts, etc., and the information about Andries was missing. From this you conclude that Andries removed the material.

I am not convinced that either of these is true. First, I am not convinced that the pages in the directory www.marijuana.com/wiki/ were ever editable by the users (as opposed to the webmasters etc.) of marijuana.com. That is, I believe that marijuana.com copied the content of wikipedia (including the user pages) but I am not convinced that they set up a wiki that could be editted. There are several things that make me suspect this.

  • The vast majority of mirrors of wikipedia, are just that, mirrors, and not wikis. The operators of websites often create mirrors of wikipedia for the purpose of promoting their website. By including wikipedia's articles, a website can increase its chances of appearing as the result of a web search query (for example a google query). On the other hand, making the content of that site editable, making it a wiki would mean that the content of the wiki would over time grow to be something different from wikipedia. That is, making the content a wiki only makes sense in the context of creating a fork. Forks from wikipedia are much rarer than mirrors, and are generally have an alternative purpose to that of Wikipedia, for example different editorial policies. I am not convinced that marijuana.com had any interest in such a venture.
  • The screen shots and cached versions of the web pages in the www.marijuana.com/wiki directory do not show any tabs for history or editting. Of course, it might be possible that these tabs were only viewable if one logged in first. However, that would make marijuana.com's version unique among wikipedia forks, as far as I know.

I believe the "blanking" of the page www.marijuana.com/wiki/user:Andires is consistent with what I have described above and also what I have described previously.

  • In many cases, if a web surfer browses to a non-existent page, the web server will return an error page, with a message such as "page not found". However, the www.marijuana.com website does not do that. If a web surfer browses to, for example, www.marijuana.com/thisisnotapage or www.marijuana.com/asldkjfaalskdfja, the server, rather than returning a "page not found" page, will return a page with marijuana.com's standard adverts. This would be consistent with a policy of attempting to promote their site and its adverts whenever possible. It seems quite possible that marijuana.com, shifted its relationship with wikipedia in two steps. First they simply deleted all the mirrored pages. Then, they redirected any pages in the www.marijuana.com/wiki subdirectory to en.wikipedia.org. If they made this transition in two steps, as I suspect, then the "blank" page framed by the usual marijuana.com stuff, is exactly what would appear if one browsed to www.marijuana.com/wiki/user:Andries between those two steps. This explanation seems to me to be the least problematic. I would very much like to know your opinions of how it all appears to me. Sincerely BostonMA 00:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

BostonMA, I disagree with many of your speculations about why the page was blank. First of all, the page in question was not an unknown page. It was an actual page that had actual content. Can you demonstrate, using any wikipedia mirror site, that when an unknown user name is typed in the url, the surrounding ads remain and the content is blank? Andries user page was blank for a month and a half and I have not seen any other user page do that. Also, the mirror page was not from the marijuana.com site. It was from the assault-weapon.com site. SSS108 talk-email 04:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

SSS108, thank you for your feedback. I remain open-minded about this, and am willing to consider new information and new arguments. (Or even arguments that I may have only poorly understood). Sometimes I am not all that clear with my explanations, so I will try to clarify.

First, let's consider the question you raise "Can you demonstrate, using any wikipedia mirror site, that when an unknown user name is typed in the url, the surrounding ads remain and the context is blank?" I went to the page Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Abc and selected the first site on the list http://1bx.com. I cannot guarantee that you will see the same thing that I have seen. However, what I see is as follows:

http://1bx.com/en/user:Andries on 23 March 2006 Click to enlarge (If picture is missing, it shows a page with adverts adn a google bar, but no content from Wikipedia)
http://1bx.com/en/user:asldkfajsd5 on 23 March 2006 Click to enlarge (If picture is missing, it shows a page similar to the previous, except for different adverts, and the different URL)

I cannot explain why there is different behavior for Essjay and yourself. However, I think this is a good example of where the mirror site, rather than give "page not found" errors, for a made up URL, just gives ads. I hope this helps to clarify. --BostonMA 13:54, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: I have reclicked all the links, and the link for SSS108 now has more ads, like the rest. Perhaps the more frequently a link is clicked, the more ads it gets? I don't claim to know exactly what is going on. --BostonMA 13:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Addendum2: I reclicked the link for SSS108 many time, and eventually, it came up with a full page copy of User:SSS108. What I think is happening, is that after a search for a blank page, it may go to Wikipedia and download that page on the fly. See Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks#Remote loading. --BostonMA 14:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

BostonMA, I find your argument convincing. I will go ahead and remove the section. I will also update my comments on my talk about why I am removing the section. I will post my former argument on how Andries never addressed or refuted this issue and after some mediation intervention and research by the mediator, there was new information that could mostly explain the behavior I screencapped on the assault-weapon.com site. Do you find this acceptable? SSS108 talk-email 17:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi SSS108, my aim is to help resolve conflicts. It is not up to me to say whether something you say on your site is acceptable or not. If something you write in your website causes a conflict and there is something that I can do to help resolve the conflict, then I will give my opinions. Beyond that, I can neither say that what you write is acceptable nor unacceptable. --BostonMA 17:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

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