Hi, I'm the IP user that Tristan Albatross described as a "conspiracy theorist". I'd like to discuss who was operating the ParasiticWhiteness and Tristan albatross accounts, because clearly neither of these accounts was actually a new user, and I would like to try to determine who the master was.

You've implied in some of your own comments that you think you know who was operating these accounts. Could you tell me whom you suspect? I have my own ideas about who it is, but I would like to hear your own theory first. 2600:1004:B126:9E9:DC83:C3B7:6567:F1C8 ( talk) 04:06, 11 October 2022 (UTC) reply

Whom do you suspect, "conspiracy theorist"? Anything to do with <redacted Twitter link> ( talk) 23:44, 12 October 2022 (UTC) reply

Sorry, I respect your contributions, but I think there's nothing to be gained by explaining this to you in particular. I'm pretty sure you already know what I think has been going on, and in any case you clearly would have liked to improve intelligence related articles regardless of whether someone was deliberately making them worse. (Which is admirable.)

@ SMcCandlish: You're one of the few editors who took me seriously when I first tried to raise the alarm, two years ago, that there was an attempt to destroy the public's trust in Wikipedia (and RationalWiki) with respect to human intelligence topics. Please read the Twitter thread that Ferahgo linked above, which describes how the same methods were used to discredit both Wiki sites. As AndewNguyen mentioned, this attempt has basically succeeded now, and I think it's very unfortunate to send a message that this was a valid method for a banned user to get retribution against Wikipedia, which IS the message being sent by this outcome. Do you feel that, at this point, we have to accept that this is the message we're going to send? 2600:1004:B12D:309A:FD89:475E:9D4C:4E18 ( talk) 00:34, 16 October 2022 (UTC) reply

I read through it. Honestly, I don't think WP has ever had much public trust when it comes to intelligence topics, and we're the first to say WP itself is not a reliable source. I don't see these socking and meat-puppetry antics having any real impact on WP's overall reputation. The articles in question are and will probably indefinitely remain something of a trainwreck, as with all controversial topics, and will see-saw between viewpoints and people will get banned, and so it goes. This is a volunteer-run site, so there's not much to do that we're not already doing to "police" the content. I think these articles in particular need more watchlisters than they have, but we can't force people to patrol them "extra". AndrewNguyen is correct here: "The more trust the public loses in these articles, the less it will matter what the articles say." They may even get to a WP:TNT point. I don't see any evidence that the public in general is turning away from WP in general; rather, it's becoming clearer to more people that the more controversial a subject is the less reliable the WP article will be, since people from everywhere with every viewpoint are daily trying to change the content to match their PoV (directly or through indirect means like pushing an opposing viewpoint the point of parody). All that said, I'm not entirely convinced there's much of the latter going on. Never underestimate the ability of the farthest left to produce output so absurd it seems like self-parody. (Same goes for the farthest right extreme of course). We need a lot more centrist editors, but it's harder and harder to be one successfully when socio-politics has become so polarized that failing to be seen as "left enough" is cause for cancel-culture campaigning against you.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:07, 16 October 2022 (UTC) reply

I noticed Tristan albatross is also on RationalWiki, see here. I suspect this same person is also creating impersonation accounts on the Emily Willoughby article talk. Do you have any idea who is behind this? Mikemikev also shows up on both those articles and has a long history on this wiki of making impersonation accounts and impersonating or making a parody of Antifa/left-wing extremists. Is it him? 90.241.67.238 ( talk) 14:23, 28 December 2022 (UTC) reply