Comment by vintermann
9 days ago
> Professionally organized shills are unable to do this since they must ensure most of their time is "on-task"
Haha, it'd be funny if they sabotaged themselves with red tape around hours billing. I could see it happening - sometimes. But not generally. I assume professional manipulators understand that gaining trust in the Wikipedia bureaucracy is part of the job.
I have a low opinion of spy agencies - but not THAT low. I have an even lower opinion of open Reddit communities ability to get anything done.
Wikipedia bureaucracy is unlike other bureaucracies because there's accountability and it is decentralized.
On Wikipedia, the possibly Israeli intelligence operative known as "Icewhiz" spent years cultivating an account known as "Eostrix" that operated entirely out of Israel-Palestine. They were one day from passing their admin election* before getting banned. A member of the committee that oversees allegations of misconduct against admins analyzed patterns in Eostrix's writing/behaviour to discover the ruse.
This was presented to the committee and resulted in a ban of Eostrix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Com...
If this were a Reddit, Discord, or even a government employee, banning Eostrix would've been a discretionary act of the top moderator/manager, who would've also been the person to have vetted Eostrix.
This is embarrassing and creates an incentive to cover up the scandal. In real life, Aldrich Ames was able to spend years avoiding scrutiny from the CIA because the CIA's management didn't follow-up on reports he was suspicious.
But because the committee is a group ultimately elected by the community, the individual incentive is to take action against, because any member of the committee could betray a cover-up and fuck over everyone else. If ArbCom did not take action, the information that they ignored a serious report would become public and lead to an even bigger scandal.
This is the same reason why even weak democracies are harder to emplace spies into than strong authoritarian regimes.
*technically not an election but they were almost guaranteed a win by that point