Steve and Wikipedia

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by cdn2wheeler

The same person who sent a PM from E R I N P A V L I N A (not "our" Erin, certainly, but somone purporting to be her) about some sort of e-book or something that this person wanted us to review?

Yup. He's still actively spamming and has hit at least 100 forums and counting. He hit several more today. He's been spamming using Erin's email address as well as mine, so we get the email verification messages and can see which forums he's targeting. He often uses Erin's name as the account handle, but it looks like he's targeting other people as well. While we never click the verification links to register those accounts (obviously), many VBulletin forums allow PMing for unverified accounts. And you can usually PM about 5 members at a time with the default VBulletin settings. He's been angering quite a number of forum admins.

After the first several days of this, I setup an auto-reply template to notify the forum admins they're being hit by this spammer whenever a new forum sign-up message comes to my email inbox. It includes info on how to fix their VBulletin settings to prevent this from happening again. So at least the same forums shouldn't be hit multiple times. A lot of forum owners thanked me for these messages, since it helped them catch and ban the spammer before he did too much damage. On some forums apparently hundreds of PMs were sent though.

I don't know why he's involving us in this by using our email addresses. The only real clue is that several months ago, he joined the forums here but was soon banned for trolling and personal attacks. So maybe he still has a chip on his shoulder about that. On his web site he boasts about trying to get people to sue him and rants about me being the real spammer (like I'm the one promoting his ebook by registering forums accounts with Erin's name and email), so he doesn't seem to be the most mentally stable person.

I even tried emailing him to ask why he's doing this, but so far he hasn't replied.

[Sam988]

Wow the "steve pavlina" entry in wikipedia is now really funny Steve Pavlina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It should be replaced as an Main Page - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia entry



These passages are the best:

"Pavlina likes to pawn himself off as a "software developer" and as a "CEO" to draw public attention away from his repeated pseudoscientific scam attempts."

"Steve Pavlina is a Russian adherent of pseudoscience and a notorious Internet scammer. Among other frauds, he is today most well known for his so-called "Million Dollar Experiment", in which he attempts to con unsuspecting believers"

[Iamsuperman]

I love you Steve!

[Steve Pavlina]

Maybe we could use this to create a second entry for my darkworker alter-ego, Steevil.

[Zukin]

Originally Posted by Sam988

"Steve Pavlina is a Russian adherent of pseudoscience and a notorious Internet scammer. Among other frauds, he is today most well known for his so-called "Million Dollar Experiment", in which he attempts to con unsuspecting believers"

That's hilarious!

In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia edits YOU!

[impaul99]

Steve, who's this dude that starts with a Z? What's he got against you?

THat Wikipedia entry is helarious. I love how it says "Among other things, he frequently claims he was the founder and CEO of Dexterity Software".

It's so funny how that sentence works. It sounds so bad, when in fact it's not really saying anything.

There's all this garbage in there intermixed with some truth. It probably wouldn't be worth it, but I would be willing to bet that a lawyer could sue someone (Wikipedia? The person who wrote the claims?) for defamation of character or something.

Oh yeah, by the way...congratulations on having a "Criminal Career". LOL. And I like how it says you like to "pawn yourself off as a software developer". Uhh... what the heck is wrong with being a software developer? And you ARE a software developer, not just pawning yourself off to be one, LOL. Heck, anyone who can program HTML is technically a software developer.

I read the Polish version of it and I thought I'd translate for your enjoyment:

"Steve Pavlina - motivational speaker, founder of Dexterity Software which is a computer game maker. Runs a blog, in which he writes on subjects tied to personal development. For over 5 months he tried polyphasic sleep - sleeping every 4 hours for 20 minutes."

Looks like you get more love from us Polaks than you do from Americans, lol.

Steve, you're the best!

[jamestl2]

That's too funny, but can't someone else just edit it back correctly? It is wikipedia, right?

Originally Posted by impaul99

Steve, who's this dude that starts with a Z? What's he got against you?

It seems like his name is ********** (from his site **********.com) And he's got a few Anti-Pavlina articles on it.

Some of those writings were ridiculous for example from this page:
Steve Pavlina, the Internet Tough Guy.
He encourages people to spam

Here's the plan :

1. Pick up a list of forums.
2. Create an account in each.
3. Spam each.
4. Point out to each webmaster that the spam that you yourself sent links to **********.com and ask them to complain to the service provider.

Hopefully, you will get a few dozen email complaints and an idiotic enough ISP to suspend service.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by impaul99

Steve, who's this dude that starts with a Z? What's he got against you?

Wish I knew. I really don't know what his motive is. I don't have any connection with him that I know of other than the fact he was banned here several months ago for very blatant trolling -- he was only a member here a very short time.

You can see the result of his recent spamming over the past month on his Alexa graph -- apparently he's had his highest traffic ever since he started spamming forums with links to his site.

[seeker5]

Well, I've never edited a Wikipedia article and just for fun I tried to edit this one. I removed all the stuff that was obviously false attack stuff from ********** and left the neutral stuff on. I didn't have to login or do anything. I'll see how long it stays up before being changed back to what Zeno had changed it to.

I hope I didn't do anything wrong.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Well, I've never edited a Wikipedia article and just for fun I tried to edit this one. I removed all the stuff that was obviously false attack stuff from ********** and left the neutral stuff on. I didn't have to login or do anything. I'll see how long it stays up before being changed back to what Zeno had changed it to.

I hope I didn't do anything wrong.

You don't have to edit the article, you can just revert it to a previous good copy. The history of each edit is permanently saved. As far as dealing with the troll, Wikipedia admins could temporarily lock the article (prevent editing) and/or ban his IP address.

[CannibalSmith]

When and where were you born, Steve? Also, may I use your portrait for the infobox?

[backpocket]

LOL.

Steve's Wikipedia entry sure made my day.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Baltar

You don't have to edit the article, you can just revert it to a previous good copy. The history of each edit is permanently saved. As far as dealing with the troll, Wikipedia admins could temporarily lock the article (prevent editing) and/or ban his IP address.

I see it's been reverted to what Zeno had set it to. How do you revert back to a previous version?

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by CannibalSmith

When and where were you born, Steve? Also, may I use your portrait for the infobox?

I was born April 14, 1971 in Santa Monica, CA as Stephen Michael Pavlina. And sure, feel free to use the portrait if you'd like.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by seeker5

I see it's been reverted to what Zeno had set it to. How do you revert back to a previous version?

It's pretty simple. Go to the history tab, find a version that's good, open it, then click "edit" and then "save". It'll overwrite the current version with the old one. There's a page on Wikipedia about reverting, including how to revert edits.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Baltar

It's pretty simple. Go to the history tab, find a version that's good, open it, then click "edit" and then "save". It'll overwrite the current version with the old one. There's a page on Wikipedia about reverting, including how to revert edits.

Cool Thanks. I see from the history page it keeps reverting back and forth between the clean version and the vandalised version.

[Steve Pavlina]

Anyone know how to protect the page to prevent it from being repeatedly vandalized by the spammer guy? He basically keeps adding links to his site.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Anyone know how to protect the page to prevent it from being repeatedly vandalized by the spammer guy? He basically keeps adding links to his site.

Only a Wikipedia admin can do it, and one of them has finally locked it. They can be contacted about vandalism at info-en-v@wikimedia.org if you ever need to (must also submit the URL of the article). More info here.

[carenkh]

I can't help but be reminded of Randall Munroe's (creator of xkcd) wikiwhiteboard he put up at his new apartment. Everything Steve's spammer put on his wiki entry is equivalent to the "grafitti" on Munroe's wikiboard.

[wulph]

From the locked Wikipedia article:

Pavlina believes that objective reality does not exist, and that there is only one consciousness (the concept of subjective reality).

I don't believe this statement is accurate; it also has no citation. Steve?

[Steve Pavlina]

No, that wouldn't make much sense. Subjective reality is merely a perspective, one of many different lenses through which we can filter our perceptions. Objective reality is yet another lens. Personally I find both lenses useful. Looking at the same situation from multiple angles can be very helpful in terms of personal growth.

When I wrote about subjective reality in the blog, I was explaining how the belief system works and what some of the benefits are. I think it's a pretty powerful perspective to consider when making decisions.

To say that objective reality does not exist is to speak from within the lens of subjective reality. That's a valid statement from within the subjective lens, but not from outside that lens.

To say that I equate my identity with a singular perspective is false. What I actually believe is that there's tremendous value in viewing reality through multiple perspectives without falling into the trap of equating your identity with any of them. That includes considering both the subjective and objective perspectives. I've written about the perspective-identity issue in the blog and forums on multiple occasions.

[wulph]

Thank you for verifying. I requested an administrator to edit the article and remove or revise the incorrect text.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

No, that wouldn't make much sense. Subjective reality is merely a perspective, one of many different lenses through which we can filter our perceptions. Objective reality is yet another lens. Personally I find both lenses useful. Looking at the same situation from multiple angles can be very helpful in terms of personal growth.

When I wrote about subjective reality in the blog, I was explaining how the belief system works and what some of the benefits are. I think it's a pretty powerful perspective to consider when making decisions.

To say that objective reality does not exist is to speak from within the lens of subjective reality. That's a valid statement from within the subjective lens, but not from outside that lens.

To say that I equate my identity with a singular perspective is false. What I actually believe is that there's tremendous value in viewing reality through multiple perspectives without falling into the trap of equating your identity with any of them. That includes considering both the subjective and objective perspectives. I've written about the perspective-identity issue in the blog and forums on multiple occasions.

I think we can safely edit the Wiki to simply say "Steve couldn't decide which lenses he liked best, so he now wears one lens in one eye and the other lens in the other eye and simply closes one eye and then the other to make his decisions. Sometimes, just for fun, he likes to keep both eyes open to really shake things up. Even though Steve's decision not to pick a single type of lens to wear often drives his readers nuts, they can at least rest assured that he has decided to make sure his lenses are polarized."