Slander and Suspicion, Chaos and Confusion

What happened on the forum last July?  Dyebat asked that Board and staff be able to prove they were real people, rather than anonymous internet identities.  And all hell broke loose.  Staff members began resigning, even those who had already provided identification. 

Waldog and Stevieboy resigned first.  They were followed by Kalua.  Staff told some members that they had planned a “mass exodus”.

Staff members began to make posts falsely accusing a group of people, the DJGers, of trying to take over the fansite.  They claimed that Dyebat and lchris were also involved in the imagined “takeover”.  LonniR sent out the following email to several members.

From: "Lonni Xxxxxxx
        Date: Sun, July 18, 2010 11:23 am 
     
       (Name), I'm letting you know that unless the good members such as yourself and as many friends as you can muster do not post against Chris and Dyebat's actions, the entire staff is prepared to resign today.
        Hard to believe, I know, but they are in league with DJG and his followers, who hate us and have sworn to bring our Forum to its knees. We have long suspected it, but the proof of it is right there on that thread. Notice who keeps constantly defending their actions and attacking us.
        If we don't receive help today we will be gone and they will have it. If you want to save the forum, please get as much help as you can and start posting the truth.

She posted similar allegations on the forum.

LonniR:  It is not this site that is evil, but it is being taken over by those who are.  Look at some of the ani-staff(sic) posts and you will see it.  (07/18/10@ 12:59:04pm EST)

She was joined in those false and slanderous accusations by other staff members.

Truus: I can tell you what is happening here is a planned takeover.
And as much as I admire the efforts of Dyebat, Ichris and Tweek, I can tell you they lead you now the wrong way.
The worst thing is they are not honest to you all, as members.(07/18/10@ 11:03:07pm EST)

Waldog:  Then Dyebat took it upon herself to TAKE OVER the site and the forum and make demands on staff that were not agreed to.  Dyebat is not honest about any of this nor has Ichris been.(07/20/10@ 12:37:15am EST)

None of that was true.  Those who were accused knew that it wasn’t true.  But something was happening.  There were reports of strange occurrences on the forum. 

Access to threads and to the Red Room was changed.  Some members had their PM capacity reduced.  Some threads and posts disappeared.  Some members could not read all the threads.  Here are just a few of the things members reported.

• The page numbers are not working correctly on some of the threads.  You cannot get beyond page one.

• The trolls are in again and have changed the title of the "Chats About Susan" subforum to "The Happy Valley".

• Some hacker was just in the control panel

• those members in the "Red" category have full access to the site, while regular members do not. If you read the newest threads, it's only the "Red" members who can read and post in them.

• When I try and go in to go into the "Transparency" thread that Dyebat started I get this message: (Name), you do not have permission to access this page.

• when I try to post new threads, I get a message that I am not permitted to do so.

• the only forum sections I can currently see are Forum Rules, Forum Announcements, Blog of the Day and Continuous Chats. What happened to all the rest of the topics?

• Somebody was posting today, by the name of "EvaMarie".  It said the account was opened in July 2009 but I think today was the first time there had been any posts.

And most disturbing of all were the reports of unfamiliar names in the admin control panel.

• heads up I am seeing kaydaniels...in the location of the Mod Control Panel...

What was going on?

Unbanned?

Both former members, LEM and Luz, had re-registered for the forum and were able to read the threads.  Word of that got around to some who knew that LEM had been gratuitously banned after her resignation (because it was shown under her name).  An amnesty for banned members had recently been discussed between Kalua, Pickled Tink and Citroenlady.  As a result, some mistakenly thought this meant that the amnesty had been implemented. 

For example, WAMcKinley posted:

LEM was a former mod at this forum. If I recall her story correctly, she resigned and then was banned, for no discernible reason. (Refer to forum history: "Bad Ol' Days") Maybe she was accorded amnesty. If so, it would be justly deserved, IMHO.

So Clix Pix, who had been banned, heard about it and decided to see if she could rejoin.  But her account had not been deleted like LEM and Luz, so she was not able to rejoin using her old name.  Clix Pix (user id = 3614) was still present in the database and shown as “banned”. 

userid	usergroupid	username
3614	8 (banned)	Clix Pix

So she tried registering under a slightly different name; ClixPix (no space).  That user name was accepted and she was given a new user number.  The account was activated at 9:31 PM EST.   Here is a screen cap from July 18 showing the user name and number, ClixPix (user id = 8107). 

When someone is unbanned, the steps shown in the admin log are liftban and doliftban.  None of those actions occurred on July 18.  The admin log shows that not a single ban was lifted on July 18th. 
 

She was never “unbanned” as Clix Pix.  She rejoined as a new member with a similar, but not identical, name.  There is no record of the account ever being approved. No one let her in.

But some questions remain.  Why were staff expecting the return of banned members?  Pickled Tink posted in the staff room on May 16 that “The DJG'ers are already talking about bringing back banned members.” 

Why did she say that?  It was not true. No one at Susahumor had suggested bringing back banned members.  So where did she get that idea?  Were her spies at that forum unreliable?  Inventive?

The timeline is also interesting.

• 3:38 PM EST  Luz activates her account by replying to the welcome email
• 8:18 PM EST LEM activates her account
• 8:59 PM EST UKSusanfanAnn notices LEM reading the thread
• 9:00 PM EST  Hulapig declares that “banned and resigned members are being let back in”
• 9:06 PM EST Hulapig: “A banned member. YOUR staff is not doing this.”
• 9:31 PM EST ClixPix activates her account

Some members recognized LEM, some didn’t.  But Hulapig made it clear that she believed it to be a return of the banned.  Note that Hulapig was posting about the “banned” being re-admitted before ClixPix activated her account. 

Clearly, creating panic about “banned” members was on someone’s agenda.  Why?  Who originated the lies about banned members returning?  And who was spreading them?

Another area of concern are the actions of Pickled Tink, an admin at the forum and Chairperson of the Board.  Tink included a deliberate lie in the official report.  (Had there been a real investigation, they would have found, like I did, that no banned members were re-admitted.)

From the report of the Board, Nov. 14, 2010:

We have explored the issue of the banned members. It seems that in actual fact only one banned member was readmitted, and that one of the temporary admin appointed by Lchris has said she admitted this person as she thought that the amnesty which had been discussed by PT, Kalua, and Lchris towards previously banned members had commenced.

What she wrote was not true.  If this was simply a mistake, it would not be so bad.  But there is reason to believe that at the time the report was written, Pickled Tink knew that Citroenlady had not admitted Clix on July 18th. 

Citroenlady was not a mod at the time Clix Pix rejoined and therefore in no position to admit her.  That fact had been discussed at two meetings in which Pickled Tink participated.  In a chat meeting on July 29, 2010, at 3:35 pm, lchris told her that CL was "let in later".  Tink responded, "yes I checked your log to see what time she was let in".

On August 12, the Tech team had a chat meeting, attended by Pickled Tink, Danileo, JudyOkla, Truus and lchris.  One of the things discussed was the supposed “unbanning”, which took place the 18th.  JudyOkla asked about Citroenlady being the one who had unbanned and lchris replied that her access was not changed until the next day. 

Judy says:  and how do you know it wasn't cl since you gave her admin permissions?

Chris says:  CL's admin permissions were given July 19th...

Pickled Tink was made aware of that fact at least two times, yet she chose to lie about it.  That was foolish because publicly available information (the Transparency thread) could be used to debunk Tink’s claim by showing that no temporary mods were yet on duty at the time.  After that was pointed out, that lie was removed from the report. 

This naturally begs the question of why Tink would write it in the first place.  Why did she think it necessary to smear Citroenlady?  Why does the Board have a person who would do that as its leader?

Banned Members Return?

On July 18, three former members of SBFII rejoined the forum.  Their names showed up in the list of members reading the Transparency thread.  Their names were in a darker color because their accounts had been activated, but not yet approved by a moderator. 

Comments about those returning members set off a panic about “banned” members being let in.  The mods were prepared for this because they had been told that the “DJGers” were planning to bring back banned members.  But it wasn’t true.

So what did happen?  Dyebat had started the Transparency thread on July 16.  During the thread a couple things occurred that revived the interest of some former members when they heard about it.  Pickled Tink admitted that she was also an admin on the official forum.  And Dyebat and lchris began to be attacked by mods and others at the forum.

Luz wanted to post in support of Dyebat.  She had resigned, but decided to return.  Her account was activated at 3:48 pm EST on July 18. 

Lovin’ Every Minute (LEM) heard about Tink being staff on both the official site and susan-boyle.com.  She wanted to post some comments about conflict of interest.  LEM’s account was activated at 8:18 pm EST. 

At the time these events took place, members activated their account by replying to a welcome email they received upon signing up.   At this point, the member could read, but could not post.  A moderator still had to approve their membership and move them into the “registered users” group before they got posting privileges. The time these actions happened was recorded.

Lovin’ Every Minute had been a moderator in the early days of the forum.  She resigned as a moderator and a few weeks later resigned from the forum.  DocRobbie posted in a staff thread that day the following:

In a related note, LEM (Lynne) and Singing Soul have asked to resign from the Forum.  I will delete their accounts at the end of the day, and also ban their IPs.

He then proceeded to do that.  This is the admin log showing that LEM was banned. 

adminlogid	userid	dateline	script	action	extrainfo	ipaddress
8104	14 (DocRobbie)	1255673686 (10/16/09@  1:14:46am)	banning.php	dobanuser	username = lovin' every minute	9x.xx.xx.x8

Banning people who resigned was not done universally.  It was done selectively and contrary to the rules of the fansite.   Some people resigned multiple times and were allowed to rescind the decision, while others were not allowed to return. 

LEM’s original account was later deleted from the site.  LEM was no longer a member.  She was not there as a banned member.  She was not there at all. 

When LEM decided to rejoin the forum, she did not try her original user name with her old password.  She registered again as a new member.  Because her account had been deleted, she was able to rejoin using the same name.

The same was true for Luz.  Luz had resigned and, though she had not been banned, her account was no longer there.  Neither a search by user ID number nor by user name produced any results.  Luz, too, had been deleted.  As a result, she was able to rejoin using the same name. 

Neither LEM nor Luz was "unbanned".  Because their accounts had been deleted, they were both were able to register as new members, using their old names, but with new user numbers.  Luz’s account was approved by Pickled Tink on July 21.  LEM’s new account was never approved, so she re-registered on July 23.  That account was approved by Pickled Tink on July 24.

Neither LEM nor Luz had their new accounts approved on July 18, meaning that nobody “let them in” that day.


Tomorrow:  What about Clix Pix?

An Introduction to the Admin Log

Lchris once told me that when she began helping Dyebat purchase the fansite, she heard stories from and about various people and groups.  Some of these stories were contradictory and she didn’t know whom to believe - until they started telling stories about her.  Those she knew were lies.  She knew she had not done the things of which she was accused.

The same is true for Dyebat, Citroenlady and myself.  Dyebat knew that many of the things said about her were untrue.  They said she was being used.  They said she was mentally incompetent.  They said she was in league with people who wished to take over the fansite.  All nonsense.  Dyebat knew those stories were untrue.

Citroenlady was a member of a site purported to be trying to take over the fansite.  I was a member of two of them.  (Couldn’t they keep their stories straight?  From which site was the takeover supposed to be coming?)  We also knew that those stories were untrue.

So we set out to find out what really did happen. 

When I offered to help with the investigation of the events of last July at susan-boyle.com, I used things that were readily available to anyone.  I searched through the threads for information that could help explain what happened. 

But  the staff at the fansite began removing the older threads from public view.  With no access to the threads anymore, Dyebat and lchris decided to provide me with some of the data they had saved.  These copies of the database were made during the time Dyebat was the legal owner of the site.

The Board had also tasked lchris with looking into what happened.  She carefully saved and protected what she had collected.  Any reasonable person would expect that the board would need an additional neutral investigation, which they did promise, yet did not deliver.

One of the most useful parts of the database has proven to be the admin log.  It tells me what staff member performed what action.  It also tells when they did the action.  Here is an example of an action taken by staff.

adminlogid	userid	dateline	script	action	extrainfo	ipaddress
27803	6	1262175639	user.php	findnames		7x.xxx.xxx.xx1
27804	6	1262175643	banning.php	banuser		7x.xxx.xxx.xx1
27805	6	1262175658	banning.php	dobanuser	username = VIAGRAeus	7x.xxx.xxx.xx1

Admin log id is the unique number given each action recorded.  User id is the member number of the staff person who did the action.  Dateline is the time the action took place.  It is recorded in Unix code, which can be converted to conventional time.  (One of many such conversion sites is unixtimestamp)

Script is the part of the site in which the action took place.  Some examples are user, forum, options, usertools, usergroups, template and so on.  Action is what was done.  Some actions require more than one step, such as banuser and then dobanuser to ban someone.  Extra info sometimes, but not always, identifies the user or thread which was affected by the action.  IP address is the address of the staff member performing the action.  I have substituted Xs for most of the numbers for privacy reasons.

So in this case, it is possible to determine that LonniR (user # 6) banned a member on 12 / 30 / 09 @ 6:20:58am EST.  Given the user name (VIAGRAeus, which is likely a spammer), I think we can all agree that the action was justified.

The adminlog chart can be searched or rearranged, depending on what information I specify.  I can arrange the data by user id, by date, by action or by to whom the action was done. 

What about changing the record?  Can that be done?  Yes, but that too is recorded.  It shows in the admin log as changehistory.  

Another useful part of the data is the user change log.  It shows when a member was changed from one user group to another.  For example, when a new member registers, they must reply to an email to activate their account.  The time they do that is recorded.  Then they must be approved by a staff member and moved into the “registered users” group.  The time and person doing that is recorded, too.

These records have proved very useful.  The Board and/or the "investigator" used by the Board should have requested and examined these records, at the very least.    Lchris made the Board aware that she had collected and protected numerous log files and other data from various sources.  She requested additional data from Hostgator. She fully expected to be asked for them. But no one ever asked her.  

Lchris had shown PT how to access and search these records from the forum software Admin Control Panel on August 2.  PT searched the logs and asked questions.   So, PT was aware that these logs existed.  Yet, the official Board Investigation Report distorted and dismissed this data as irrelevant.  But it was not.