Lightburst AKA James Michael Lubbad

[Giraffe Stapler]

We talked about Lightburst a bit in this thread about the Article Rescue Squadron. There's something about him that annoys me and I'm not quite sure what it is. I'm probably just jealous that he has all those nice guitars and I only have a broken ukulele that I found in a dumpster.

On 12 July 2022, admin GeneralNotabiity (T-C-L) left this message on Lightburst's talk page:

COI

Hi Lightburst, I'm here in my capacity as a functionary. The CheckUser queue (and ArbCom) received off-wiki evidence regarding whether or not you are making conflict-of-interest edits, and what was presented pretty clearly established that you are on good personal terms with the folks in Koch Marshall Trio (enough so to raise concerns about neutrality) and also have a COI regarding Bengal cats. I can't force you to do anything, but it might be best if you just followed COI best practices in those areas - discuss changes if challenged rather than reverting, make edit requests, that sort of thing. This really is just a suggestion - take it or leave it as you see fit. (and sorry about posting this to your userpage by accident earlier...not sure how I screwed that up. Need more coffee, I guess.) GeneralNotability (talk) 21:56, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Then on 13 July 2022, they left this message:

An apology

Hi Lightburst. This is a follow-up to what I posted yesterday. Following our conversation over email, it looks like I was too hasty in accusing you of conflict-of-interest editing, and I'm sorry that I left that mark on your record. I get things wrong sometimes, and this was one of them. GeneralNotability (talk) 14:08, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

We discussed Lightburst's identity and COI in that other thread, but just to make sure it is absolutely clear, Lightburst is James Michael Lubbad, guitar collector and bengal cat breeder. See the info on this image uploaded by Lightburst. The author is listed as "James M Lubbad". Now, technically that's incorrect since it is someone else's autograph ("Letter from the person describing a guitar that he sold"). Or see the logs for the deleted file "Paintedcats Red Star.jpg". The source said "''Previously published:'' Facebook, and on my web site paintedcats.com" (paintedcats.com is the website where James Michael Lubbad sells bengal cats). It also shows that his account was named Lubbad85 at that time. Now, I don't know the content of that email conversation, but I think GeneralNotability was somehow bamboozled by Lightburst.

I didn't even start this thread to complain about another case of blatant COI (and copyright concerns) being ignored by admins. I started it because I noticed that in this article about one of Paul Kossoff's guitars (created 5 September 2022 by Lightburst), the picture illustrating it isn't even the right guitar! It's a picture of the Gibson recreation of the original guitar. Lightburst has just taken the image from the Gibson website and uploaded it as an image of the original. Which is perplexing, since it's a non-free image and he could have uploaded one of the original just as easily. Any bets on whether he owns one of these reproductions and stands to benefit if they are worth more?

[Giraffe Stapler]

Well, that's odd. Lightburst has requested speedy deletion of one of those images I mentioned above. Now, if Commons follows their own policies, it won't be deleted since the "uploader requested" speedy deletion is only for "recently created (<7 days) unused content". It was uploaded almost a year ago and is in use on Wikipedia. Hmm.

[Giraffe Stapler]

I guess Lightburst is reading, since he's changed the deletion request from a speedy deletion to a normal deletion request. And he's removed it from the article so it's no longer in use. As I pointed out before, it's not actually his work that he is asking to be deleted.

[ArmasRebane]

Commons doesn't like deleting stuff anyhow; I doubt he gets rid of a potentially-useful image.

[Giraffe Stapler]

This seems like a good time to bring up an episode from 2019 when two accounts, Gristleking (T-C-L) and Operationendgame (T-C-L), were blocked as sockpuppets. Gristleking asked to be unblocked and claimed that the accounts were different people editing from the same home. The blocking admin points out that even if they were different people, they were acting as meatpuppets by stacking votes on AFDs.

Gristleking appeared on the scene at exactly the same time that Lightburst (then Lubbad85) was trying to prevent deletion of an article he wrote on a fellow bengal cat breeder, Jean Mill (T-H-L). Both of them voted in Articles for deletion/Jean Mill. That AFD is interesting reading when you know that Lightburst has a financial interest in promoting bengal cats. It also has the Article Rescue Squadron fingerprints all over it.

The CU who blocked Gristleking and Operationendgame was well aware who the puppetmaster was. When Lightburst (Lubbad85) got caught in the block, they had an email exchange and a discussion on Lightburst's talk page.

I'll be honest with you: I have more than enough evidence to block this account in addition to the other two, but I have not done so. If the other accounts are abandoned and not logged into, the block affecting this account should expire in a day or so. —DoRD (talk)​ 01:22, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Over on Commons, Gristleking uploaded an image of a book cover ("Guide To Owning A Bengal Cat") by the aforementioned Jean Mill and added it to the article. Their only other image upload was, of all things, a picture of a guitar. Huh.

[Giraffe Stapler]

This is tangential to Lightburst but I find it funny. While looking at Frankie Sullivan (T-H-L), one phrase jumped out at me:

According to pianist and keyboardist Jimmy Tranchitella of Northlake, Illinois, Sullivan's musical career began in his early teens.

Jimmy who? No citation, just a name dropped for no apparent reason. Turns out, that person was first added to the article by an IP in 2010:

Frankie began playing guitar in his very early teens by sitting in on local garage band practices and helping with their equipment changes. Eventually he was allowed to play a little after band practice when members realized his serious interest, as stated by local piano/keyboard musician and Northlake, IL resident Jimmy Tranchitelli

For 12 years, that bit of fluff has managed to survive despite being unsourced and not even very insightful. Someone did correct(?) the spelling of the name in 2015, though.

On a more serious note, if someone buys a guitar from Frankie Sullivan, does one have a financial interest in polishing Frankie Sullivan's Wikipedia age? This certainly looks better than how it was before Lightburst worked on it. The more people who know Frankie Sullivan, the more that guitar is worth.

Edit to add: On his website, Lightburst identified a red ES335 as the guitar once owned by Frankie Sullivan of Survivor.

[Midsize Jake]

On a more serious note, if someone buys a guitar from Frankie Sullivan, does one have a financial interest in polishing Frankie Sullivan's Wikipedia age? This certainly looks better than how it was before Lightburst worked on it. The more people who know Frankie Sullivan, the more that guitar is worth.

Edit to add: On his website, Lightburst identified a red ES335 as the guitar once owned by Frankie Sullivan of Survivor.

If we're being charitable about this, then the interest doesn't necessarily have to be financial — it could just be simple pride-of-ownership combined with having too much free time.

Otherwise...

I'm not a guitar collector myself (I own three electric guitars, all of which are fairly cheap-ish), but AFAIK there's two main factors involved when it comes to ensuring that a guitar like this is worth as much as possible (aside from condition, which of course has to be EX/EX+). The first is obviously provenance, which means having a photo of the famous former-owner guy playing that same guitar, and that exists, except that it has to be licensed from Alamy.com — so it can't be used in the WP article. The second is simply timing — Frankie Sullivan isn't likely to be treated as "legendary" once he's passed on and shuffled off this mortal coil, and while "Eye of the Tiger" was a huge hit, it wasn't really a timeless one. So if he wants to sell the thing, he might be better off doing it sooner, while original fans of the band are still alive (not to mention Sullivan himself) and have some disposable income, rather than later when they're not or they don't.

I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that polishing up the Wikipedia article might cause a potential buyer to think of Sullivan as more "legendary" than he really is... It depends on how dumb the buyer is, but a '59 Les Paul can go for anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 even without celebrity provenance, so if you can increase the provenance value by, I dunno, $25K maybe (?), just by "sprucing up" a Wikipedia article...? It seems absurd, but if there's that much money involved, why wouldn't you at least try? Honestly, I wouldn't blame him.

Anyhoo, there's a thread on the Les Paul forum about what may be this guitar, and one of the forum members there calls himself "Zorglub," which could just be a coinkydink. A lot of the photos (including most of his) have expired or been taken down, though.

[Giraffe Stapler]

(stuff about guitars)

This is probably my fault, but I think you may have confused which guitar we're talking about.

There's a '59 Les Paul used by Paul Kossoff, there's a 2012 reproduction of that particular guitar, and there's a '62 ES 335 that used to be owned by Frankie Sullivan. Lightburst has or had the ES335. Having had a look at Frankie Sullivan's Facebook page, he seems to be a bit of a guitar hoarder. If Lightburst has a Les Paul that was owned by Sullivan, it wouldn't be surprising, but I don't know anything about that.