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User:Piotrus/ArbCom

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With regards to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list.

1. Based on the list available publicly here. Please sign under the statement below, next to your nickname.

"I have not, in any combination, leaked/shared/faked archives of the Eastern European mailing list, nor have I hacked/used without authorization computers/accounts of its members."

2. User:Durova, a person I (Piotrus) explicitly trust, has asked here to be allowed to view the archive that was made available to ArbCom (and several other users) already to carry out her own analysis. Please indicate whether you agree to that or not.

Responses to concerns

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My real name and photograph are published on my userpage. I'm probably the only person in North America who has that name. With regard to trustworthiness, I could provide a list of editors who have had good experience trusting me with sensitive information. Durova320 21:05, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

(moved from above) Regardless of whether she is given or not that task, I, as editor, welcome any questions from her [you] about and/or any revue by her [you] of my editorial activity. I agree for Wikipedia to provide her [you] some additional tools for that if needed (e.g. it is alright for her to exercise sysop and checkuser rights upon my account). As an editor, I am totally at her [your] disposal, just as I am at ArbCom's (well, with sufficient time allowances; please note I am still on semi-wikibreak).
(moved from above; this part is general for everybody) If one has any questions to me as a person, address them to me as a person (by email), please. I would like to put it clear that I make serious distinction and borderline between my personal and professional life on one side, and my activity as an editor, therefore I might not be interested to answer as a person.
Thank you very much. I do trust you. As an editor I trust you completely.
Also as a person, I trust your integrity. I would like however to know that you would look at what seems to be private email communication (if the so-called archive is what it is alleged) with privacy and discretion issues kept in mind. It is not a matter of simple personal integrity and good judgement, it actually needs that the person be somewhat qualified to do that. I would, for example, never try to fly a plain or a helicopter, although basically I would know what to do, because there are professional issues that one must be taught, and one has to be aware beforehand about them. Modern pilots mostly do corrections and react to the unforeseen (because of training they know reflexively how to handle the unforeseen), 90% of tasks (the routine ones) are easily handled by the autopilot. ArbCom members are advised about privacy issues: they know they must handle private information with discretion and perhaps have some experience at that already. If you tell me they have instructed you how to do this, i.e. if they told you what to do in case of x, y, etc, and you can ask for help from them in case you are unsure how to proceed, then I am withdrawing my condition. ... (thinking) All right, let it be: In case receiving instructions from ArbCom is unpractical, I would drop that condition if I can email you once before you start.
About your name, yes, you are totally right. :) See, this is me a typical example of a person who does not know what to ask because is the first time in such situation. Obviously to ask for ArbCom to "know your real name" was quite redundant.
But there is a second issue: Wikipedia should not proliferate the distribution of hacked private information. So, I am afraid I have to leave one condition in place: the copy you analyse has to be from ArbCom, not from someone else. All 9 people who received the email should have sent their copies to the ArbCom and erased them from their computers. ArbCom should disallow any so-called evidence from people outside ArbCom who took upon themselves to read that achieve. Dc76\talk 00:27, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
It seems very reasonable that a version I review should be absolutely the same as the one ArbCom is viewing. If all list members agree I will send a request to the Committee, and cite discussion at this page. For an example of how I handled a sensitive issue in the past, see the historical/nonblanked version of this page. For a summary of how that ultimately turned out, see here and here. Best regards, Durova320 01:01, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Sounds fine to me. I would respectfully ask you to not review something sent to you by third parties. I suppose it would take a few hours until you get the archive from the ArbCom, so I hope you will excuse me if I write you my email about privacy considerations tomorrow. (Is the email feature of your WP account active?) Once you read that email, I have no condition. (You are free to show my email to you to ArbCom, but not to third parties.) Again, thank you very much for being so forthcoming. Dc76\talk 01:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, my email is enabled. Although I have requested to keep communications regarding this case as onsite as possible, matters of personal privacy that require offsite attention would be handled with utmost discretion. Durova320 01:30, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
I have sent you an email. You are welcome to look at the archive. Thank you very much for your time to do this review and for your understanding of privacy issues. Dc76\talk 14:03, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Have you folks really considered this offer well? Durova offered to compare disputed messages against the rest of the archive; in other words, comparing disputed messages written by user:Alfa against undisputed messages by Alfa, Beta against Beta, and so forth, looking for some linguistic tic that can exclude Alfa as the author. Presumably, the disputed messages will describe the most outrageous conduct, forged and salted into the mix. So you're going to be doing Arbcom's evidence-gathering for them. You'd better be darn sure the messages really are altered. In fact, the archive is now publicly available on an outside web site; has anyone downloaded it and clearly identified altered or totally fake messages? Might want to do that before sending Durova down the rabbit hole. Thatcher 20:54, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Thatcher, just by curiosity....why you are so much against the Durovas willingness to examine all this and why you so sure that the people here are %100 guilty? I just can't understand that..am I missing someting you know??--Jacurek (talk) 00:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
I do think that there is a valid point here: let's wait and see if ArbCom finds anything questionable before Durova invests her time into this. If the arbcom finds nothing questionable, then there is probably no alteration to worry about. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 04:26, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
That's a question I pondered before making the offer. Provisional desysoppings are rare. No one (on the Committee or outside of it) has attempted this type of survey. According to my brand of common sense, this is the inquiry which ought to have happened before a case even opened. It's hard to see how any fair opinion could be formed without a diligent attempt at comparison. If everything checks out identical then at least that'll settle one point of contention and turn down the heat a bit. That much improvement would be worth the effort. Durova320 05:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm thinking of the challenges involved. It's not really possible to drop 3000+ emails into a computer and ask "which ones are fake?" The only way I can think this will work is for the participants to read the archives and flag emails that they allege are altered, then have Durova attempt to compare (for example) 6 allegedly altered Piotrus emails with the hundreds of undisputed emails, and so on for the other participants. Before you do the comparison you have to discard all quoted and extraneous text, which might be possible with a script but might require hand checking. Then you have to hope that there is some diagnostic quirk that clearly sets those alleged altered emails apart from the others. I'm thinking that the sample size is likely too small to make any definitive findings. Consider the Shakespeare authorship question, which is not settled after years of analysis of a huge body of work. I'm also thinking about the statistics of the problem. Usually a P-value of <0.05 is considered significant, but if you examine a hundred variables, you could easily have several that have P<0.05 by random chance. What are the statistics of examining hundreds of emails. What is the rate of false-positives and false-negatives? How is the result biased if you ask a biased question? (That is, if you tell a computer or investigator that here are 100 authentic messages and 5 fake ones, find evidence to prove you may get a very different answer than if you tell the computer or investigator here are 105 messages which may or may not contain one or more fakes, tell me what you think). I'm thinking that if you have already identified false or altered messages you could post notice of such on the evidence page by their time stamps, so that Arbcom and other editors who have downloaded the file can look at the evidence for themselves. And finally I'm thinking that if you do identify some allegedly altered messages, the most likely answer from Durova is going to be "inconclusive" (for the other reasons I mentioned) and thus not helpful to your case. Thatcher 20:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Further, there needs to be independent validation of Durova's methods. For example, Arbcom could randomly select 95 list messages by Piotrus and 5 by Radek, strip out all identifying meta-data, and give them to Durova to see if she can correctly identify the 5 that were written by a different author. Thatcher 21:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
It is not necessary to validate all 3000+ messages or a random selection there of, only those messages that ArbCom deem to be evidence of breaches of Wikipedia policy. The remaining messages remain personal private property. Let's not forget that the original claim was that half of these 3000+ messages were about "getting Russavia". --Martintg (talk) 04:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
ArbCom will get a detailed report, which they can value or not as they believe it merits. If any arbitrator wishes to work together or in parallel that's welcome too. Durova320 05:41, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

That's everyone

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Molobo can't sign because he's blocked. I think Digwuren has ceased all Wikipedia related activities. So if it's not these two, this is a complete list.radek (talk) 01:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Digwuren has emailed me. Molobo is welcome to do the same. How about Hillock65? Durova320 03:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Okay, Hillock65 and Digwuren are taken care of. Molobo's blocked but his user space isn't full protected. Waiting for word from him, preferably to user talk or alternately via email. Durova320 20:39, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Molobo has given approval at his user talk. That's everybody. Durova320 18:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Can you confirm that both Digwuren and Molobo also expressed support for the first statement? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Molobo's statement is at his user page; it appears to cover both portions. You might want to seek clarification from Digwuren. Durova320 21:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Details, details

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Because there is no official archive for this list, it's necessary to work out logistics. If any member has a complete archive please contact me promptly. Otherwise I will be collecting partial archives from various members. For recordkeeping purposes, each archival version will be assigned a unique identifier.

To list members who supply archives: please do not attempt to alter or modify your emails in any way--even if content is 'gray area' or clearly wrong. If your correspondence has indeed been hacked and altered by someone else, I'll do my best to look for clues that would identify that person. We'll have the best chance of that outcome if no one introduces new variables. Don't worry about offending me; I'm a former sailor. Whatever has happened here, I'll do my best to help clear the air. Durova320 18:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

List members, please go ahead and begin sending me your archives. I will either be comparing them against ArbCom's direct material or against the publicly available version of the file. Thank you all for your cooperation. Durova320 01:45, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
I have a logistical question for you, Durova. And perhaps, for other more knowledgeable members of our discussion group, willing to chip in. I have no idea how the leaked archive looks like. All messages from the list members were delivered to my Windows Live Hotmail account and that’s where they are, most of them still unopened (sorry folks, I didn’t have time). I looked at the options and noticed, that in order to collect them for you, I would have to open each and every message separately (there are thousands of them), and even then, I would not be able to save any of them locally with a click of a button, because there’s no such button to click on anywhere. I don’t know how to make an archive of my own. For example, would I have to copy-paste every message’s content manually? I hope not. I created a new folder called Eastern European mailing list and moved the first 494 messages there to see what happens. The new folder is 5.0 MB big already and that’s just a fraction of my own set, because I retained all messages sent to me by the group. – Would you have any ideas about how to proceed? How about if I let you see what I have with a temporary password to my account? I have no clue what to do next. --Poeticbent talk 04:12, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
You're very trusting, but it would be best not to give me any passwords. It's going to be a lot of work to organize the emails (much less compare them). One possibility would be to populate the folder and burn a copy to CD, then send the CD. Durova320 15:13, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear enough. I have nothing at home to burn a CD from. My special folder called Eastern European mailing list belongs to my Hotmail account online. That’s where I keep my own genuine archive which contains every single message sent to me from the discussion group since the day I joined in, in mid June. Most of the emails are marked in bold, because they’ve never been opened. What I’m enquiring about here is whether there’s a way of sharing this folder with you without having to deal with each and every email by clicking on it and copy-pasting its content to my hard drive manually before saving. This would be a Herculean task for me since the messages remain unopened for the same reason. --Poeticbent talk 18:16, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Very good question. I'm not versed in every nuance of the Hotmail system. If it were possible to batch-forward an entire folder that would be perfect. Is there a Hotmail expert handy? Otherwise one of us can wade knee deep through their help files. Durova320 21:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
One very important point. I woud like to assure all my friends and everybody who ever sent me any private correspondence to my Hotmail account, that in case I allow Durova to access that address for the purpose of comparison, I will give you a fair warning first, then create a new account for my Wiki mail and move all my personal letters there. In other words, there will be nothing but the Eastern European mailing list for her to read in my current account. Your private mail will forever be safe with me. --Poeticbent talk 22:57, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Need material

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In order to undertake this it is necessary to receive List emails. The survey I will undertake is a comparison survey, so until material comes from the List participants it will be impossible to begin. In order to avoid possibly prejudicing the review I will not be reviewing the publicly available version until your own files reach me.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere apparently part of the content includes forwards of emails written by third parties. Since I do not have permission from anyone other than List members I will delete unread anything that was written by people other than yourselves. Durova320 18:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

  • It is a bit disconcerting that only Durova and I take part in this conversation. Perhaps it is still too early for a thorough checkup of the mailing list content considering the flood of evidence being submitted and the amount of feedback given in talk? My offer to her stands of course, and I will share with her my Windows Live Hotmail account as soon as she agrees to it. My special online folder called Eastern European mailing list contains 2,403 messages for the total of 25.4 MB. It begins on June 15, 2009 1:19:00 AM with a welcome message including password, and ends on September 18, 2009 7:33:37 AM with the "unsubscribed" notification. Most emails have never been opened. – Would somebody tell me please, when the leaked archive begins? It would also be interesting to know when exactly did the original members join in. You can put a date next to your name below if you want to help. Thanks. --Poeticbent talk 14:52, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
  1. Alexia Death (talk · contribs)
  2. Biruitorul (talk · contribs)
  3. Digwuren (talk · contribs)
  4. Dc76 (talk · contribs)
  5. Hillock65 (talk · contribs)
  6. Martintg (talk · contribs)
  7. Molobo (talk · contribs)
  8. Piotrus (talk · contribs)
  9. Vecrumba (talk · contribs)
  10. 2009-03-21. Miacek joins
  11. 2009-04-14. Biophys joins
  12. 2009-05-27. Radeksz joins
  13. 2009-06-03. Sander Säde rejoins
  14. 2009-06-05. Tymek joins
  15. 2009-06-08. Jacurek joins
  16. 2009-06-11. Ostap R joins
  17. 2009-06-15. Poeticbent joins

Update time

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What shall I tell the Committee? When everyone signed on it seemed like a done deal, but two things blindsided me:

  1. Other people's privacy besides the List members' was actually at stake. Here's wishing I'd known sooner.
  2. No emails from List members have actually been forthcoming.

A handful of people on both sides have been emailing me. Without disclosing who, here's the general shape of the matter:

  • To people who believe the List done wrong, it looks like you're hanging your heads because you know you've been caught.
  • To people from the opposite perspective the lack of followup reflects shock, dismay, and dispondency.

Two suppositions need to be put to rest:

  1. Nobody put me up to it when the offer got made. I'm my own woman; ain't easy to influence me.
  2. I have not read the public files, and will not do so until/unless the List members provide material for comparison.

Also for the record:

  1. I'd blow the whistle on my own best friend if I believed they were really wrong and nothing else worked.
  2. Even if an editor is wrong within the wiki-universe, broader consequences are a different matter.

There's a joke we used to tell in the Navy. Saint Peter at the pearly gates interviews the new arrivals. First in line is a preacher. "I spent thirty years at the pulpit sharing the Lord's word."
Saint Peter answers, "Yes but you also dipped into the collection plate to pay for your kid's orthodontist."
The preacher disappears in a puff of smoke.

Second in line is a nun.
"I spent fifty years serving God, teaching theology to children." she tells him.
"But you rapped 214 children on the knuckles with a ruler."
The nun disappears in another puff of smoke.

Third up is a sailor.
Having seen the others, he has nothing to say for himself.
Saint Peter opens the Pearly Gates and says "Come on in."

Fourth in line is flabbergasted.
"The preacher? The nun? And then the sailor?"

Saint Peter shrugs and answers "What goes on Pac stays on Pac."

To anybody who's lurking this page, please keep the reaction in perspective. Durova320 19:11, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Withdrawal

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When I first made this offer it would have stretched my available time and energy to the limit. Unfortunately, my time is less free in October than it was in September. No emails have been forthcoming, nor any clear time frame for delivering them. The case itself has progressed (as arbitration cases do) and it is no longer feasible to attempt a comparison within a reasonable time frame. It is with regrets that I withdraw the review offer; I will be posting similar notification to the arbitration talk pages shortly. Durova321 18:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the offer; I hope we can still do such an analysis at some later point. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 19:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
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