By Delicious Carbuncle
Another in a in a series of blog posts highlighting lesser-known Wikipedia editors.
Four weeks ago I wrote on this blog that an active Wikipedia editor (User:For An Angel) was a self-declared pro-pedophilia advocate and made the case that they were still advocating pedophilia, although somewhat more subtly than with their past account. When that blog post was published, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before it was read by Wikipedia editors. I expected that it might be a day or two before there was any reaction, but I did not foresee what was to follow.
All Talk, No Action
I had expected that a couple of things would happen. For An Angel would be blocked. Of that I had no doubt. I also thought there was a very good chance that some people at Wikipedia would ask for me to be blocked for writing the blog post. I was fairly confident that would happen, but I had no prediction about how that would turn out. What I did not expect was that neither of those things would happen.
Shortly after the blog post went up, an IP editor alerted For An Angel about it. For An Angel’s reaction was to delete the message and carry on editing. After a couple of days with no reaction, I posted a link to the blog post on one of the most widely watched pages on Wikipedia – Jimmy Wales’ talk page. After the discussion started, For An Angel asked for their userpage to be deleted (the user page that included a hidden “girllover” symbol). The discussion drew a small amount of comment — including one comment from For An Angel himself — but dropped off Jimbo’s page after a couple of days.
Jimbo’s talk page got over 2,500 page views in the days that the discussion was up. Many people would have seen it, even if they did not take the time to read the details. I have no doubt that several admins saw the discussion. Here’s what Wikipedia’s “Child protection” policy says: “Editors who attempt to use Wikipedia to pursue or facilitate inappropriate adult–child relationships, who advocate inappropriate adult–child relationships (e.g. by expressing the view that inappropriate relationships are not harmful to children), or who identify themselves as pedophiles, will be indefinitely blocked“. None of the admins who read that discussion blocked For An Angel.
My comments and links to the blog on Jimbo’s talk page and elsewhere prompted one of Wikipedia’s most unhinged editors, Wnt, to complain that Wikipedia’s Child protection policy was not being followed. Wnt argued that rather than having Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee deal with this type of complaint (as the policy now states), questions about whether a user is or is not advocating pedophilia “should be addressed up front by a vigorous community debate”. This is the same community that has had years-long debates about the correct use of the dash. “The thing is, in the case I mention, it’s already been discussed in an open forum, and absolutely nobody seemed to care,” Wnt observed. Three admins participated in that discussion. Coren, one of those admins, is a former member of the Arbitration Committee. That discussion ended over a week ago with no action coming out of it.
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Since then, For An Angel has been editing less frequently. Perhaps they are slowing down or taking a break. In all likelihood, they are just using another account. Perhaps my earlier blog post did not illustrate this case in a way that people could easily grasp. This is what Ospinad’s user page looked like in December 2007:
The userboxes that were discussed in the previous blog post are these ones:
For An Angel’s new user page has these userboxes:
Ospinad identified himself as a “girllover” which is generally understood to mean someone who has a sexual attraction to prepubescent or adolescent girls. It is not surprising that he would claim to be against child abuse, since such people frequently make the claim that their desires and actions are expressions of “love”. With this in mind, take a look at the images that Ospinad uploaded to Wikipedia. The first two are from a movie in which the protagonist is a 10 year-old girl. Now take a look at the images uploaded by For An Angel. It should give you a good sense of what Ospinad/For An Angel likes.
There used to be an account on YouTube named Ospinad. That account has been terminated for “repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines and/or claims of copyright infringement”, but some of their comments are still visible. For example, on this video of two pre-teens dancing, Ospinad wrote “:-Þ …i’m kidding. these girls are so effing hot it’s ridiculous …and i mean that in the most innocent way imaginable”. Far worse is this comment made by a user named Ospinad on a website called Would You Hit This?: “like i always say…. if they’re old enough to crawl then they’re already in the right position!!”. I am confident that these users are the same person behind the Ospinad and For An Angel accounts on Wikipedia.
Seen enough?
Image credits: Flickr/John Snape and Wikipedia. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).
Let’s not forget about Logical Fuzz, whose user page still links to a hidden “girllove” symbol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&page=File%3AGLogo.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&page=User%3AJayW
The person who originally uploaded that symbol onto enwiki was blocked in 2007.
Logical Fuzz inserted the symbol into “User:Logical_Fuzz/lists” in November 2010:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Logical_Fuzz/lists&diff=396170684&oldid=395605514
Let’s assume good faith, and assume that Logical Fuzz doesn’t know what “girllove” is. Someone should leave a message on Logical Fuzz’s talk page about that symbol and what “girllove” is, wait, and see how Logical Fuzz responds.
JayW, who uploaded the image file that is there now, was a sockpuppet of User:Lingofascist.
The image was originally uploaded by Lindsay Ashford, a pro-pedophile activist who edited WP as User:Zanthalon. They had an autobiography on WP for some time. Took four deletion nominations to get rid of it.
Thanks for the correction. I should’ve dug deeper. Thank you also for confronting Logical Fuzz:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Logical_Fuzz&diff=531165507&oldid=528463660
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ALogical_Fuzz&diff=531178284&oldid=531165507
After I contacted ArbComn about the girllove symbol on Logical Fuzz’s subpage, AGK told me they would look into it and decide how to proceed. I waited a week and then contacted Logical Fuzz myself. It is gone now, but it should have been gone about 5 minutes after ArbCom first learned of it. I’ve had no response to my questions about why it wasn’t removed.
It’s amazing that in this era of heightened alert when children are at risk, the Wikipedia universe still seems to be exempt from any rational form of policing and restriction of dangerous, predatory elements. I suppose as long as the donation dollars keep pouring in, there’s no incentive for the Wikimedia Foundation to engage more responsible measures of child-protection.
I feel nauseous after reading this. I am a minor editor on Wikipedia. I am female. I am not fortunate enough to have children of my own. But I was a little girl not all that long ago, and I am crying as I type this.
What is going on here?! I quickly scanned For an Angel’s image uploads, and the associated Wikipedia articles. I don’t understand why most remain extant. Far, far more notable and less ephemeral subject matter is questioned and removed from Wikipedia than these particular television show and movie related articles. The theme throughout ALL of them is imagery of pubescent and pre-pubescent females. The original subject matter was inoffensive and sometimes wholesome, though not within the scope of Wikipedia. Rather, it is the obsessive interest in these harmless television shows and videos that raises a huge red flag to me.
For example, I noticed one of For An Angel’s more recent uploads, a copyrighted image for the television program Dance Moms. I perused the associated Dance Moms article. In my opinion, the entire thing deserves speedy deletion. I looked at the edit history, at the article content. There is a disturbing, obsessive and intense interest in documenting every tiny aspect of a minor, discontinued TV show. Furthermore, the article has been protected (though only from IP-only a.k.a. not confirmed accounts)! That is even worse, as it shows complicity and approval, by (at least a basic level of) Wikipedia administration. I am certain that I just scratched the surface.
Can anything be done about this? I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I would be afraid to try, as it is clear that someone(s) must want this content on Wikipedia, and will fight for it.
To be fair, and very clear, regarding the Wikipedia article Dance Moms: For An Angel is not a contributor to the text content of that article, at least, not under that userID. No, I am not implying sock puppets or anything else, just mentioning it. This is why: There are many contributors to the absurdly detailed Wikipedia article about that sitcom, Dance Moms, on Lifetime Networks. (Even the author of the Channel Guide post, from which the photo was sourced, was dismissive as to the raison d’etre for the program.) For An Angel is the subject of this post, of “Meet the Editors”. He is by no means unique, based on my perusal of the article and article talk pages’ historical activity logs.
It was disturbing to see likely copy vio’s risked for such as this. I made some minor additions to the Dance Moms file and photo page, which will at least give attribution to the original photographer for Lifetime Networks. That was missing until now. Perhaps the contradictions between the “copyrighted image” boilerplate and the lack of justification for inclusion will be helpful to others, in the future.
Ellie, For An Angel actually made 79 edits to that article, more than any other user (even more than AussieLegend,.a>, who seems to be owning that article now). You might not have looked back far enough in the history.
Dance Moms is a popular tv show and as such will have a WP article. WP is intensely interested in popular culture, perhaps because it is the one area in which everyone can be considered to be an expert. WP admins are complicit in allowing huge amounts of this dreck, but I don’t think that means they necessarily endorse the activities of people like For An Angel.
What is interesting is that people who edit WP articles about shows aimed at children and pre-teens turn out to be adult males in almost every case that I have looked at. That should be a red flag, but on WP it is considered normal (and suggesting otherwise would have dire consequences).
This user is now indef banned