Meet the editors: Crakkerjakk

 

When the account Crakkerjakk was registered on Wikipedia in late October 2010, the person behind the account was probably already an experienced WP contributor. Their very first edit was to create a fully-formed article about actor Kipp Marcus, who would have been 13 when he began the television show which is his most significant credit. Crakkerjakk has gone on to become a prolific editor of articles about male child and teen actors. What’s wrong with someone being interested in adolescent actors and adding information to WP based on their interest? If you are a child or teen watching television shows made for children and teens, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want to add information about shows that you enjoyed as a child, there’s nothing wrong with that, either. But if you are an adult man and you are creating WP biographies about current adolescent actors on kids’ shows, then I find your interest troubling. As we saw in the case of For An Angel, that kind of interest can be an indicator of something more ominous.

Discovery
On 5 October 2011, I noticed a change to Scott O’Hara, an article that I had on my watchlist. A user called XXX Pink Narcissus XXX had added an infobox, which is an unusual thing for a new editor to do. The fact that the article had a featured quotation from O’Hara that started “When I was 12 and 13 years old I would have joined NAMBLA in a minute…” made me especially curious about the people who edited it. [Editor's note: NAMBLA is the acronym for the North American Man/Boy Love Association.] This is what XXX Pink Narcissus XXX’s user page said at the time:

Looking at his contributions, it was very easy to see whose “alternate account” this was. The image that had been added to Scott O’Hara had been uploaded earlier in the day by Crakkerjakk. Another Crakkerjakk-uploaded image was added to Kurt Marshall by XXX Pink Narcissus XXX. Both O’Hara and Marshall were young-looking gay porn performers from the 1980s. Also on 5 October 2011, an anonymous IP editor commented in the deletion discussion for the biography of another 1980s gay porn performer. XXX Pink Narcissus XXX then signed that comment as their own. That particular IP (12.68.109.185) is assigned to Horizon Cable and geolocates to Stinson Beach, California, USA.

Report to ArbCom
I thought ArbCom would like to know that an editor who specializes in kids’ shows also had an interest in gay porn with a NAMBLA connection. I didn’t have time to do any serious research, so I summarized what I knew and sent off an email that same day. Three days later, on 8 October 2011, having heard absolutely nothing from ArbCom, I decided to gather up a bit more information and send it to ArbCom to reinforce the case. I sent them a link to an auction site where a user named Crakkerjakk was buying videos of Broadway performances of Billy Elliot, among other things. At that time, they listed their location as “Stinson Beach”. (They also have a profile on this auction site where they again claim to live in Stinson Beach.) I sent ArbCom links to a site called “Teen Idols 4 U” which had a profile for a user named Crakkerjakk whose “favorites” included some of the same articles most edited by WP’s Crakkerjakk (for example, Kenton Duty). I also included a selection of comments made by Crakkerjakk about images of young teen actors.

• “OMGUH!!! look at that big juicy bulge!! 8-P” (note that this image has been deleted, but the comment remains)
• “every gay guy has rubbed one out thinking about lucas till at least once..“
• “kenton is the hottest!! he’s the only reason i watch ‘shake it up’…“
• “i’m gonna marry this boy as soon as california legalizes it..“

ArbCom’s response
I did get a response from ArbCom this time, saying that they would look into it, and one of the Arbs deleted the pro-NAMBLA quote from Scott O’Hara. (That quote, incidentally was not put there by Crakkerjakk/XXX Pink Narcissus XXX, it was inserted by an anonymous IP editor and set off as a stand-out quote by current WP admin OlEnglish.) But Crakkerjakk did not get blocked. In fact, something odd happened soon after. On Teen Idols 4 U, the image of a 13 year-old Noah Hathaway in tights and a dance belt about which Crakkerjakk has commented “OMGUH!!! look at that big juicy bulge!! 8-P” was deleted. Another image of Hathaway also disappeared (Crakkerjakk’s comment had been “soooo fuckin cute!!”).

The timing of the deletions seemed more than coincidental. I wondered if someone from ArbCom had decided to speak to Crakkerjakk privately instead of blocking him and this was the start of Crakkerjakk covering his tracks. I voiced that opinion in another email to ArbCom on 19 October 2011. Although one Arb did reply privately that they would look into it, nothing happened. That was my last communication from ArbCom about this user.

Follow the breadcumbs
ArbCom deliberately places blinders on themselves, judging WP editors based on their contributions to WP and ignoring the larger picture. There’s nothing wrong with editing articles about child actors if you ignore the fact that the person making those edits is commenting elsewhere about how they masturbate while thinking of that child actor. Crakkerjakk has left an interesting trail across the internet. Some of it is gone now, including pages “archived” by Web Citation, but I will link to what still remains.

I found a copy of that image of a young Noah Hathaway on a Russian image sharing site. A user named “Captnkidd” made the following comment: “i love this kid’s bulge”. If that sounds a lot like Crakkerjakk’s comment, it isn’t just because they have similar interests, but I’ll get to that. Captnkidd still has a profile on that site and you can see his galleries screencaps from TV shows such as this one of Tommi Ohrner featuring an “adolescent boy showing nice bulge in tight jeans”. His words, not mine. Note that WP’s Crakkerjakk is the main editor of Thomas Ohrner. Again, not a coincidence. On a message board for kids’ TV show “Pepper Ann”, a user named “crakkerjakk” gives their email as crakker_jakk@mac.com. That same email is given by a user named “crakker jakk” on a website devoted to sitcoms, in this case regarding a show about a children’s baseball team. On a now defunct site called thesk8board.net, a user named “captn_kidd” gave the same email. Crakkerjakk is Captnkidd (at least in this case, since there is more than one person who goes by Crakkerjakk and several who go by some variation of Captn Kidd). On Photobucket, he goes by crakker_jakk.

Naive teen or very creepy old man?
One other place where the email address appears is at the bottom of a blog comment from “crakker_jakk” about Kids, Inc. “i was a huge fan of ryan lambert on ‘kids inc.’ back in the 80s,” he says. Let’s look a little more closely at “crakker jakk” on Sitcoms Online who used the same email.

If he was a huge fan of Kids Inc in the 1980s as he says, he must have been old enough in the 1980s to watch the show. WP’s Crakkerjakk has uploaded many images of kid’s TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s. You may assume that he watched these as a child and he is a man in his sixties. Yet here is crakker jakk on the sitcom board saying “I’ll be sixteen in March” and flirting with a young boy, while others assume the user is a girl. Perhaps our assumption about Crakkerjakk’s age is wrong? No, read the thread for yourself – I think you’ll figure out what is happening. Also this one where he wishes happy birthday to a boy turning 13. This is exactly what people mean when they say “internet predators” are “grooming” children. The pretense is dropped at some point since the same account later admits to videotaping Walt Disney shows in the 1970s.

What should be done?
Obviously, I think Crakkerjakk should be banned immediately on all WMF projects, but there’s more to it than that. For An Angel and Crakkerjakk are just two of many editors whose primary focus is on child actors or children’s shows. I’m not suggesting that everyone who edits Toddlers & Tiaras or Dance Moms is somehow engaging in pedophilia advocacy, but when you find an editor who seems obsessed with child actors, ArbCom needs to recognize that this is a red flag. When that editor also edits biographies of NAMBLA-associated porn performers, you really don’t need any more clues. Crakkerjakk should have been blocked when I originally notified ArbCom, but perhaps it is my fault for not pushing them and fleshing out their off-wiki profile. I hope I have done enough now.

 

Image credit: Flickr/hermanturnip ~ licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic