New edit based on AGK's critique.
Basic position: Johann Hari has
using
been massively editing Wikipedia[1] contrary to WP:AUTOBIO and, by his use of sockpuppets to attack other editors and to ask for help from admins, he has been gaming the system WP:GAME. He's been using Wikipedia to promote himself WP:NOTPROMOTION, to advocate for those he likes WP:NOTADVOCATE, and to attack those he does not WP:NOTBATTLE.
A permanent community ban has been imposed on User:David r from meth productions: Johann Hari has admitted to his employers, who have published his admission, that he used to edit Wikipedia as "David Rose" / User:David r from meth productions. This identification had already been made[2] by David Allen Green some weeks earlier.
I am concerned that user:Zafio is a Johann Hari sockpuppet still active. I wish to show that I have grounds for concern by demonstrating:
I invite other editors, especially those who have edited the Johann Hari and Talk:Johann Hari page between 2004 and 2011 to examine the evidence.
Between 23:00, 22 October 2004 and 19:24, 29 December 2005 there is a strong pattern of similar IP addresses adding material to the Johann Hari page and signed-in editors removing it.
Six similiar IP addresses with similar things to say edit Talk: Johann Hari between 19:11, 14 March 2005 and 15:10, 28 December 2005.
Made 2 edits, both on 23 August 2005.
There is no need to prove that this user is a sockpuppet: Johann Hari has admitted it. All edits made by David r from meth productions or by the IP addresses used by him without logging in (signed DaveR, Dave) are known and verified sockpuppetry.
"As I understand it, this semi-regular user has been involved in adding negative information to articles about journalists involved in spats with Johann Hari (that they were alcoholics and anti-Semites and so on) and in fluffing the article of Hari and some of his friends. The account was at one time found to be using an IP at the The Independent, Mr. Hari's paper. It was claimed that the account was a Hari acquaintance at The Independent." Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive711 discussion on banning User:David r from meth productionsYonmei (talk) 15:49, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Examples will follow for comparison only.
One to the Quinefan user page 16:34, 11 January 2007. Three to Talk:Johann Hari:
Thelionforreal made 38 edits between
and
All but 5 were to Talk:Johann Hari except for
A comment signed "Johann" was left at Talk:Emiellaiendiay on 19 August 2007
This incident sheds some light on Johann Hari's use of IP addresses. A comment signed "Johann", but the same IP address (77.97.249.234) edits elsewhere, always referring to Hari in the third person.
Examples:
David Allen Green investigates "Subject to the results of my other checks (if I ever receive them), my current view is that the real identity of Zafio must remain an open question: the evidence neither for nor against is enough to rebut the other."
Zafio made 18 edits between 22 November 2007 - 9 July 2008, 11 of them to Johann Hari/Talk.
Zafio's first edit to Wikipedia is on Talk:Johann Hari on 22 November 2007, where like Robblackhurst on 23 October 2006, Zafio says "I stumbled upon, some months ago and quite by accident, the dispute over this page".
The vast majority of words Zafio has added to Wikipedia have been to Talk:Johann Hari
In 2009/2010, Zafio mades 14 edits to the Norman Mailer/Talk:Norman Mailer page. Johann Hari published (November 2007) an article on Norman Mailer Why Do We Ignore The Abuse of Women The majority of Zafio's edits to the Norman Mailer/Talk:Norman Mailer page are in defense of an anecdote sourced by Zafio to that article by Johann Hari.
Yonmei (talk) 19:15, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Suggestions for how the investigation should proceed welcomed.
Thanks for your time. Yonmei (talk) 13:25, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
On 20 and 21 September there were three updates from DAG/Jack of Kent, all posted as comments at Snowdon's blogpost on this situation where DAG/Jack of Kent had offered (and Zafio had accepted) to clarify independently if Zafio existed as a real person and was not Johann Hari. I've quoted all three in full here (below) for the record because the information is sufficiently complex that I don't believe a summary does them justice.
But the summary is: Zafio is, according to David Allen Green, either genuinely who he has told DAG he is (RL name "[AB]" for anonymity) or a very elaborate sockpuppet, with social media accounts definitely under Zafio/AB's control. But it is currently not definitely established which.
Given the lengthy elaborateness of the David Rose deception, I do not see that we can assume Zafio is not Johann Hari simply on the grounds that no one would go to such trouble simply to be able to continue to edit his own biography on Wikipedia.
So I will continue with the next step in the investigation, which as I see it is to alert all editors of the Johann Hari page that this sockpuppet investigation is taking place. Yonmei (talk) 07:24, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Feedback appreciated. Will attempt to redraft before the weekend.
Problems anticipated include: Any summary of the problem has, in the past, tended to minimise the problem such that Johann Hari was allowed to continue editing his own biography page and editors who protested were blocked. In essence, the Johann Hari/David Rose problem is a TL;dnr problem, which rather explains how he managed to continue and even win the support of Wikipedia administration in his project of making himself sound like a major writer / cultural icon, on his own wikipage.
But I had registered that the formatting of the page as it stands makes this look awfully long and dull, so yes, some drastic redrafting is in order. Yonmei (talk) 12:37, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
What Yonmei fails to mention here is that they have already been warned for WP:OUTING, as well as for personal attacks. In July, real people's identities were being investigated and discussed in non-Wikipedia sources on the sock puppet issue, and I had no desire to have my real life identity dragged into this tale. And WP:OUTING is not permissible on Wikipedia. Period.
As for any potential sockpuppet investigation, its no fun for me, but I have nothing to fear from this whatsoever, because I am not Johann Hari. Yonmei's submission here is a paranoid rant. But if admins agree that an investigation is appropriate on any of the presented grounds, I have nothing to worry about whatsoever, about outing or anything else. Zafio (talk) 19:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
No actual evidence - and most of those named were named at a noticeboard which required they be notified (WP:ANI) - which they were not. Use of SPI just because consensus is not going your way != anything much more than fishing for trout. Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
As Collect rightly says, the evidence that I am a sock puppet is paper thin. Nevertheless, I have crossposted this from [[1]].
I'm not very keen on personal information being discussed here, but this might merit it because it strongly indicates I am not Johann Hari.
In this diff on the Morrissey talk page I respond to a contributor who removed a reference to Morrissey's Catholic upbringing: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Morrissey&diff=prev&oldid=188606791
In this diff (written in February 2008), I write that "Few of my catholic friends, nor myself, practice or even believe particularly; but indeed catholic is what we are."
Can anyone find a single source where Johann Hari has made any personal identification with Catholicism, a religion he has consistently attacked? Can anyone possibly imagine *Johann Hari* writing that catholicism is "in the blood", as I write in this diff? (My own identification with Catholicism is a Dara O'Briain style cultural catholicism. I'm a non-believer).
Its possible, I suppose, that Hari was brought up in the Catholic church (if so he hasn't talked about it as far as i know). But he has never made, to my knowledge, even the mildest identification with Catholicism. He is not simply a non-believer, he is a radical anti-theist who shows no sympathy or identification with any religion whatsoever. I have no idea if he likes Morrissey.
I hope this settles the matter, although given the paranoia displayed on these pages, I have my doubts. Only a deranged mind could imagine I'd planted this diff three years ago awaiting just this eventuality. I hope reasonable editors doubts are put to rest.Zafio (talk) 23:10, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
I've been involved in editing this page in the past, but got bored of fighting with David R/Hari. From what I can see, the argumentative tropes used by David R are strikingly similar to those of 'zafio', who I think was used as a more conciliatory sockpuppet designed to appear more moderate than David R while retaining the vast bulk of the hagiography that Hari had written about himself. Yomnei's analysis above is spot on and i'd be stunned if Zafio were not yet another sockpuppet, which really is quite remarkable. SamuelSpade79 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.5.42.215 (talk) 21:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I am going to make a few points here and then cool off for a while. I'm also going to cease interactions with user Yonmei elsewhere on Wikipedia or online, which I think will be good for both of us. If we do at a later date communicate directly on this page, I think we should both try to keep the tone more civil than we have been doing. I suspect a restoration of terms of good faith is unachievable, if any ever existed.
The following points are for the record. I am not entering into any discussion of them for now. Taken together, they form a cumulative case that it is vanishingly unlikely that I am Johann Hari. Its rather a long edit, so for those pushed for time the doozy is number 6).
1) A particular pattern of David R edits was the insertion of negative or malicious edits in the articles of Hari's enemies (Yonmei calls this "a familiar pattern for DavidR sockpuppets". This is probably the most morally serious aspect of the sockpuppet scandal. My user account does not fit this pattern. No negative edits of this kind were made from this user account.
2) I'm not as yet sure how Checkuser works, but some comparative investigation into the IP addresses of my account and that of David R would be helpful if there was doubt. On this site [[2]] (of questionable reliability, I use it only for illustration) there are a list of ips that David R has edited Wikipedia from. The locations are all from Greater London, and I suspect that most if not all of David R's edits come from this broad location. I am confident that no edit in my user account comes from the same IP as any edit in David R's user account. Furthermore, no edit made from my user account was made in Greater London. In fact, all the edits were made a few hundred miles away from London. IP address locations can be unreliable, but I would argue that if a strong trend of this sort could be established, I think this would suggest that it is unlikely that I am a sockpuppet for Johann Hari. And, see point 6).
Does anyone know how this process works in sockpuppet investigations?
3) The Catholic identification I make on a Morrissey talk page is a little odd detail that is difficult to explain. And hasn't been adequately explained using any other arguments than the idea that Hari told lies, so why wouldn't he tell this one? This argument is difficult to entirely refute. However, those who hold the position that this is a statement from Johann Hari still have a lot of work to do to make the claim that it is *likely* that it is Johann Hari. (Here, I will adapt a little from my post here [[3]]).
"David r from meth productions" is, in many ways, an impressive fiction. It is clear that Johann Hari made regular lying claims from that account specifically designed to deter the implication that "David r" was Johann Hari. "David R" the invention, and Johann Hari, the inventor.
However, all of those inventions had some relation or other to disputes on or surrounding the Johann Hari page: they were explicitly motivated to deter implications that "David R" was Hari. None of them had any connection to the Morrissey talk page. David Allen Green has not accused Hari of using sockpuppets to insert hostile reviews of Vauxhall and I into Wikipedia. On that talk page, I explicitly identify as a non-practising Catholic; I talk of Catholicism being "in the blood". There is no evidence anywhere that Johann Hari has ever identified as a Catholic in any respect; in fact, he is relentlessly critical of the faith. Now, if Zafio is a sockpuppet account for Hari, what possible motivation could there have been for this edit?
To believe that my account is a sockpuppet account, you have to believe the following: that Hari not only invented biographical facts about "David Rose" in his editorial disputes on his own Wiki page (which is an established fact), but also that he invented another sockpuppet to plant invented beliefs on articles that have no connection to Johann Hari. So that at a later date he could reuse that identity if his cover was blown elsewhere. Behaviour that, if discovered at this point, would be suicidal in career terms. All of this has to be believed, and believed to be likely, to make the claim that Zafio is Hari.
4) Related to this objection is the simpler one. Why would Hari so recklessly return to editing his own Wikipedia page in the days following his apology? It would be especially foolish since the account Zafio was linked with the sockpuppet scandal here http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2011/07/who-is-david-rose.html. Why return to editing the article with an account that he must have known was under suspicion? I don't find any of the explanations provided here for this conclusive or even plausible, and at least one editor here agrees that it is unlikely http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Johann_Hari_sockpuppetry. This objection I think puts the balance of "plausibility" in favour of the idea that this is not a sockpuppet.
5) Edits before July 2011. Before July of this year, my edits on Wikipedia were split roughly between the Johann Hari page and the Norman Mailer page. During this time, I made 12 edits to the Norman Mailer page, and only 3 to the Hari page. Overall, including talk pages, I made 16 Norman Mailer related edits, and 11 Johann Hari related edits. Of the 3 Hari edits made, two were minor and non-contentious. A third was actually an edit based on an earlier edit by SamuelSpade, and this was an edit which David R had argued against. The view has been put forward by an anonymous user (who clearly has edited the page but for some reason refuses to come forward) that this kind of behaviour was typical of Hari's socks, a pattern of manufactured disagreement between different sockpuppets. Its possible that something of this sort did go on elsewhere (although no other sock has been confirmed), but its just simply not true in this case because this account is not a sock. And another interpretation of my (civil) disagreements with David R is that I was civilly disagreeing with David R. I also disagree that I have made any hagiographic edits to the Johann Hari page, especially as this one removed a few of David R's problematic edits. None of this is an outlandish interpretation of events, despite what some editors might say. As an addendum, I should point out that SamuelSpade has come forward to say he thinks I am a Hari sock. I'm sorry he feels that way.
6)But until this July, my main editing interest here was in Norman Mailer. Hari has written a (very hostile) article on Mailer, only a week after his death. Some of my edits there were dedicated to issues surrounding Mailer's violence against his second wife, something that Hari writes about in his article. These do indeed look like the kind of edits Hari might have been involved with. Other edits, however, seem less like the kind of thing Hari is associated with on Wikipedia. You are free to look through them and judge each on its own merits, but its worth asking why Johann Hari would be bothering with unverified information about an illegitimate child of Mailer's almost two years after his article appeared, as happens here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norman_Mailer&diff=prev&oldid=307339591.
Hari has obviously read Mailer's work, but isn't a big fan. In this diff[[4]] I write that "I'm an advocate of Mailer's work, just not an uncritical one". Hari is certainly critical of Mailer's work, but he in no way can be described as an advocate.
Not impressed? Lets stay with this diff, because it has a little more to tell us. A user Jerzy posts on the Mailer talk page about a quote without a verifiable source where Mailer describes some speculation in his 1973 book Marilyn as "not good journalism" (many ironies there). I pop up to discuss this edit which I inserted into the article more than a year before I first logged in as Zafio. The crucial information is that Jerzy mentions the edit was posted from "a 500-ish-edit presumed-shared academic IP". I respond to this by mentioning that "Very shortly after that July 2006 edit, I left said institution." In July 2006, I was editing an article on Norman Mailer from an academic IP, and left shortly after. Since Johann Hari was neither a student nor a lecturer in July 2006, this leaves the idea that Zafio=David Rose=Johann Hari looking shaky indeed. And its a tonic indeed to also find that that "500-ish-edit presumed-shared academic IP" is traceable to a location significantly distant from the Greater London Area. Yet oddly pertinent, should you care to take a look.
7)A final statement. I have no complaints about the sockpuppet investigation process as such. If editors had legitimate concerns, this was the proper channel for them. All along. I take a very dim view of the harassment however, which has dogged me in July and now again in September. This hasn't been nice at all, I'm afraid. I'd be grateful if any comments on this edit are kept below, and not in the edit. Please also bear in mind my repeated wishes for privacy. Zafio (talk) 02:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Just a note to say that I have brought this matter to the arbitration committee. I hope other editors think it reasonable that speculation in the blogosphere should cease until this is resolved. I must say that I was unaware of David Allen Green's offer. His journalism has been throughout considered and responsible on this issue, so I will certainly consider such a representation.Zafio (talk) 14:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Hari's sockpuppets tend to behave in certain ways.
Given Hari's obsessive six year history of editing under various guises on Wikipedia, and his control freakery over his own article, it is not surprising he has not been be able to disengage, despite being found out. 86.152.240.151 (talk) 15:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC) Yonmei (talk) 15:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm not certain comments from an unsigned editor are helpful in the current circumstances.Zafio (talk) 14:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
It has already been established that Hari’s sockpuppeteering activities at Wikipedia went on over a number of years and were extraordinarily warped and bizarre. To quote Tom Chivers's recent piece in The Telegraph:
As David Allen Green, the legal writer, and the blog Velvet Glove, Iron Fist have both said, some of the behaviour that "David Rose" has engaged in is genuinely bizarre. At one stage Johann Hari quotes David Rose in his blog, giving him biographical details like "a starred first from a degree specialising in environmental science at Cambridge, and extensive work in Antarctica observing the effects of global warming", to support a point Hari himself is making. Green counts "at least fifteen biographical facts (from a lawyer girlfriend in Walthamstow and subbing jobs at the Independent and Spectator, to a principled and noisy opposition to the invasion of Iraq)" about David Rose, none of which were true, because there is no David Rose. "[It] was a fluent stream of lies contrived just so that the systemic smear campaign and dishonest self-promotional exercise could carry on and never be exposed", he says. Snowdon mentions an example in which two apparent Hari sockpuppets, David Rose and "Jessica", talk amongst themselves and pretend to get in touch with Hari himself over the choice of picture on his Wikipedia entry, and another in which he spent some time "emphasising his own importance as a major cultural figure". This is magnificently strange behaviour, not to mention utterly dishonest. This is not someone who made a few errors here and there, it is systematic misrepresentation and deceit.
So if it turns out that Zafio is indeed Hari's latest sock incarnation, then it would simply be in keeping with the utterly wierd behaviour outlined above. In short, you can't put it past him. On the other hand, Zafio may be entirely innocent, and our suspicions, though understandable, are in fact unwarranted. What the community needs to do is to present some clear evidence. Jprw (talk) 11:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
No it is not clear evidence, it is circumstantial. Perhaps something checkuser-related? Jprw (talk) 12:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes that was what I was trying to suggest. Jprw (talk) 13:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
I can address some of this circumstantial evidence here. David Allen Green, as reposted from an off-wiki site belowe, writes that "Zafio has also provided a plausible and detailed explanation of his interest in Hari, which fits with the available evidence". I have supplied David Allen Green with evidence that shows my prior interest in subjects of at least two Hari articles, and that my interest pre-dates those articles. One of these prior interests is in issues relating to Hari's article on Mailer. Zafio (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Hello, I am David Allen Green and I am new to Wikipedia editing, so I apologise for any newbie clumsiness in either form or content. I would just like to say that the quotation by Zafio of my conclusion is misleadingly selective. I was there merely summarising what Zafio had presented; my intention was descriptive and not evaluative. My current view, taking into account this selective use of my statement, is that there is something suspect about Zafio's use of their Wikipedia account. Cheers, "Jack of Kent". Jack of Kent (talk 19:54, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I am amused by the "proof" offered including Long-winded and verbose. By that standard, it is very clear who must be a sock of Hari! I would also point out the fairly clear comment that this SPI request is not going to be acted on - as a result of the Long-winded and verbose posts made by the complainants. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Three updates from DAG/Jack of Kent, all posted as comments at Snowdon's blogpost on this situation. I've quoted them all in full here to record them because the information is sufficiently complex that I don't believe a summary is appropriate. The blogpost and comments-thread. The "I" in each of the three dated updates below is David Allen Green.Yonmei (talk) 07:24, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Last night DAG also added the following comment here:
Zafio's selective use of my carefully worded statement smacks of bad faith. It is very disappointing. Adding this selective use to the pot, I would like to now vacate my earlier statement about Zafio's real identity being an equally balanced open question. My current view is that something is very suspect about whoever is operating the Zafio account here and on Wikipedia.
Jprw (talk) 10:00, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I am amused by the "proof" offered including Long-winded and verbose. By that standard, it is very clear who must be a sock of Hari! I would also point out the fairly clear comment that this SPI request is not going to be acted on - as a result of the Long-winded and verbose posts made by the complainants. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks very much to you both - I have also received some very helpful advice from Atama頭 at my Talk page and have a better idea now how I can redraft. Yonmei (talk) 08:31, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
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