Post by blissyu2 on Jul 6, 2008 9:43:55 GMT -5
Did I ever own Wikipedia Review?
The short answer to this is YES.
From 16th January 2006 - 16th January 2008 I owned the domain name "wikipediareview.com", which I purchased on 16th January 2006 and then renewed for a 2nd year on 16th January 2007, purchased both times from GoDaddy.
From 16th February 2006 - 16th February 2008 I owned the forum itself, having purchased Invision forum software from Lunarpages.
So why then does it say that wikipediareview.com is hosted by HostGator?
At first, I thought that it was simply giving false information, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
Our best guess is that somewhere between 16th February 2007 and 7th November 2007 Somey registered wikipediareview.com (both hosting and software) with HostGator. I can't say an exact date on this, although there may be some hints somewhere, so we can say "mid 2007".
Why would Somey want to register wikipediareview.com in mid 2007 when it was already registered and it didn't expire until Jan 16/Feb 16 2008?
The short answer to this is power.
By changing hosts, Somey prevented me from ever taking the site back. It was done in secret, although presumably Selina also knew. It wasn't posted anywhere. It just suddenly happened. I didn't know about it, and didn't believe it, until I discovered that Lunarpages and GoDaddy were refusing to let me get my site back.
Why did Lunarpages and GoDaddy allow this?
In short - why would they care? They got their money paid up, but in this case didn't have to provide a service for it. It was a win-win situation.
As far as they were concerned, I had opted to cancel the hosting early, because I wanted to go elsewhere. They didn't realise that it wasn't me doing it.
See, I had given the passwords to the site to Selina, because she was coding it. She had in turn given the passwords to Somey because he started doing the coding.
Because I wanted to have a hands-off approach, I didn't bother too much about it, although a big issue was made of it in mid 2006 by Blu Aardvark and others.
Why couldn't I get it back?
Part of the problem was that Lunarpages and GoDaddy are located in USA while I am in Australia. Another part of the problem is that the e-mail address that I registered with, internode, no longer existed, and hadn't existed for over 18 months prior.
The reality was that they wanted me to call at certain times, which meant either 4am my time or else when I was at work. When I did call them, they then refused to answer and would call me back at times when I wasn't here or else was asleep. It just wasn't happening.
If they had had better customer service, it might have been doable, but the reality was that they were pricks about the whole thing.
Did I ever really own it or was I merely donating money?
Technically and legally I owned it, but I always said that I wanted to be known simply as someone who was donating money. The only times when I even mentioned that I was the owner was when there were legal issues, such as when Jimbo Wales threatened to sue us. I did not give any orders, or any directions at all, and acted just like any other user. People in the know knew, of course, but they were able to happily lie about it in the end.
The difference between donating money and actually owning it is that my name and identity was attached to the registration of the site as a legal entity. That meant that if WR ever got sued, I would be the one who would get sued for it.
Whilst that might not mean much to a lot of people, with the kinds of things that many people tried to do there, it meant a lot to me. I had to make sure that everything on the site was above board.
What mistake did I make?
In retrospect, I shouldn't have allowed Selina to use "emergency admin powers", and should have jumped in and made her go back to user level after she had banned Igor (and reversed the ban). That was when the rot set in. I just didn't want problems.
My hands were tied when they tried to give the site back to me because I didn't have internet access, but the rot was set in by allowing Selina to become an administrator without anyone ever approving of it.
You could say that I made the mistake of demanding that Kato be banned, but that was all a set up, a power trip by Kato. I didn't really have anything that I could have done to have led to a different result there. Kato knew what he was doing.
It is quite likely that Kato will end up controlling Wikipedia Review, if he doesn't already.
The short answer to this is YES.
From 16th January 2006 - 16th January 2008 I owned the domain name "wikipediareview.com", which I purchased on 16th January 2006 and then renewed for a 2nd year on 16th January 2007, purchased both times from GoDaddy.
From 16th February 2006 - 16th February 2008 I owned the forum itself, having purchased Invision forum software from Lunarpages.
So why then does it say that wikipediareview.com is hosted by HostGator?
At first, I thought that it was simply giving false information, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
Our best guess is that somewhere between 16th February 2007 and 7th November 2007 Somey registered wikipediareview.com (both hosting and software) with HostGator. I can't say an exact date on this, although there may be some hints somewhere, so we can say "mid 2007".
Why would Somey want to register wikipediareview.com in mid 2007 when it was already registered and it didn't expire until Jan 16/Feb 16 2008?
The short answer to this is power.
By changing hosts, Somey prevented me from ever taking the site back. It was done in secret, although presumably Selina also knew. It wasn't posted anywhere. It just suddenly happened. I didn't know about it, and didn't believe it, until I discovered that Lunarpages and GoDaddy were refusing to let me get my site back.
Why did Lunarpages and GoDaddy allow this?
In short - why would they care? They got their money paid up, but in this case didn't have to provide a service for it. It was a win-win situation.
As far as they were concerned, I had opted to cancel the hosting early, because I wanted to go elsewhere. They didn't realise that it wasn't me doing it.
See, I had given the passwords to the site to Selina, because she was coding it. She had in turn given the passwords to Somey because he started doing the coding.
Because I wanted to have a hands-off approach, I didn't bother too much about it, although a big issue was made of it in mid 2006 by Blu Aardvark and others.
Why couldn't I get it back?
Part of the problem was that Lunarpages and GoDaddy are located in USA while I am in Australia. Another part of the problem is that the e-mail address that I registered with, internode, no longer existed, and hadn't existed for over 18 months prior.
The reality was that they wanted me to call at certain times, which meant either 4am my time or else when I was at work. When I did call them, they then refused to answer and would call me back at times when I wasn't here or else was asleep. It just wasn't happening.
If they had had better customer service, it might have been doable, but the reality was that they were pricks about the whole thing.
Did I ever really own it or was I merely donating money?
Technically and legally I owned it, but I always said that I wanted to be known simply as someone who was donating money. The only times when I even mentioned that I was the owner was when there were legal issues, such as when Jimbo Wales threatened to sue us. I did not give any orders, or any directions at all, and acted just like any other user. People in the know knew, of course, but they were able to happily lie about it in the end.
The difference between donating money and actually owning it is that my name and identity was attached to the registration of the site as a legal entity. That meant that if WR ever got sued, I would be the one who would get sued for it.
Whilst that might not mean much to a lot of people, with the kinds of things that many people tried to do there, it meant a lot to me. I had to make sure that everything on the site was above board.
What mistake did I make?
In retrospect, I shouldn't have allowed Selina to use "emergency admin powers", and should have jumped in and made her go back to user level after she had banned Igor (and reversed the ban). That was when the rot set in. I just didn't want problems.
My hands were tied when they tried to give the site back to me because I didn't have internet access, but the rot was set in by allowing Selina to become an administrator without anyone ever approving of it.
You could say that I made the mistake of demanding that Kato be banned, but that was all a set up, a power trip by Kato. I didn't really have anything that I could have done to have led to a different result there. Kato knew what he was doing.
It is quite likely that Kato will end up controlling Wikipedia Review, if he doesn't already.
