The strange webs one gets caught in with time on one's hands....

Geez - what an afternoon.

Having heard of some of the stories mentioned below previously, I decided that I wanted to work out for myself what I thought had gone on. Here's my take on a famously heated, bitter and vituperative episode - which I've also posted to wikback.com.......


Welcome, Wordbomb to the wikback!

I know this is a chat forum, but having spent longer than I ever intended trying to work out what the heck's going on with Wikipedia, Overstock, Wordbomb, SlimVirgin, Pan-Am 103, and probably the Knights Templar, I've dusted of my 'NPOV' gloves, and I thought I'd post a bit of background from a hopefully neutral perspective. I confess to have ploughed through this mainly for my own clarity and edification - and I've probably got heaps of stuff wrong, so in the same spirit as your post, all should feel free to chime in;

You're Judd Bagley, alias Wordbomb, and you're banned from Wikipedia. Also, you work for Overstock.com whose CEO is Patrick Byrne.

Patrick Byrne has been fiercely critical of something called 'naked short selling', and at this point a journalist called Gary Weiss becomes involved - I think because he's either written about Patrick Byrne, or because he supports naked short selling, or says it doesn't exist (or something). Sorry to be unclear on this point.

You believe to that you've shown, amongst other things, that the editors 'Mantanmoreland' and 'Samiharris' are in fact said journalist Gary Weiss. You assert that there's a fairly straight forward abuse of 'sockpuppets' going on.

I think that's the meat of your situation, but there are a few unique side stories to this one, which are worth noting;

You report that Patrick Byrne may have met Slimvirgin in real life as a student, and recalls the interest in and personal relationship to the Pan Am 103 disaster of the woman he belives to be Slimvirgin. An amazing coincidence - but not really relavent, except......

When you were getting into troubled waters at wikipedia, you believe Slimvirgin acted unfairly and improperly, specifically you allege that you have evidence that private emails you sent to Slim were forwarded directly to Gary Weiss (I think).

I think even you would categorise your reaction to your troubles on wikipedia as aggressive; and some wikipedians assert that you have harassed / stalked / abused / 'sock'ed violently and vehemently ever since. For whatever reason, several fairly well known editors have been quite closely involved - these include;

* Jayjg, who you assert used the oversight tool inappropriately, and has used checkuser in your case
* Fred Bauder, who may have been aware of a 'sock' issue but not addressed it to your satisfaction
* David Gerard, who in dealing with what he perceived to be disruption / vandalism blocked an IP range as an 'open proxy' - it transpires that it's actually a Utah town!!
* JzG, whom you assert has used a 'sockpuppet', and who has been fairly vocally critical of you and your methods.
* Many other editors have put forward strong opinions that you are not to be trusted

Surpisingly, through the fog of the broo ha ha, I'm not sure if anyone has specifically said that your claim that Gary Weiss = Mantanmoreland = Samiharris is complete nonsense, or not - and having ruminated for a little while, I think I'm coming to the conclusion that that's really the most important question.

Thoughts?