Post by blissyu2 on Jul 26, 2008 18:42:14 GMT -5
This is how Wikipedia Review ended up getting stolen:
Stage 1) We moved to our own servers without the founder.
Igor Alexander founded the place, so he should have been going to the new server. Indeed, ideally he should have been running it. But he wouldn't put up any money, so I had to do it.
Stage 2) Slim Virgin / Grace Note make up stories about the founder.
Being accused of being a holocaust denier is a big enough complaint that people are going to react to it rather than properly check their facts. It was based primarily on similarity of letters used in the names. It wasn't based on any posts made or anything like that.
Stage 3) The founder bans the new coder.
Igor Alexander in many ways started the rot by banning the new coder, Selina, from his own site, because she had accused him of being a holocaust denier. He banned a lot of other people too, but that's not the point. It was a pointless ban as we were moving to a new site.
Stage 4) Selina uses "emergency powers" to ban the founder.
Think of how the bad guy became the emperor on Star Wars and that is basically what happened here. Selina was the coder, not even an administrator, yet she used emergency powers to make herself an admin, ban the founder (Igor Alexander) from his own site, change the passwords and basically put the site to ransom. If she was banned then, the whole site would have fallen apart.
Stage 5) Igor is banned from his own site, setting a precedent.
You should never ban the founder of a site from their own site, or a former owner, no matter what happens. But this happened. Because it happened, it set a precedent. Later, founding members such as Blu Aardvark and Lir were banned, along with virtually all of the administrators. Later still, the owner of the site was banned while they were still the owner! You don't see Jimbo getting banned from Wikipedia, and if anyone suggested it they would laugh at it. Nor even is Larry Sanger ever going to be banned. It is laughable to suggest such a thing.
Stage 6) Try to take the site back while the owner can't do anything.
There was no chance whatsoever for me to help to get the site back when I couldn't even use the internet. I could log in for 30 minutes once per week in the local library, not nearly enough time to read everything related to the incident and to decide what to do. But this of course led to Selina knowing that I might eventually try to take it back, and get rid of her.
Stage 7) Get a new person involved to try to hide what is going on.
Somey became involved, which supposedly was meant to stop all of the problems with Selina's heavy handedness. Of course, this led to Somey stealing the site secretly, by pretending that Selina was the owner.
Stage 8) Register the site with new hosts (HostGator) in secret.
In July 2007, Somey registered Wikipedia Review.com with HostGator, even though it was already registered with GoDaddy (for the domain name) and Lunarpages (for the software) and they weren't going to expire until January 16/Feb 16 2008. This was a way to steal the site.
Stage 9) When the e-mail address doesn't work, claim it has changed.
The hosts (GoDaddy/Lunarpages) e-mailed me for confirmation, but of course it went to Internode, not to Octa4, which I was using then. Since I didn't know that the e-mail had arrived (obviously, since I couldn't access that account anymore) I couldn't say no to it. Somey simply claimed that that e-mail account was invalid and presented a new one - HIS e-mail address. In this way, Somey was able to pretend to be me, and to steal my identity (in these terms at least).
Stage 10) Don't tell a single soul about it.
Somey didn't write any posts on Wikipedia Review or anywhere to say what he had done. If he had, someone might have told me. He let me keep posting stuff about "As owner" and never corrected me. He knew that if I found out, he could get in a lot of trouble.
Stage 11) Promote a serious trouble maker to administrator.
Undoubtedly the reason why Somey promoted Kato so quickly was to goad me into action. He knew that Kato should not have been promoted, and he knew that the way that he did it was against our rules (he was promoted instantly without any discussion). He also knew that I could disapprove of someone, yet he ignored that veto power. He did it all to try to get an excuse for banning me, so as to complete his theft of the site.
Stage 12) Lie to support that trouble maker.
Kato himself was a great manipulator and liar, but Somey knew what was going on, yet he lied to support him. This was undoubtedly to further his intentions to steal the site.
Stage 13) Ban the owner, but call it a "holiday".
By calling it a holiday, Somey was able to get me to not immediately dispute it. He claimed that I would come back. But then after initiating the holiday, he made things increasingly worse. He suddenly was listening to Jorge's lies. It all happened gradually, worse and worse, so that by the time that it had all happened there was little to do about it. People thus seemed to forget that I was the owner and that it shouldn't be described as a banning but rather as a hacking. Somey even admitted that it was a hacking. He said that he had changed my password.
Stage 14) Delete all posts that prove that I am the owner.
Somey wiped huge amounts of posts, undoubtedly using the search function to find them, basically wiping every post that said that I was the owner. Thus he could claim that there were none.
Stage 15) Somey then claimed that I was never the owner.
In spite of at the time claiming that I was no longer the owner, Somey subsequently altered this to pretend that I was never the owner and that I had made it all up. Somey claimed that the screen shots were fake, etc.
Stage 16) Somey claimed that the reason for the ban was a blog post made that complained about the ban.
Using some circular logic, Somey pretended that the ban was in relation to my complaining about the ban. Sorry, but the ban had already existed. Yet somehow people believed this.
Stage 17) Register wikipediacritics.com too.
Somey registered wikipediacritics.com, which I said I wanted to use to set up an alternative to Wikipedia Review (I ended up going here). He did this deliberately to stuff me around. He even set it up as a redirect to Wikipedia Review. Somey proved that he wasn't interested in fairness at all, after I said to just let me on to advertise the site as an alternative, and that's it. He proved that his reasons for hacking my account were purely power related.
Stage 18) Hack my e-mail address.
Somey also hacked my e-mail address. In this case, he knew that I didn't use Octa4 anymore as an ISP so he simply wrote a message to them complaining that I had stolen the e-mail address. An IT person responded, didn't check out anything at all, and banned first ask questions later. This was of course a major inconvenience for me, but the real reason was to stop me from posting the e-mails that Somey had sent to me where he confessed to hacking the site and admitted that I was the owner. It also stopped me from being able to contact the hosts further.
Stage 19) Claim that screen shots are fake (etc).
Even though I posted screen shots and e-mail logs that proved my ownership (complete with headers), Somey claimed that they were fake.
And so it is complete. Now Somey has control of a popular web site. Now he can be mentioned in articles about it. Now he can have power and fame.
And Somey can run it into the ground, spy on people, stalk people and so forth, all the time pretending that he isn't, because those claims were falsely made the whole time. Now that it is actually true, nobody suspects a thing.
Stage 1) We moved to our own servers without the founder.
Igor Alexander founded the place, so he should have been going to the new server. Indeed, ideally he should have been running it. But he wouldn't put up any money, so I had to do it.
Stage 2) Slim Virgin / Grace Note make up stories about the founder.
Being accused of being a holocaust denier is a big enough complaint that people are going to react to it rather than properly check their facts. It was based primarily on similarity of letters used in the names. It wasn't based on any posts made or anything like that.
Stage 3) The founder bans the new coder.
Igor Alexander in many ways started the rot by banning the new coder, Selina, from his own site, because she had accused him of being a holocaust denier. He banned a lot of other people too, but that's not the point. It was a pointless ban as we were moving to a new site.
Stage 4) Selina uses "emergency powers" to ban the founder.
Think of how the bad guy became the emperor on Star Wars and that is basically what happened here. Selina was the coder, not even an administrator, yet she used emergency powers to make herself an admin, ban the founder (Igor Alexander) from his own site, change the passwords and basically put the site to ransom. If she was banned then, the whole site would have fallen apart.
Stage 5) Igor is banned from his own site, setting a precedent.
You should never ban the founder of a site from their own site, or a former owner, no matter what happens. But this happened. Because it happened, it set a precedent. Later, founding members such as Blu Aardvark and Lir were banned, along with virtually all of the administrators. Later still, the owner of the site was banned while they were still the owner! You don't see Jimbo getting banned from Wikipedia, and if anyone suggested it they would laugh at it. Nor even is Larry Sanger ever going to be banned. It is laughable to suggest such a thing.
Stage 6) Try to take the site back while the owner can't do anything.
There was no chance whatsoever for me to help to get the site back when I couldn't even use the internet. I could log in for 30 minutes once per week in the local library, not nearly enough time to read everything related to the incident and to decide what to do. But this of course led to Selina knowing that I might eventually try to take it back, and get rid of her.
Stage 7) Get a new person involved to try to hide what is going on.
Somey became involved, which supposedly was meant to stop all of the problems with Selina's heavy handedness. Of course, this led to Somey stealing the site secretly, by pretending that Selina was the owner.
Stage 8) Register the site with new hosts (HostGator) in secret.
In July 2007, Somey registered Wikipedia Review.com with HostGator, even though it was already registered with GoDaddy (for the domain name) and Lunarpages (for the software) and they weren't going to expire until January 16/Feb 16 2008. This was a way to steal the site.
Stage 9) When the e-mail address doesn't work, claim it has changed.
The hosts (GoDaddy/Lunarpages) e-mailed me for confirmation, but of course it went to Internode, not to Octa4, which I was using then. Since I didn't know that the e-mail had arrived (obviously, since I couldn't access that account anymore) I couldn't say no to it. Somey simply claimed that that e-mail account was invalid and presented a new one - HIS e-mail address. In this way, Somey was able to pretend to be me, and to steal my identity (in these terms at least).
Stage 10) Don't tell a single soul about it.
Somey didn't write any posts on Wikipedia Review or anywhere to say what he had done. If he had, someone might have told me. He let me keep posting stuff about "As owner" and never corrected me. He knew that if I found out, he could get in a lot of trouble.
Stage 11) Promote a serious trouble maker to administrator.
Undoubtedly the reason why Somey promoted Kato so quickly was to goad me into action. He knew that Kato should not have been promoted, and he knew that the way that he did it was against our rules (he was promoted instantly without any discussion). He also knew that I could disapprove of someone, yet he ignored that veto power. He did it all to try to get an excuse for banning me, so as to complete his theft of the site.
Stage 12) Lie to support that trouble maker.
Kato himself was a great manipulator and liar, but Somey knew what was going on, yet he lied to support him. This was undoubtedly to further his intentions to steal the site.
Stage 13) Ban the owner, but call it a "holiday".
By calling it a holiday, Somey was able to get me to not immediately dispute it. He claimed that I would come back. But then after initiating the holiday, he made things increasingly worse. He suddenly was listening to Jorge's lies. It all happened gradually, worse and worse, so that by the time that it had all happened there was little to do about it. People thus seemed to forget that I was the owner and that it shouldn't be described as a banning but rather as a hacking. Somey even admitted that it was a hacking. He said that he had changed my password.
Stage 14) Delete all posts that prove that I am the owner.
Somey wiped huge amounts of posts, undoubtedly using the search function to find them, basically wiping every post that said that I was the owner. Thus he could claim that there were none.
Stage 15) Somey then claimed that I was never the owner.
In spite of at the time claiming that I was no longer the owner, Somey subsequently altered this to pretend that I was never the owner and that I had made it all up. Somey claimed that the screen shots were fake, etc.
Stage 16) Somey claimed that the reason for the ban was a blog post made that complained about the ban.
Using some circular logic, Somey pretended that the ban was in relation to my complaining about the ban. Sorry, but the ban had already existed. Yet somehow people believed this.
Stage 17) Register wikipediacritics.com too.
Somey registered wikipediacritics.com, which I said I wanted to use to set up an alternative to Wikipedia Review (I ended up going here). He did this deliberately to stuff me around. He even set it up as a redirect to Wikipedia Review. Somey proved that he wasn't interested in fairness at all, after I said to just let me on to advertise the site as an alternative, and that's it. He proved that his reasons for hacking my account were purely power related.
Stage 18) Hack my e-mail address.
Somey also hacked my e-mail address. In this case, he knew that I didn't use Octa4 anymore as an ISP so he simply wrote a message to them complaining that I had stolen the e-mail address. An IT person responded, didn't check out anything at all, and banned first ask questions later. This was of course a major inconvenience for me, but the real reason was to stop me from posting the e-mails that Somey had sent to me where he confessed to hacking the site and admitted that I was the owner. It also stopped me from being able to contact the hosts further.
Stage 19) Claim that screen shots are fake (etc).
Even though I posted screen shots and e-mail logs that proved my ownership (complete with headers), Somey claimed that they were fake.
And so it is complete. Now Somey has control of a popular web site. Now he can be mentioned in articles about it. Now he can have power and fame.
And Somey can run it into the ground, spy on people, stalk people and so forth, all the time pretending that he isn't, because those claims were falsely made the whole time. Now that it is actually true, nobody suspects a thing.