User:Stirling Newberry/statement

Sep 18, 9:45 AM Wikipedia Arbcom Faces Key Test: Corruption in its own hiearchy by Stirling Newberry

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People may have noticed a troll by the name of "Ray Lopez". Many have written about the offensiveness of his comments. The reason they were being allowed to accumulate is because "Ray Lopez" is part of an organized group of hard right wingers on wikipedia. However, these individuals are not merely organized editors, but have backing from people with trusted status on Wikipedia.

Now, I have proof of it.

[Update: geek explanation of a security hole in Wikipedia to follow. The clicking on an image gets its description, not a history of the image. Hence someone maliciously uploading to already existing images is invisible to someone looking at the history. This makes it look as if the original uploader of the image is responsible for the current content. See below.]

According to this image history, I uploaded a pornographic image to wikipedia months ago. This is patently false, as a check of google cache on this page shows.

The individual has done this twice this morning to keep the pornographic image on the page. He's, at the time of this writing, is currently logged in as me, reverting my changes from my user account.

This means that someone with access to the database is part of the "Ray Lopez" attack. It follows closely on the heals of this arbitration request.

The evidence is clear, individuals with trusted status on wikipedia are using their powers to prevent individuals from access judicial mechanisms of wikipedia. How wikipedia deals with corrupt members of its own hierarchy will determine whether the project can survive.

This is a test case. It is a warning to anyone who upsets the powers that be in wikipedia - they will go after you, they will use hidden powers to cover their tracks.

There aren't any indications as to how this will play out - wikipedia's arbcom has been known to dish out slaps on the wrist, as it did in the Ed Poor case, and come down very strongly on an editor. As with the military, there is a "good soldier defense", where people who have done good work for wikipedia are clearly treated differently from those who are ordinary editors. There is no formalization of this, no policy or rule that a person can refer to, and therefore anyone approaching the mechanisms of wikipedia is, literally, in the hands of an arbitrary and capricious "rule of people" rather than "rule of law".

This is important, because wikipedia is important. It is, by google, the most referred to general reference on the planet. However, it is not the most trusted reference on the planet. And actions like this are why.

Wikipedia isn't an organization, it isn't even a company - it is an industry. It is an industry driven by community, and an example of a key shift in society.

In political economy there are three means of transmitting information - the market, the government and the culture - which is to say the community. Community transmission of information is not formalizable in any complete way. If community does not transmit useful information, then that must be done by some change to the community, or by government or the market. Often a combination of government and market.

To no small extent the transformation to the modern was created by a situation where the cultural and community norms which had evolved became counter-productive to survival in a mechanized age. A modern project to attack those norms evolved, and both market and government expanded their power dramatically. It was neither the first, nor the last time, when community was pushed down in order to handle changes in politics, technology or economy. This process is traumatic, and the echoes of the modern version are with us today. A similar transformation is now occuring - because of the extrenal pressures of the end of extraction, which is robbing the market of its basis, the creation of digitality - not merely digital communication, but digital communities - which are robbing both market and government of privileged positions in social organization. Hit from "below and above" as it were, the society we live in is fumbling towards a new set of rules of behavior, where the rules and limits are.

For some time I have known that individuals within the trusted circle of wikistatus - which is not that difficult to get - were using their powers for unpleasant ends. This is proof of it. Rather hard to ignore proof of it in fact.



It is, for the time being, a warning to people not to cross the right wing powers embedded in wikipedia - since, at present - they still have free run of wikipedia, and there is nothing that can be done quickly to prevent them. The "well just fix it yourself" ethos of wikipedia here to fore cannot be accepted - since it places single individuals against organized, empowered, groups on wikipedia. People doing real work are overworked, and this kind of pure cost - and it is pure cost - will not amuse them.

It is through such moments that organizations grow, it was the case of Wik - an extremely active editor who lost a small proceding and then proceded to rampage through wikipedia - that lead to the creation of Arbcom itself, since it was clear that there was a need for such a body. The recent incidents on wikipedia - of which this merely the one I happen to be involved in - have shown, with escalating clarity, the end of the anti-factionalist faerie tale of wikipedia. It is the same moment that American Democracy came to rather early. There is no mention of "party" in the constitution - and deliberately. Yet, rapidly parties formed. One could argue that only the "era of good feelings" - one party rule in America - was close to the founder's design.

Wikipedia's current rules assume that disputes are between people - this person disagrees with that person, or these people with those people. However, more and more of the more hostile disagreements are between factions - organized or semi-organized groups. The judicial system of wikipedia, and its fundamental working system, is not set up for even amateur organized groups, let alone professional ones. As it grows in stature and importance, the reward for doing what is being done here, namely corrupt the system for the ends of a faction, will grow.

Update: wikipedia has crashed, I don't know why, but certainly don't ascribe this outage to what I am writing. Merely one of those annoying coincidences.

Update: Rob Brewer explains why the edit history might have been out of sync:

The edit history that I see at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pub.jpg shows a 19 February version uploaded by you, a pornographic version uploaded by an impostor today, and reverts by GMaxwell and TenOfAllTrades.

The impostor is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StirIing_Newberry with capital I in place of the lowercase l.

It is possible that the edit history was confused by delays in syncing the slave database. That is, for a while after the porno version was uploaded, it was the current version of the image, and appeared on the page, but the image history was being read off the slightly out-of-date slave database.

Does that make sense?

Permalink by Stirling Newberry Sep 18, 9:45 AM Comments (10) , Trackback (0)

Comments Actually, it's technically difficult to post in someone else's name by direct db access.

It's much easier to steal account by guessing password, by brute force, sniffing or exploiting your machine.

Ask someone with CheckUser right to see from which IPs were the edits performed. The database records this information.

If indeed someone has password to your account, change it to prevent further damage and use checkuser to find the bad edits.

Posted by: taw at September 18, 2005 10:24 AM The log in as me is probably brute force.

The edit summary on the image - which shows the last change to be MARCH, for a change made LAST NIGHT - however, is database or server. My suspicion is that they might have simply compromised the image server and replaced the original image with this one.

It also underlines my point - an ordinary user has no protection and no ability to deal with this.

Posted by: Stirling Newberry at September 18, 2005 10:42 AM FYI, the database history for Image:Pub.jpg reads as follows:


 * (del) (cur) 15:19, 18 September 2005 . . Gmaxwell (8442 bytes) (Reverted to earlier revision)
 * (del) (rev) 12:53, 18 September 2005 . . StirIing Newberry (31615 bytes) (Stirling Newberry) [pornographic image]z
 * (del) (rev) 16:03, 19 February 2005 . . Stirling Newberry (8442 bytes) ( Stirling Newberry)

Note the difference: "StirIing Newberry" versus "Stirling Newberry" -- no database corruption involved.

Posted by: anon at September 18, 2005 11:38 AM Yeah, that capital I for lower-case L sans-serif hack is one that craigslist was dealing with in forums a long time ago. They came up with a solutions that forces every capital I to a serif font.

Posted by: paperwight at September 18, 2005 11:45 AM Hi Stirling; is it possible that the upload was done by http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=StirIing_Newberry, which is an impostor of you? He's been blocked. Note the lower case L in Stirling is actually an "I"? I don't see the image in the user contributions (it may have been deleted). If you use the monobook skin, l and I look identical. Take care, Antandrus

Posted by: Antandrus at September 18, 2005 11:46 AM Sorry, but you lose this time ;-)

's page history shows changes in *description* of image. You apparently changed image's description from "" to "" in March. History of *uploads* is shown on image's page, and is shows an upload by " StirIing Newberry" (notice uppercase "i" in place of lowercase "l"), last night.

So it's not even your account being hax0red - someone simply made an account with similar name, and you misinterpreted the facts big way.

But it's not even the whole misinterpretation - Google cache does not cache images, only HTML. So the image seen on your page was not cached, but came directly from wikipedia servers.

Better luck next time ;-)

Posted by: taw at September 18, 2005 11:49 AM LOL, looks like several people sprang to your defense all at once; my post was a minute late. We get a lot of those "I" for "l" impostors; I block them when I see them. Take care, Antandrus

Posted by: Antandrus at September 18, 2005 11:51 AM Updated comments are important. It seems that there are two problems:

1. The page shows the history of the description, not the image, the image history is below.

2. The syncing of databases can leave history information out of sync.

Posted by: Stirling Newberry at September 18, 2005 12:41 PM Douche. Its not a security hole, its a feature.

Posted by: Raymond Lopez at September 18, 2005 12:50 PM You need to retract this. It was someone being an imposter of you. You should have checked the name before you accused Wikipedia of being corrupt.

Posted by: J Stanton at September 18, 2005 12:57 PM