Alden Sockshade: a timeline of deception

This is a timeline of several accounts suspected of being operated by Alden Loveshade (Cainad, Binky The WonderSkull, Un-Minnie, Miley Spears, Why do I need to provide this?, Pope Hilde, Alden Loveshade, Devil Details, Black Enforcer, GINA Is Not an Acronym, and PlacidDingo), as well as the "Dǐll Kevlar" account. Dates and times are in UTC. Cainad was unblocked after I originally wrote this, as he was apparently impersonated. I believe the next seven are Alden, I'm undecided on the other three, and I believe Dǐll Kevlar (DK) to be a different person (though I initially suspected them of also being Alden). At the end there is also an analysis of DK's activity (#Who is Dǐll Kevlar?) and a proposed explanation for Alden's actions on the "hosting options" forum (#What really happened here?).

This is not a comprehensive collection of evidence. I intended to write a brief overview of times and dates but ended up with something rather longer and more detailed.

2006

2009

2010

2012

2015

2016

2018

2019

After the shutdown notice

Who is Dǐll Kevlar?

Dǐll Kevlar (whom I sometimes refer to as "DK" for brevity and to avoid that pesky ǐ character) is an account with a very brief career on Uncyclopedia, having made just 20 edits spanning the period between 11 February 2019 and 16 March 2019. Almost all of these edits consist of advocating for Wikia Uncyclopedia to merge with uncyclopedia.co. DK claims to be a reader rather than a community member and would have us believe that readers have as much of a stake in the outcome as editors:

Which wikis is DK referring to here? They don't say. They are equally vague in this forum post on .co, saying "As a previous host of several forked wikis [...]".

I do not believe the average reader of Uncyclopedia, even with experience on other wikis, would begin editing there with the sole purpose of pushing for it to meet this particular fate -- one most popular among a certain group of insiders -- and behave so aggressively toward established editors. It's possible but unlikely. DK is much more likely to be established themselves and pretending to be a mere reader for some unknown end. But who could it be?

DK is established on Wikia Community Central, where they began editing on 8 April 2010. Their user page links to their pages on several other Wikia wikis and Wikipedia. On those under "Current Projects", they are an admin and bureaucrat.

Under "Current Projects":

Under "Places you might see me":

Out of all these wikis, the one they started on the earliest is Community Central on 8 April 2010, an unlikely place for a new Wikia editor to begin. There is no log entry for account creation here, so the account was probably created elsewhere first. I don't know where.

The page on the Internet Box Wiki contains a link to uncyclopedia.co. This link formerly used Wikia's interwiki prefix for Uncyclopedia and was changed on 2 March 2019 with the summary "RIP wikia's uncyclopedia", anticipating the "merger" as if it were a given. The original link was added on 3 February 2019. This is all the evidence I've found so far that DK had anything to do with Uncyclopedia, as a reader or otherwise, before 11 February.

The bulk of DK's edits to Uncyclopedia are more than just advocating for the so-called "merger": they consist largely of replying to posts by Miley/Alden and supporting points of view they were pushing around the same time. This can be seen from the timeline above. To recap: DK posts on a forum by Miley, supports merging with .co on Sannse's forum before Alden and his socks show up, replies to Alden to agree with him about merging, replies to Miley's "child porn" comment, votes for merging on another forum by Miley, tries to talk Romartus into unlocking said forum (arguing that they won't comment there anymore -- in that case, why do they care?), votes for "Uncyclopedia.co" on Romartus's vote forum 8 minutes after Alden does, attacks me for striking the vote, replies to Alden's message about the vote being restarted... and those descriptions cover 17 out of the 20 edits. The remaining 3 are a minor edit to "England", creating User:Imdill3 as a redirect to User:Dǐll Kevlar, and creating User:Dǐll Kevlar with a transclusion of DK's Community Central page.

The insistence that attention be paid to readers is reminiscent of Alden's complaints here, here and here about how the site isn't usable or good-looking enough for readers and my work on Fake Vector is basically worthless because readers won't see it. The issues complained of are different, however -- voting rules vs. web design/interface. That said, given Alden's extensive network of socks, I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to further his point by pretending to actually be a "reader". Furthermore, Miley was quick to jump in and defend DK with very similar arguments, including the one about non-editors getting to have a say. DK stated that "this vote's result should not be taken into consideration by Fandom", implying Wikia has some authority over where the site goes when they obviously do not, similarly to Miley talking about Sannse's comments as though they were the law and not -- as Sannse herself said -- mere opinions.

DK's writing style has some similarities to Alden's but is noticeably different:

If we accept that Miley Spears and Lorien Loveshade are Alden, he's clearly quite capable of altering his writing style to suit different socks. For example: Miley and Lorien make heavy use of smileys, while Alden does not seem to use them at all. Alden uses double spaces and Miley uses single spaces. Lorien sometimes says "lol" while Miley and Alden do not. Younger versions of Lorien use bad English with run-on sentences, misspellings and missing apostrophes. However, I find that Miley resembles Alden and Lorien resembles Miley while DK resembles none of these. He seems to "switch gears" between intelligent, reasonable adult man, stupid little girl, and various intermediate stages. DK doesn't have an obvious place on this spectrum. It's possible he could pull off a style like DK's, but it seems unlikely.

Alden and DK's interests don't seem to overlap. Alden shows no interest in Rooster Teeth or online games, and DK shows no interest in Discordianism, Miley Cyrus, the SCA, or little girls. DK appears to have some technical knowledge, e.g. CSS and file types, while Alden and Miley claim to lack such knowledge (though Alden obviously knows enough to design his websites, which use some advanced features including keywords within <meta> tags and custom cursors). The main commonality is that they both have an active, years-long presence and advanced permissions across multiple Wikia sites.

My "Dunning-Kruger effect" comment was not just random snark. I believe that "merging" is what an outsider or newcomer with no real knowledge of the site's community or history would want. (It's what I wanted back when I was one.) It's obvious, right? There should only be one English Uncyclopedia, not two. Except if you know about the cultural differences and the years of pain and fighting, it's not so obvious anymore. Even if you don't know, it's arrogant to assume you know better than people who have donated years of their life to a project and there are no good reasons for them to stay separate when they have been for over half a decade.

It's possible I made a bad first impression and DK was only reacting to that. I can't go back in time and try being nicer. But it took very little on my part -- two mean comments and striking a vote, and suddenly I'm the worst thing since unsliced bread. Really? There are other possible ways DK could have replied to me:

But they didn't say anything like that. First they claimed that their opinion as a self-described outsider was "as good as mine", then they jumped straight to painting my actions in the worst possible light, and they never took it back even after I explained what really happened. The characterization of me as "scummy" and "shady" reveals more about how DK thinks (or what they were told) than what my motives were.

Notice that my suggested reply ditches the "Someone brought to my attention" bit. It is not an appropriate opening. Who is "someone"? Where and when did this happen? The implication is there was some conversation that took place in private or in a chat room. Why mention this "someone", and why not name them? It gives the impression of offsite gossip or conspiracy, not a "nice" thing to convey. Perhaps it is alluded to in this fashion for the sake of secrecy, or perhaps it never happened at all and "someone" is the account operator themselves.

If DK is not Alden, it's likely that they're some other fork editor, or possibly someone who hangs out on the fork's chatrooms and mostly or entirely stays off the wiki. The latter could explain why I don't recognize them. I've also considered that DK is Roza. Roza uses the name "dill" on Discord, initially supported a merger and replied to DK's first comment on "A message from Fandom", uses lowercase edit summaries sometimes without apostrophes, and shares the very rare trait of putting extra commented-out text in a post (DK, Roza). Roza writes like a native English speaker, though, and they don't seem to have much else in common, so they're probably not the same.

If DK is none of the above, truly just a reader, we are left with many questions:

Whatever the case, we can be sure of this much: though they claim to value Uncyclopedia's content, DK has no respect whatsoever for the people who produced it and does not care about what they want or what would benefit them.

What really happened here?

I can never know for sure, of course, but this is what I think.

Alden Loveshade decided he was going to stuff the ballot. He had plenty of socks, and he meant to make full use of them. First he voted with his "Alden Loveshade" account. Even though in that period there were several people casting votes within minutes of each other, he waited a while before logging in as Miley, probably thinking it would be more realistic.

Before he did so, DK came in and cast a vote. DK had been hanging around the fork's Discord server (or the wiki) and knew there was a "reunification plan" even before the closure announcement. They made a token edit to the England article in early February to make themselves seem more established, then focused on internal discussions. They had preconceived notions about Wikia Uncyclopedia and its editors, possibly specifically me, either absorbed from others or carried over from a different established identity.

Then Alden logged in as Miley. Before voting, he mangled the voting section so that my objections to DK's vote, Spike's vote and mine were no longer in it, giving the excuse that he was "moving discussion to discussion". The idea was to deter the challenge to a point for his side and sweep away votes for other outcomes. He then moved Spike's vote back, possibly thinking his action wouldn't be accepted otherwise or trying to make it look more innocent (see, I just screwed up a little, that's all). In any case, the more he messed with the section, the harder it would be for other people -- real people -- to vote.

He decided to have Miley criticize me to strengthen the effect. He condescendingly quoted one of the rules to me and echoed DK's argument, not necessarily believing it himself but using it to support an outcome he wanted. Then he made the vote (his second).

Seeing that I wasn't giving up on the DK issue, he really went on the attack. Even if he didn't succeed, he knew, he could sure make a mess. Usually he had her play the "nice airhead" role, but for this purpose he made her the "catty bitch". When I said I was done, he removed that comment so my attempt at deflection and closing the issue would fail, I would look worse, and he could continue raking me over the coals. He knew of my history with losing adminship and my feelings about it, so he threatened me in vague terms knowing he couldn't follow through but I would infer this consequence and be intimidated into backing down. It was a button he could push. And he did. It worked. He then had Miley back off and resume her usual sweet smily behavior, saying "I am not your enemy". This would confuse me and make me more likely to comply. It would also make both me and others more likely to see the original threats as just reasonable advice.

Then he logged in as Devil Details. First he cast a vote signed as Cainad, voting for something he didn't want to confuse the issue. Four minutes later he cast a vote signed with the account's real signature but with a fake timestamp so the timing didn't look suspiciously close. An hour and two minutes later, he changed the Devil Details vote to the outcome he actually wanted. He didn't change the Cainad vote because it was supposed to throw dust in the air and he couldn't edit it further with a different account without looking even more suspicious.

He switched back to Miley and used Sannse's words about active editors (her misreading of the rule) as an excuse to strike the Cainad vote, thus going to the opposite extreme from his previous position that voting should be for all "users". The Cainad and Devil Details votes were made after Sannse's comments, so he was counting on being able to toss out Cainad. He was not counting on me coming back and getting in his way; he thought he'd permanently intimidated me off the forum. He redid the strike as well as striking/removing votes for Lyrithya to make it look more "objective". He went back on the attack, including the accusation that I struck and unstruck votes because of what the votes were for, which applied to him more than me because he defended the first vote with bogus arguments and made the second one himself just to throw it out afterward.

I did not give up. He adjusted his claims, removing the one about me striking/unstriking votes in accordance with my preferred outcome because it no longer applied. Seeing that I'd removed comments from him, possibly knowing full well I'd put them back, he used this as an excuse to threaten me further. Then he changed the rule he didn't like so it (sort of) said what he had claimed it did, counting on nobody noticing it. When I called him out on the threats and accusations instead of just folding over again, he realized that tactic wasn't working and backed off.

He switched to Binky The WonderSkull and posed as an innocent bystander reflecting on the "sad" "infighting", referring to his own argument with me, while also using this account to vote "1/2" for Lyrithya. The conclusion that "it would be best if we go with an Uncyclopedian off site like Carlb or Lyrithya" does not follow from the premise. What does the choice of host have to do with the "infighting" on this wiki? What is "an Uncyclopedian off site"? What he means is not me. The intended conclusion is that I caused the problem and should not host the site.

He switched back to Alden and put on his "reasonable" role that he uses with this account. He went on about how confusing the rules were and how he didn't know what the "fork" was, which was untrue and meant to throw more dust in the air. Then he switched to Miley and resumed the "nice airhead" role. This, combined with her saying she was taking a break, further reinforced the notion that I was the big meanie. I made sweet little Miley get upset and run off, see.

He was not counting on Supergeeky1 pointing out the double Devil Details vote, either. When this happened, he cooked up the excuse that he "got confused with [his] old and new accounts, didn't know which sig to use", and he said he changed his mind "because of all the infighting here". These are both implausible.

This comment serves two purposes: to excuse the double vote, and to further paint me as the cause of the fight Alden started. He then had Devil Details get a bit more personal and direct with the "new jerks"/"panties in a bunch" comment. Naturally, since the vote was for something he never wanted in the first place, he wanted it struck and was unhappy about having it unstruck.

Notice in the comments by Binky and Details, Binky calls the Wikia site "the fork" and Details calls the .co site "the spoon". Alden had previously said that he didn't know what the "fork" and "spoon" were. Before that, Miley used "fork" to refer to .co, indicating that Alden knows perfectly well what it means. The swapped terms and professed lack of knowledge were meant to sow confusion and add to the impression of Alden, Binky and Details being ignorant "innocent bystanders".

After Sannse returned to say she'd misread the rules and she thought letting inactive editors vote was a mistake, Alden agreed with her as himself, adding support to the view previously only expressed by Miley. When Romartus ignored this in the course of restarting the vote, he had Miley complain that this was bad because "other admins" -- meaning him -- were being ignored.

This didn't get him anywhere, and he mostly left off at this point. He alphabetized the voting sections, which was an excuse to move Miraheze to last place and make it less likely to be selected by voters. He defended The Pioneer's vote to appear reasonable; he never wanted Miraheze to win, and he had no stake in that particular vote. A few days later he signed up for Miraheze to invent reasons why it was a bad choice, and he posted these to strengthen the case against it. Then he left the forum. He knew he'd won.

I believe he went after me the way he did not because of me specifically but because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone else. I fear for those who cross him.

So who pushed the vote to Lyrithya? Not "the forkers", but two people: one with a good grasp of "always attack, never defend", and another with an army of sockpuppets. They are not "the community" of either site. They never were.

This page was created on 9 June 2019 and last modified on 9 June 2019.

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