Richard Symonds

DESYSOPPED LOL

DESYSOPPED LOL

DESYSOPPED LOL

DESYSOPPED LOL

DESYSOPPED LOL

DESYSOPPED LOL

DESYSOPPED LOL

Richard Symonds in his true naval role: cruising the docks for sex

me ladies, I'm the Cavalry Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (AKA Richard Symonds or simply Cavalry) is a disgraced Wikipedo admin known for his war on the GNAA, shilling for the Liberal Democrats, then abusing his position as a CheckUser to have his enemies banned and manipulating Wikipedia to libel them. He tends to use CheckUser tools on any user who opposes his view points, a blatant violation of the CheckUser guidelines. True to the double standard at Wikipedia, he himself operates several sockpuppets whose main function is to back up all arguments he makes, a high crime for ordinary Wikipedians but not a problem for admins. Like HighInBC, he can't stand the GNAA, and abuses Wikipedia's COI noticeboard to round up support for bans on known GNAA members. In 2015, Symonds faggotry was exposed, and he was desysopped for the lulz and for graet justice in a humiliating ArbCom decision, which found that he had leaked information to The Guardian, and abused his position in order to gain a political advantage for his party, the Liberal Democrats.

	“	Richard Symonds is one of the UK's top "Wikipedians" and spends up to eight hours a day working on the site. He is currently unemployed, so is working full-time for free.	„
	— The BBC

His numerous sockpuppet accounts

Symonds successfully manipulates Wikipedia despite his ArbCom desysop via several sockpuppets, one of which is an admin account belonging to his imaginary girlfriend, Panyd. In addition, he hates ED with a passion, and defames the writers of this truthful article, which has existed for several years before the ugly, ugly truth was exposed by old media:

	“	Think about Wikipedia, but run by 14 to 21-year-old children with a misguided sense of "free speech". There's an article about me on there, one about my wife, so do a lot of people. Wikipedia Review and Wikipediocracy do at least make an attempt at reasoned discourse, and some of the people on there are actually quite pleasant, and genuinely want to help reform Wikipedia. Encyclopedia Dramatica... is not interested in reform, nor is it interested in polite discourse. It's interested in trolling, and that's about it.	„
	—Richard Symonds, white knighting for another abusive Wikipedo

Panyd

This is his wife.

Panyd is a sockpuppet of The Cavalry who he claims to be his wife. Countless hours have been spent by him trying to prove it to be a legitimate person. Going as far as to write a nice little backstory for his alleged schizophrenic lover. This is all bullshit, of course, because Wikipedia users can't get any pussy.

However, his blatant sockpuppetry did not amuse his fellow Wikipedia aspies, who decided to file a sockpuppet investigation case. The evidence brought forth included:

“	-The Panyd account submitting a comment obviously from Chase Me, with a later explanation that they were together and he had accidentally used "her" laptop - Inconsistencies in explanations of where they were, and when they were and were not together - Similarities in writing styles, most notably use of dashes - Absence of Chase Me from Wikipedia as Panyd was building resume for RfA - Absence of both accounts from Wikipedia since RfA failure	„

It should be noted that the user, who filed the report, was blocked one month later.

LiteralKa, as well as other GNAA members, were not invited to their wedding. They have yet to forgive The Cavalry for this atrocity.

Elena

Panyd later opened a twitter account and chose to follow Cavalry. She listed her name as Elena Salvatore which may be a fake alias, as opposed to Cavalry who remained as Richard Symonds.

Unlike her boyfriend, who refused to follow her back, Jimbo Wales showed an interest in her, and paid her the attention she deserved, as an upcoming Arbcom member.

It is possible that he is too distracted by Angela following him.

Jimbo following Elena

Elena following Richard

His reaction

We can assume he carries out his chronic USI in real life, however we can also assume he is bullshitting about his (lol, former) career.

“	I'm quite happy to go through with a checkuser; I've done nothing wrong. As to the claims: The Panyd account submitting a comment obviously from Chase Me, with a later explanation that they were together and he had accidentally used "her" laptop - Entirely true. Inconsistencies in explanations of where they were, and when they were and were not together - I'd like clarification of these inconsistencies, I don't remember there being any, and if there are I can easily clean them up. Similarities in writing styles, most notably use of dashes - we spend a lot of time together and have similar writing styles. I often proof-read Panyd's university work. Absence of Chase Me from Wikipedia as Panyd was building resume for RfA - I was having a rather long break from Wikipedia, which I still intend to have. To be quite honest, fitting in OTRS, Wikipedia, my personal relationships, my new job and the Royal Navy is all a bit too much. I'd been absent for a much longer time than Panyd sorting out her RfA; in fact, I've only really worked on OTRS and CSDs since Panyd started using Wikipedia. Absence of both accounts from Wikipedia since RfA failure - Being a long-serving administrator and editor, as well as OTRS volunteer, in good standing with the community, I'm quite shocked at the sockpuppetry claims. In any case, I've been absent for a very long time irregardless of the RfA. I believe Panyd's absence is down to her being told that she's too disabled to be an administrator, which tends to have a chilling effect.	„
—Here we learn that The Cavalry is either a sockpuppet owner, or controlling boyfriend.

Long story short, the Arbitration Committee decided that this was no concern, and the case was declined CheckUser. It is almost certain they figured him out in the process, but he is an honorary member of the Wikipedia hivemind (Archive), thus is above the law of the land.

Fiona

The Panyd account later claimed to be named Fiona and revealed 2 sock accounts:

• All Hail The Muffin, for making edits when she is schizophrenic
• Fiona Apps, supposedly her full name

Panyd loves Wikipe-tan.

A Bristol Wireless article later wrote about her speaking at a "Girl Geek Dinner" held August 18, about why women don't edit Wikipedia. Pics were taken.

2011 concluding

2 things of interest happened recently.

1. November 22: Panyd announced she would be running for ArbCom.
2. November 24: Cavalry announces he was hired as "Office & Development Manager for Wikimedia UK" and will step down at end of term (when "Panyd" will hopefully get his seat, naturally). This was due to a potential conflict of interest between having this job and holding an administrative position. Though it's apparently okay if your girlfriend has that position. Sort of like Hillary Clinton marrying Vladimir Putin, what could go wrong?
   • Original announcment (Archived)
   • Decision to replace him is demanded, and results in another spot being opened up for GF

London "meetups"

Panyd allegedly attended multiple Wikimedia events in London prior to her trip with her "husband" to Wikimania. EdSaperia, one of the main voices in the IRC meeting, was registered shortly before Cavalry's "resignation", and uses the same obscure ISP, Be Unlimited, as the Cavalry.

GNAA COI

	“	Blocks all round, then? The Cavalry (Message me) 23:08, 25 July 2011 (UTC)	„

Like most AN/I complaints, it is simple, yet manipulative.

One day while TOW admins were brainstorming on what to do with the Gay Nigger Association of America article, The Cavalry decided to file a Conflict of Interest complaint on AN/I. He created a list of all known Gay Niggers and requested a topic ban (which later progressed into full bans). Immediately, floods of replies asking for these users to be banned spammed up the page, proving that most Wikipedians in fact do not assume good faith. Particularly Diego Grez who went on to make a slew of personal attacks on Twitter, despite it being a bannable offence. The Cavalry then decided to close the discussion, thinking that the consent of two users would be enough to give out topic-bans to multiple editors. This itself was enough for the shit to hit the fan, and a large argument quickly broke out. Seeing as several of the admin hopefuls were supporting him, he decided to gather his friends together and make them agree upon a community consensus that would allow him to further abuse his e-power. Unfortunately for him, there were more opposing view points than he had expected, and began to go about finding ways to remove these. Checked comments include:

	“	Oppose Can someone explain to me where edits from either LiteralKa or Murdox have been BAD to Wikipedia in any sort of way. This is seeming more and more of personal opinion rather than an actual violation of WP:COI.	„

	“	Oppose you people are just looking to cause trouble. I see nothing wrong with what these editors have done with the article. They have kept a NPOV and cited all information added to the article. If we went around preventing anyone who had anything to do with a certain topic from editing, there would be nothing on this site.	„

	“	Oppose I've watched developments on the GNAA article for a long time without knowing that LiteralKa or Murdox were connected to the organization, largely because their contributions to that article were not outwardly partisan or promotional. In fact, they are exemplars of what Wikipedians should be, in that they cited every statement, strictly adhered to NPOV, and calmly addressed the concerns of fanatical anti-GNAA people on the talkpage. Apparently there is some bad blood between old-time Wikipedians and the GNAA, and as a result, many Wikipedians tend to assume the worst in every action from these two users (such as their AfDs of obviously anti-GNAA articles created in bad faith). However, to uninvolved editors like me, looking at the presumed evidence with no prejudice against these two users, I see no egregious violations of COI policy or anything else that would warrant this proposed ban. These editors, probably because of their outside involvement with the organization, are the only editors who would edit an article on such an unpopular group constructively. As long as they strictly adhere to WP:V and WP:RS as they have been doing so far, LiteralKa and Murdox's presence on GNAA articles is crucial to maintaining NPOV against the legions of users who would like nothing more than to have the articles deleted.	„

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Further bullshit

The Cavalry accused this of Canvassing, although it did nothing to "influence the outcome" of the discussion at hand. Anyone else thinking bad faith?

The Cavalry soon decided that a link to the discussion on Twitter was a violation of WP:CANVASS, despite the definition of the policy being "the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way is considered inappropriate." Apparently, linking to a discussion board is attempting to influence its outcome.

	“	And you attribute... a tweet to a sockpuppetteer noticing something controversial on a large, public noticeboard and a guy deciding to create a cross-wiki article?	„

This lead to LiteralKa, head of GNAA public relations, receiving an indefinite ‎block for "Exhausting the community's patience". He was also credited for sockpuppetry after editing Simple Wikipedia under a different name, despite this not being a ban-worthy as WP:SOCK says nothing about "cross-wiki sockpuppetry".

Minions

Cavalry is not limited to a single meat puppet. He always has some (or perhaps socks) in reserve to do his bidding. Ignoring his girlfriend, this includes, but is not limited to:

• User:Bsadowski1 (Brian Sadowski of Chicago, IL), a SysOp on English Wikipedia, CheckUser at Simple Wikipedia, and new Wikimedia steward claiming to deal with spam/vandalism issues. Compare: Cavalry bans a guy and 12 minutes later Bsadowski enforces it globally.
• Diego Grez - His Mexican "butt buddy"

Desysopped

	“	18:44, 9 June 2015 Acalamari (talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry from administrator to (none) (Special:Diff/666214303 / Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard)	„

Symonds, like many other UK Wikipedos, is a Liberal Democrat "to the last". In an embarrassing arbitration case, it was determined that Symonds abused his position in order to gain a political advantage for his party during the UK general elections by falsely claiming that "Contribsx" was Conservative Party member Grant Shapps and then leaking this to The Guardian. The only two problems with this were:

• Shapps's account had not been used for several years, yet checkuser guidelines only call for this information to be held for 90 days
• The Guardian's use of a timestamp, which notably differs from the current version

	“	Liberal Democrat (to the last). Also a cyclist, a Wikipedian, and an atheist. Views my own.	„
	—Symonds, on his now deleted Twitter

	“	The Guardian news story was published at 15.55 hours BST, or 1455 hours UTC[3], and includes nearly direct quotes from ChaseMe's unmodified SPI statement, and also states that the Contribsx account was blocked by Wikipedia "administrators" - despite the fact that the account was not blocked until 18 minutes after the Guardian article was published. The allegation that the living person was abusively editing Wikipedia using the Contribsx account has now been widely reported through most major news outlets throughout the United Kingdom.	„
	—Risker

“	I have already reported myself (and all of this) to the functionaries and they have chastised me (and continue to do so) and suggested that I would have done better by running this investigation past the functionaries list, rather than past the few administrators I did. They are right.	„
—Dick Symonds, busted

None of this would have caught the notice of anyone, except the timing of this might have affected the outcome of the UK Elections, at the time less than two weeks away. ArbCom correctly perceived this as an attempt by Symonds, a known liberal activist, to smear the opposition by abusing Wikipedia, and then eliminating the opposition by concocting fake checkuser evidence.

In June, Symonds was desysopped for great justice, which hilariously caused The Guardian to throw him under the bus for the lulz, while The Telegraph just pointed and laughed.

Legal fallout

In August 2015, news broke out that Wikimedia UK Emails related to the Shapps-Symonds affair were deleted. Coincidence or design? Well, does this mean that Symonds and WMUK don't have anything to worry about? Legal experts say otherwise.

Since the outbreak of controversy, Symonds' userpage contained a link to a Guardian article that asserted that he was right about Contribsx, (archive) but in August, Symonds removed that statement (archive) in response to a blog entry by Vordrak.

See also

• Bureaucratic Fuck
• Deletionist
• Jimbo Wales and Rachel Marsden, a similar conflict of interest

External links

• E-mail: [email protected]
•  ImTheCavalry
•  Panyd

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