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Jossi

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Jossi retires in disgrace.[1]
   
“ 		 
I consider myself a "Renaissance man"...
  		„
  		 

—Jossi

Jossi in The Matrix.

Jossi aka Jossi Fresco is not your usual, everyday Wikipedo admin: day and night, he's also the webmaster and publicist for Prem Rawat, cult leader and Lord of the Universe. Since Jossi became an administrator on the Wikipedia, controlling their pages about Prem Rawat became just part of his job. Jossi doesn't only try to control Prem Rawat pages on the english Wikipedia: he's also signed up for Wikisource, Wikiquote, and a few of the Wikipedias in other languages to make sure they only have nice things to say about his Master. He even signed up to Metawiki to make himself look really serious. As the Wikipedia's Captain Cult, he extends the blessings of his admin powers and experience in gaming the system to other cultists looking for total cult PoV.

Birth of a Monster: From Sign-up to Admin

Wiki dashboard for Prem Rawat: OMGLord of the Universe, Jossi is the pwner! Momento, Zappaz and Rumiton are cultists; 64.81.88.140 was Jossi so it's a runaway WIN!

In April of 2004, Jossi signed up and got straight to work with this page about his Perfect Master. A month later, Mike Finch (anti-Rawat guy who also appeared in The Register's article) created the original version of the Prem Rawat page. Rawat cultists saw it, banged their heads together, and started an edit war within 24 hours.

Early Adventures

Tricksy and sneaksy Jossi created the "Criticism of Prem Rawat" article, with the snarky content "Opposing views can be added here", but turned it into a series of outrageous smears of critics and lame rebuttals of contributions from critics and neutral parties. Almost all of the very cheap shots and low attacks on this page are from Jossi, either logged in as Jossifresco or as the IP address 64.81.88.140. Zappaz, a fellow Prem Rawat devotee, was the only consistent cultist helper at the time.

Jossi makes one of his most entertaining plays when he forgets he's not logged in or using the "Jossi" computer in the office and replies to a critic through an IP address. He then logs in or uses his "Jossi" computer and continues the reply (ripping apart the paragraph he's replying to in his rage). The reply features this very twisted argument:

   
“ 		 
Jim. I would really apreciate it if you address me as a humqan being and not as a "cult member". You have absolutely no right to call me any names or to judge me. Who do you think you are? I am jewish and if some one peyoratively calls me "jew" I would not let it pass. I have also dark skin. If walking down a street in England someone would call me "paki", I would not let it pass. I will fight that with all my being. I will indeed.
  		„
  		 

—Jossi, here

Let's try to unscramble Jossi's argument: calling him a cult member is a hate crime (although most people would say he is a cult member), especially because he is a "Jew" (but nobody other than Jossi said so and nobody would normally assume a connection, "peyoratively" or not), and even more so because he is dark-skinned (nobody said that), so if you call him a cultist you must be calling him a "jew" or a "paki", even if you didn't, and if you call him a cult member you are calling him a "jew" or a "paki" so you must hate him (even if you would not naturally have wanted to notice him in the street, let alone call him names, applicable or not) because, you see, he has dark skin, is Jewish, and is a cult member. Can you run that by me again?

These were very early days for Jossi, so "I am jewish" was probably a kind of mating call to future allies on the Wikipedia whom he hadn't yet contacted by e-mail.

The beautiful thing is that he solidly confirms his identity as 64.81.88.140 on the Wikipedia at that time, when 64.81.88.140 was the main or second cultist contributor to all of these articles.

Jossi for Administrator: What were They Thinking?

It's always been cult-like, but Wikipedia characteristics like the siege mentality were still embryonic at this stage. Maybe that's why Jossi easily became an administrator (scroll down for some good opposing comments) in October of 2005, especially with Essjay as his main supporter. Others must have seen his strong track record of making edit wars, personal attacks, wikilawyering, being disruptive, sock-puppetry, running a single-purpose account, PoV editing, using his account as a soapbox, and editing with a conflict of interest, so maybe it was just because he had identified himself on-wiki as a member by birth of the ruling cabal and probably done the same behind the scenes as well.

64.81.88.140 suddenly stopped editing a couple of weeks after Jossi became an administrator when someone asked this awkward question.

Jossi the Model

After Jossi became an administrator it was that much easier for him to keep the ten articles on Prem Rawat, Prem's aliases, different names for his cult, two books, and a movie completely one-eyed. In the process, he created the model for other cultists looking to pull the same trick.

Jossi wants you to READ SOME GODAWFUL PROSE!

The model

  1. Sign up for the Wikipedia.
  2. Kiss cabal ass by popping up to play the parrot on policy and administrative pages (Jossi was fond of Martin Luther).
  3. Be passive-agressive like a real cabal member.
  4. Invite fellow-cultists along and make sock-puppet accounts: some will be aggressively biased so that you can play the voice of moderation and reason, others will play non-cultists who think the cult is cool (even though they claim to have never heard of it before) and that the non-believers are all biased.
  5. Accuse all non-believers of having a conflict of interest on account of being in anti-cult groups (hate groups according to Jossi).
  6. Fill discussion pages with repetitive verbal spaghetti to try and make everyone else give up.
  7. Control the page.

This subject area has to have some kind of record for near-irrelevance and spam; the Prem Rawat discussion page on the Wikipedia has over 35 archives (roughly one every six weeks) and twenty other sub-pages. The nine or ten related articles have their own sub-pages and multiple archives. Sub-pages pop in and out of existence at Jossi's whim. Jossi and his helpers use this mess to obstruct others and get their own way.

Conflict of Interest

Not conflicted. No. Not at all.
His Lord of The Universe

"If Jossi is editing as a cult propagandist, he has a huge conflict of interest. Why don't they do something about it?" Well, the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" has a place for that. You should be able to report Jossi's style of foul play on the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. "So why does he still pwn all those stupid articles?"

The policy about vanity pages was supposed to cover conflicts of interest until Wikipedos started sprouting the conflict of interest policy in September 2006. Jossi had been wetting his pants for fear of losing his administrator status every time he saw someone get banned for having a conflict of interest much lighter than his own. Since he was fond of playing the big man on policy pages by this stage, he jumped into the new page with this series of about twenty edits and then continued in tag-team mode for twenty or so more with his ally SlimVirgin. Slim used her technique of shifting things about a lot to make matching the changes with earlier versions and simple reversion impossible.

The main thing Jossi wanted to get rid of was a specific reference to gurus and disciples.

The discussions are here and (less tl;dr) here. Jossi promised Arbcom member Charles Matthews that he would stop editing the Conflict of Interest policy, which meant shit by then, since he had what he wanted and Slim's manipulation had pretty much locked it in.


   
“ 		 
You have again removed the word 'discipleship', and again without prior discussion. You are very clearly a conflicted editor in so doing ...
  		„
  		 

—Arbitrator Charles Matthews to Jossi, Old Conflict of Interest talk page

   
“ 		 
The main practical effect of your following up a disputed edit with two dozen more, is to make it harder to revert ...
  		„
  		 

—Arbitrator Charles Matthews to Jossi, Archived Jossi talk page

   
“ 		 
I think your position is quite serious. You have an apparent conflict of interest here, and are lawyering about it, in my view.
  		„
  		 

—Arbitrator Charles Matthews to Jossi, Archived Jossi talk page

Flush with ego at putting one over on an Arbcom member by acting as if he and SlimVirgin were "the community", Jossi finally had the gall and hypocrisy to scuttle in and brazenly create the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. "OIC."

Criticism of Prem Rawat

Cade Metz was misinformed about the "Criticism of Prem Rawat" article. Technically, Jossi did not have it deleted; he might (or might not) have requested it by mail. He argued against the article but voted to keep it since it suited him as long as he was using it as "Criticism of Critics and Other Non-believers". This couldn't last forever, so he tricked a neutral editor into redirecting it after its content was in the main article, then deleted the content from the main article. Jossi has deleted "Criticism" sub-pages of the discussion page and "Criticism" sections in the "Prem Rawat" article after using them to gather material he doesn't like.

Jossi's "Fightin' round the Wikiworld": Wikisource

Jossi happily uploaded megabytes of spam from his Lord and Perfect Master to Wikisource. When another user posted a few stubs about court cases involving the cult and its cultists, Jossi hit the roof and started wikilawyering like crazy. To make it look like he wasn't acting as an agent for the cult, Jossi offered even more spam from the Perfect Master through user Tprf. He was a little worried about checkuser, since Tprf was a meat puppet if not a sock (probably in the same office if it wasn't Jossi himself, ROFL), so he used the "unsigned" template to reply on the talk page for non-existent user TPRF (see the gallery).

Pwnt

In January of 2008, Jossi was approached by Internet superhero Mr. Cade Metz of The Register. Metz had been talking to some disillusioned former cultists and was planning to expose Jossi. Jossi wet his pants with panic at the new threat to his beloved banhammer, posted this hasty notice about what a great guy he is so everyone should support him, and went on his longest wikibreak ever. After giving his side of the situation and getting support on back channels (nobody posted an open response to his plea until after the article came out), he came back from the wikibreak to brazen the thing out.

Wikipedia Ruled by 'Lord of the Universe' totally pwnt Jossi and led to frenzied activity on the Wikipedia.

Metz kept the spotlight on Jossi in this article about a month of great denial and drama from the Wikipedia.

Citizendium

People on Citizendium started asking awkward questions about Jossi and his Prem Rawat article there in late 2007. Larry Sanger chimed in after The Register's article appeared, and then barred Jossi from editing certain articles in late February 2008. Jossi promptly quit in a cloud of butthurt. Wikipediots are too cultish to draw the obvious conclusions from his leaving just because he was forbidden to edit his favorite articles.

Jimbo weighs in

Jimbo Wales sees nothing wrong with Jossi's conflict of interest.

Apparently, Jimbo Wales sees nothing wrong with Jossi promoting his "Lord of the Universe", Prem Rawat, everywhere he can on TOW:

   
“ 		 
I went through a pretty good volume of the potentially COI edits posted in that discussion, and I found nothing which would raise for me any alarm at all.
  		„
  		 

—Jimbo Wales, here

   
“ 		 
I haven't seen any evidence at all of bad faith edits here. I am indeed taking a hard look at it. I came to this issue for the first time today, prepared to block Jossi as a hardcore POV pusher, etc. But then... I looked at his contributions. I looked at links submitted by critics. And what I found is... a great Wikipedian. So far, I have seen absolutely nothing to cause any concern... but I remain open.
  		„
  		 

—Jimbo Wales, here

Jimbo attacks the messenger.

   
“ 		 
It's really time that people realize that The Register is not a serious website, it's a parody... of itself.
  		„
  		 

—Jimbo Wales, here

Wikipedia courts

The Prem Rawat article became an epic case at the Arbcom, Internet court of the Wikipedia. Jossi brazenly took it there as a way to avoid becoming a case himself. After it had been open for a month, the Arbcom received some secret evidence by mail. This evidence must have been damning to Jossi because the Arbcom spent another month agonizing over whether to lie about it or not. Jimbo or the Wikimedia Foundation finally ordered them to close the case and make their conclusions a whitewash for Jossi.

Why the whitewash?

Some speculate that only a foundation-to-foundation connection can explain the blindness to Jossi's cult affiliation.

Drama in Arbcom time

This hero fell into Jossi's control drama and played a very cool role. Mukadderat was straight enough to correct one of the articles Jossi owns during the Prem Rawat article's Arbcom case, so Jossi hit the roof (again).

IsabellaW appeared out of nowhere to make the most deranged contribution. She says she is a researcher and like Jossi smears ex-premies (ex-cultists) by saying they form a hate group. Unlike the present Jossi she doesn't have to keep up any false pretences, so she says most of the same things Jossi said in the old "Criticism of Prem Rawat" article, claiming that the ex-cultists make cultist cows give sour milk, cultist chickens stop laying, cultist women have deformed babies, the full moon go dark on cloudless nights, and the cock of the Lord of the Universe go limp.

Arbcom cabal praise OMGWTFBBQ WHITEWASH!

   
“ 		 
Jossi disclosed his potential conflict of interest on 1 September 2004 voluntarily, and has been aware of the need to behave in a circumspect manner on pages relating to Prem Rawat. On 10 February 2008, he declared his intention to edit only talk pages for Prem Rawat related articles, a self-imposed restriction to which he has held. The Committee commends Jossi's voluntary restraint, and notes that it is not strictly required by the policy on conflicts of interests.
  		„
  		 

—TOW Arbitration Committee final decision, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat

So it's back to business as usual, with Jossi using the talk page to rule the article about his Perfect Master (except for Jossi turning Will Beback into an e-enemy along the way).

"Technologist" and "high-impact executive"???

Jossi took the blue pill

Despite being a hyperactive 24/7 Wikipedian, the marketing partnership Cyberland describes Jossi as a technologist and high-impact executive with "extensive experience" in resume padding, claiming that Jossi gathered this experience "during extensive periods in Israel, Europe, the UK, South America and the US": must have been before he joined the Wikipedia, because he certainly wouldn't have had time since then. Jossi’s partners at Cyberland include LeRoy West. Cyberland says that LeRoy "is a recognized expert ... new technology ... corporate message ... increase sales ... unique insight ... creative, technical, and business issues ... effective ... business success". LeRoy is very happy to associate himself with the DECA Project stating that he was once Operations Manager for DECA, an aviation company in Miami,FL. DECA was a sweat shop for Guru Maharaji’s dupes. Their biggest project was customizing (including a gold toilet) a Boeing 707 for the Master.

Cyberland lists lots of big-name customers but not Prem Rawat. The company probably only exists to own the domain name these days, since this 1997 article about an unsuccessful dot-com venture is the only evidence on the Internet that it ever existed, other than the hard-to-believe claims on the site. Jossi gets a credit on this 1999 Maharaj Ji site and is said to have been webmaster for The Prem Rawat Foundation from its 2002 launch. Boring people who read tax returns say the Foundation spent $500,000 on its website alone.

This $500,000 of charity was surely well spent because Jossi knows business trainer Tim Gallwey who has the idea that managers get good by playing pocket pool and Inner Tennis. Jossi expanded Tim’s Wikipedia entry, which was only right as Gallwey is another Rawat dupe, and so is his partner Alvaro Pascotto who just happens to be the brother of the husband of the Chairperson of The Prem Rawat Foundation.

Jossi Fails Remedial English

Jossi claims "an advanced level of english" on his user page. ROFL, his natural english is atrocious. He uses a lot of wikipedese, which helps to hide it, but some argue that he usually has a junior cultist around to fix his stuff up before he hits the save button.

Jossi-isms

Jossi-isms are easy to find. Here are a random few for teh lulz:

   
“ 		 
I made my opinion of the book know and reserved to myself my opinion on yourself So you can make your opinions know in a productive manner, and stop and calling them 'facts'.
  		„
  		 

—Jossi, here

   
“ 		 
No Francis, that does not fly on the face of evidence.
  		„
  		 

—Jossi, here

   
“ 		 
Will Beback and I go long ways, and I respect him greatly as an editor. So I feel about Vassyana.
  		„
  		 

—Jossi, here

Gallery

  • Jossi is a Wikipedia administrator and a clone army of hard-core cultists.
    Jossi is a Wikipedia administrator and a clone army of hard-core cultists.
  • oic what you did there.
    oic what you did there.
  • Jossi asks himself if he wants to upload more spam to Wikisource and makes a false user page for the puppet.
    Jossi asks himself if he wants to upload more spam to Wikisource and makes a false user page for the puppet.
  • Welcomes a non-existent user (he must know) and replies there (wouldn't want anyone matching up IP addresses).
    Welcomes a non-existent user (he must know) and replies there (wouldn't want anyone matching up IP addresses).
  • Jossi rules teh world & haz teh baddest case of Internet disease!
    Jossi rules teh world & haz teh baddest case of Internet disease!
  • Teh real Jossi without Internet disease
    Teh real Jossi without Internet disease

External links

Worshipping Guru Maharaj Ji all over teh Wikiworld

   
“ 		 
i think Jossi Fresco is a pretty cool guy. eh public relations for Prem Rawat all over teh internets abusing power of Wikipedia Administrator and doesnt afraid of anything.
  		„
  		 

—Anonymous, teh Internet

Don't vandalize Jossi's user pages!

Public Relations and Wikipedia Administrator at same time = wtf?

PR for PR
To try to confuse things, Jossi made this account with an e-mail address that sounds like the name of a site he hates.

These PR sites all list Jossi. Some are free but some cost money to join and most carry articles that really were written by Jossi for his Perfect Master. Jossi claims they are all a gigantic conspiracy against him and made one with an e-mail address that sounds like the name of an site he doesn't like to support this. Joining these sites fits the same pattern that finds him pumping cult tl;dr into the public domain on Wikisource.

teh blogs pick up interest

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