User talk:Rhododendrites/Chaney

Thanks

Thanks for doing this. Chaney showed up on my radar as I have Memory on my watchlist. Our friend Buzzsawyer dropped a bunch of links to 'Dynamic Mind' into the article. I am a bit of an expert on memory (and I have way more citations than Chaney.....) and I know most of the literature. I hadn't seen or heard of this book before, so I started down the Chaney rabbit hole. Anyway, upshot it, that because I am a psychology prof I have access to academic databases and such, plus, I'm on sabbatical...... If anyone needs me to look something up, just drop me a note. Dbrodbeck (talk) 14:22, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dbrodbeck: I've been wondering how you noticed the article for Dynamic Mind in the first place. I've also been wondering if you had seen that shortly after you posted about that AFD on WP:Psychology, I replied to essentially say "OMG WTF" and make sure you knew that Neverland1 was a sock when he replied to your AFD. In my research to figure out what to do about everything else besides Dynamic Mind, I read that I shouldn't have given my opinion on your notification for the AFD, so I ended up deleting it. Then I couldn't really figure out an appropriate way to reach out to you to make sure you knew I knew you knew how messed up this is. Now it has come full circle. :)

I think I've learned I've learned a lot about Wikipedia in the last week thanks to Warren Chaney though. For example, it did not occur to me that someone might mark their changes as minor even if they were major! Also, at first I thought the only reason the socks were making random comments or having conversations with themselves on the talk pages was to make it look like there was interest in those books/movies. Later, I realized that some of the times he did that to cover up deleting a negative comment by someone else, presumably b/c he thought people might notice if the text on the talk tab wasn't red but the page was blank. Similar to how he made changes on Dynamic Mind with a gross negative to hide the new-old references he was adding back in and then gave a dishonest explanation for the changes. At first I was flabbergasted when you commented that you removed more references after we had just purged all of them!

If you do an advanced google search, there's no mention of Dynamic Mind anywhere prior to 2011 even though it was supposedly published in 2006 or 2007. America: A Call to Greatness, on the other hand, has existed on IMDb for a long time, so that one has really gotten picked up by a lot of unsuspecting sources. I didn't even realize that IMDb was user-generated until looking into that movie. Permstrump (talk) 15:31, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh sorry, didn't see that comment. Yeah IMDB is not an RS. If you remove the user generated stuff from many of these movie articles you get, umm, you get like nothing, or next to it. WP can be a strange place. I've been on here for a little over nine years, and have about 10 K edits, and I still learn new stuff. Heck, there's even a guy who is so obsessed with me out there that he has made up an attack page about me because I believe that HIV causes AIDS and have reverted his edits saying AIDS is a conspiracy (message there might be don't use your real name, that said, I find it kind of funny)..... Dbrodbeck (talk) 15:38, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad this page is turning out to get useful. Just to reiterate: do whatever makes sense with it (either the /Chaney page or this talk page). No need to ask first just because it's in my userspace. The point was to consolidate parallel discussions without disrupting other project pages, but also to make a pretty big project manageable. So if it becomes unwieldy, messy, or diffuse I have no objection to collapsing inactive sections or tangential content, rearranging/reorganizing, archiving, or whatever (or, rather, if I do object, I'll undo just like you should if you object :) ). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:24, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

To remove or not remove content from Chaney articles

This is really to anyone in general, but I'm pinging Dbrodbeck b/c I just noticed you deleted the narrative in America: A Call to Greatness that mentioned Gene Autry and the corresponding citations (I assume b/c the source didn't say anything about the movie). I was wondering if we should leave Chaney-related articles in tact until there's some kind of investigation, to make sure the extent of the problem is clearly visible to an objective 3rd party. Or instead of just leaving junky content in the articles, would it be better to tag citations that are unreliable/unverifiable and tag backlinks on the celeb BLPs as disputed? I'm a n00b though, so feel free to let me know if that's not a good idea and we should just delete delete delete. Permstrump (talk) 19:25, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Tough call, perhaps we ought to leave them and put citation needed tags. Dbrodbeck (talk) 19:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Put the Autry one back, but removed the cite, as it is not there, then added cn tags. For other stuff, I mean say where all of the 'reviews' of these movies are simply user generated, I think we can remove the content. Dbrodbeck (talk) 19:37, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites, Tokyogirl79, CactusWriter, Erik, and MarnetteD: I'm not sure who's watching this page yet and you guys helped me with my questions about proper protocol the other day, so I'm wondering if you want to weigh in. Permstrump (talk) 19:39, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Well per WP:BURDEN the info needs sourcing. Dbrodbeck's using cn tags is okay and follows WP:AGF which is commendable. For me more than enough evidence has been presented that too much funny business has gone on with these articles to have anything in them that isn't verifiable and anything that isn't should be removed. That is just me and others will add their thoughts as they have time. MarnetteD|Talk 20:04, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Believe me, my AGF is dropping..... Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:08, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Can we say "plummeting" Dbrodbeck. I love that word :-) MarnetteD|Talk 20:12, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

We can say, I don't know what it means, but we can say it..... [1]. Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:17, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

That is excellent D! One of my all time fave films. Thanks for the chuckle. MarnetteD|Talk 20:26, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

In answer to Permstrump's ping -- my suggestion is to wait for the results of the checkruser at the SPI and the subsequent blocks of the sock accounts; as well as wait for the conclusion of the current AFDs and the deletions of those articles. After that, I think it will be fine to remove all mentions of the America: A Call to Greatness and the other non-verifiable articles from WP because of dubious sourcing per the concluded AFD discussions. At the same time, I would like to see an AFD for the Warren Chaney article opened on the same basis: dubious or fraudulent sourcing that would require an article built from scratch to correct. This mess has been stewing on Wikipedia since 2011, so waiting a few days for the conclusion of each step is fine with me. Then nuke the rest of it. Of course, others may want to move faster -- but when dealing with BLPs it is always necessary to proceed judiciously. Just my opinion. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 03:47, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Good call. Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:07, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• My thought process on the Chaney article is to just bypass AfD if anyone can make a good, neutral version of the page without any of the puffery that would establish notability. We delete the pufftacular version created by the SPAs to deter re-adding any of the dubious content. I think that he may pass GNG but the version I'd last seen needs to go. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:13, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Books

Clicking on the ISBN links often brings up NOTHING..... Dbrodbeck (talk) 19:39, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• I was researching about ISBN's and the WP policy on self-publishing (WP:USINGSPS) the other day re:Dynamic Mind and it seems like if a book is self-published or published by a vanity press, it's easy to get an ISBN that is actually legit. You can check if a book was published by a mainstream company vs self/vanity by searching the library of congress website, but there aren't any reliable sources to search for distinguishing a fake ISBN vs an ISBN for a book that was self/vanity published. It's not that important though, because you're only allowed to use self-published sources as long as the majority of the article is supported by really solid references. And I don't think there's any risk of that happening with Chaney articles.

According to Open Library, Houghton-Brace Publishing Company supposedly published 4 books, all by Chaney. I think some books might share the same ISBN though, which is obviously fake. I can't remember if that was on open library, amazon or when I checked open library against amazon. I'm starting to conflate everything I found before all of these lovely people with better organizational skills got involved. I think I remember reading a WP policy that said to look out for self-published works that have the name of a publishing companies sounds like a real business, and may have actually been incorporated, but only publish books by one author. I can't find where I read it though. Permstrump (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth: "Screentimesmagazine" on the IMDb has reviewed three films, and they all happen to be glowing reviews of Warren Chaney's work. I seriously doubt this is a real magazine. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 06:46, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

@NinjaRobotPirate: Omg... who does that?? Screentimemagazine is just a user account on imdb! definitely NOT a magazinePermstrump (talk) 14:44, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

When looking into America, I searched for "Paige-Brace Cinema" and didn't see any other film it had worked on. But, of course, "Brace" is Deborah Winters's middle name, so it would make sense if it, along with "Houghton-Brace Publishing Company" were all in-house. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:45, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I could only find Chaney productions attributed to Houghton Brace, so that was my assumption, but I didn't notice that about her middle name. That pretty much seals the deal (as if it weren't already sealed). Do you think it's a Folie a Deux, she's totally duped or she just plays along? Permstrump (talk) 14:52, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

One wonders.....

If all of the stuff he is related to is deleted, I mean, what will become of his WP article? We may never get there, but it is a question. Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:57, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dbrodbeck: I was wondering the same thing. Did you notice the conversation on Talk:Warren Chaney about trying to clean it up? A month ago Stevietheman commented, "Thanks for the great start. I found other things to clean up and remove. The article still seems somewhat puffy, but at least it's now nowhere near as puffy and messy as before." By the time I was looking at it, it made me laugh to think of how bad it must have been if 2 people had already felt they'd made a big improvement. I suppose one of the socks could have reverted the changes. I haven't studied the actual Warren Chaney article as much as I have Dynamic Mind and America: A Call to Greatness, so I haven't checked the history of that page yet. Permstrump (talk) 21:26, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Our reductions haven't been reverted. The article was far worse before -- just look at the version before Gilkey1's edit. Overall, I have to admit that this is the only biography I've seen in my 11 1/2 years of being a Wikipedian where I felt the information as a lot was too fantastical to be true. I honestly was too afraid to go down the rabbit hole everyone is talking about now, as I didn't want to get consumed by it all. Sometimes I thought that it just might be best to delete the Chaney article and have it started from scratch, and I'm relieved there seems to be a growing movement in that direction. What got me even looking at this article is that the subject is (apparently) from Louisville, and thus is covered by WikiProject Louisville. Assuming Chaney really is from Louisville, this could become a local story of interest. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 01:09, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Who thinks Chaney and/or his sock(s) are following what we're uncovering here on Rhododendrites/Chaney? Permstrump (talk) 21:19, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Hoax or no

Yesterday I was increasingly of the mind that there's some serious hoaxing going on. The deeper I go, however, the more I think it's not quite that interesting -- just severely exaggerating the significance of non-notable or marginally notable topics through excessive reliance on user-generated content, low quality sources, and possibly sock/meat puppetry.

So for America: Call to Greatness we have the YouTube video that shows clearly some production was done. I was thinking it might be limited to that when everywhere I looked I saw content from around the time the article was created (e.g. Sinclairindex included a bogus URL for the official site of the movie, then replaced it with the current name less than two hours after the domain name was reigstered). But then I found this, a version of Dynamic Media Inc.'s website from 2002 -- a company Chaney was involved with that looks to have produced a number of low budget videos. The site is selling DVD copies. Who knows if it was actually broadcast anywhere (I still only see references to it having been "broadcast", i.e. no specifics), but it is now increasingly looking real. Maybe it's just a matter of it being created in the early days of the web and so due to link rot all we have are lousy databases and aggregators which at some point scraped content from the pages. There's definitely some funny business here, to be sure... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:56, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm increasingly of the mind that calling it a "hoax" is a euphemism. To me, hoax implies a practical joke. And I think someone has been very, very committed to these stories since at least 2011, some even go back further. I disagree about the potential credibility of AATG for a few reasons, but I'll go back to that b/c I have Magic Mansion on my mind right now... Permstrump (talk)

Reasons to think Magic Mansion is a hoax

Since at least 1978, the story has been that Magic Mansion was an original production of the Armed Forces Radio & Television Service (AFRTS, now AFN) based out of Japan. First of all, as far as that article's reliability, Magic Mansion is only mentioned in one sentence in what’s a pretty long puff piece based on an interview with Chaney about his life story, with an emphasis on his stint working for that same paper, AKA not WP:RELIABLE.

I’ve been looking into the AFRTS angle and it seems extremely unlikely that in the 1960’s, AFRTS created an original TV sitcom that aired on a regular basis for 2-3 years and was written, acted, filmed and produced by servicemen in Okinawa. According to the meticulously documented history of AFRTS on AFN’s official website, there wasn’t much original TV production until the 80’s. Even then it was pretty limited and mostly official business as far as overseas production. Until the 80's, anything that was distributed internationally was produced in a US studio and then film reels were shipped out to the troops. It sounds like AFRTS mostly only had the funding for local military bases to make their own TV segments for brief, location-specific announcements and news. They definitely didn't have the technology to broadcast it abroad. And for the most part, they were importing and broadcasting popular American TV shows and movies.

They also had to scrupulously documented their TV lineups from the very beginning, but I can't find a single mention of Magic Mansion on the official website (and there are plenty of references to other productions from the same time period and even older). There are a couple of unofficial AFRTS websites maintained by veterans that have repositories for audio archives, photos, personal stories, etc. No one else seems to have brought up Magic Mansion on any of those sites, and despite the fact that there’s no shortage of information about Chaney on the internet, no one from his fan club thought to post about Magic Mansion on any of those websites. At most, I’d consider being open to the idea that Chaney was involved in a small number of very short TV segments that had the talent-equivalent of a middle school play and were only aired one time and by the local station. P.S. Is military rank a public record with a searchable database? Permstrump (talk) 04:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• That's kind of what I was wondering: that this is the equivalent of someone buying airtime on their own to broadcast something on a channel that only shows in 1-2 areas. I wonder if that's the same for all of his productions? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:53, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Since the article has been deleted, it's mostly a moot point, but just in case a deletion review is started: In the since deleted Magic Mansion Wikipedia article, it mentions that "it was one of the first television shows to move from live broadcast media to the newly invented composite U-matic system". One problem: U-matic did not exist, not even as a prototype, until 1969, after Magic Mansion was supposedly canceled. Just to clarify (talk) 05:58, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Images

Anyone have a good sense of what should be done with the images assuming most of the articles Sinclairindex uploaded them for are deleted? If it were a hoax, that would make for a straightforward Commons CSD, but otherwise... the license was released (for at least the ones I looked at) via OTRS, so it's not a fair use no-article deletion, either... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:50, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• I think that there might be a good case for deleting them since they were created by sockpuppets of dubious origin. Did the OTRS tickets show that Chaney himself had given permission? I think that it's likely that he was the one who gave permission, to be honest, since I have a feeling that these accounts are likely either Chaney himself or someone he hired. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:27, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• Is there a way to get a bot to do a reverse google image search for them? I'd really like to know if any of them are coincidentally similar to images from another website. Most of them have some kind of comment about the poor quality. Permstrump (talk) 05:32, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• The Magic Mansion title card looks photoshopped from the 1990s or later -- we didn't have computer-drawn fonts like that in the mid-1960s. For me, this makes all other Chaney-related images suspect. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:05, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

The discussion on the talk page for the article is fascinating. The user who uploaded the images claims to have only seen kinescopes of the show, but somehow has managed to do hires screen caps of them.... Dbrodbeck (talk) 16:08, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I did a bunch of google reverse image searches yesterday, the pics seem only to come up to wp or commons. Dbrodbeck (talk) 16:23, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• @Dbrodbeck: RE:The claims on the talk page and in the description of Magic Mansion about kinescope vs videotape. Didn't you know that the reason Magic Mansion is so historically relevant is b/c "The episodes were live with the military producing early kinescopes of the show for distribution. Videotape was used only during the final season but unfortunately, none of the show’s episodes survive"? So those stills are clearly from the final season of the show. Hmm... but those didn't survive and the metadata says 1966 though, which would have been its first year on air. I just don't know! /s

But seriously, the jumble of claims about why Magic Mansion was so pivotal are pretty ridiculous. (Emphasis added by me) "The sitcom was transitional for television because it was one of the last live non-variety show broadcasts and one of the first to use the new medium of videotape... A multiple-camera setup format employing three cameras and a studio audience was used during production." From what I read in the history of AFRTS, they were behind the times with TV technology and didn't have the funding to update their systems until the 80's, so I'm pretty sure this one station in Okinawa wasn't on the cutting edge technology. The multiple camera setup isn't consistent with what I read either. I'm also pretty sure I read somewhere that they had to destroy the film reels of any OC that was recorded overseas b/c it was only meant to be for internal use. AND I'm pretty sure Home Improvement and a lot of the sitcoms I watched growing up were live, so WTF is he talking about that this was one of the last live non-variety shows? That sentence is worded so awkwardly I'm not even sure what it's trying to say. Permstrump (talk) 22:50, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Permstrump it would take too long to go into all of the details here but there is a difference between the Live television of the 50's and 60's where much of the programming (variety, comedy and drama) was performed and recorded in real time and shows like Home Improvement which were "performed in front of a live audience." The filming of the latter could be stopped for things like flubbed lines or prop problems (and many other reasons) and then restarted. The former couldn't. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 23:29, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: This time yesterday I might not have known what you meant, but I've been reading all about AFRTS since last night, so that actually clears it up for me. I still think it's bunk, but that's a separate thing. Thanks! :) Permstrump (talk) 00:00, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Metadata

• The metadata for the Magic Mansion title card show it was created in Photoshop. Now, people do post process things in PS, so that may not mean too much, but.... Dbrodbeck (talk) 16:30, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

The title card also says, "Magic Mansion Title Card used for the opening of this (1965-1967) television sit-com series..." but the main article says 66-68 65-68. See below for another contradiction about the dates. Also note this image was apparently created in Dec 1965! Permstrump (talk) 23:09, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• The metadata for the picture of the cast Magic Mansion says it was created in 1966. It honestly made me "lol" to imagine Sinclairindex thinking he was being so clever in changing it to say 1966. Almost fooled me! There's another curious mistake in the metadata for that same photo. The description says, "A rare still of the cast from the AFRTS Network sitcom, Magic Mansion (1995-1997)." Everywhere I've seen so far said that the show ran from 1966-1968 1965-1968. It would be different if someone accidentally typed in 1996-1998 1995-1998, but it's not easy to argue typo for this mistake. I think it's a sign that Sinclairindex forgot his own lie or he revised the story and forgot to check thoroughly for all of the places he put a different date. Permstrump (talk) 22:14, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• This is a picture from episode 74(!) in July 1966. It's pretty amazing that they were able to film 74 episodes between Jan 1965 and Jul 1966. It also looks clearly photoshopped to me, but I don't know where it would say that in the metadata. I think the shadows look unnatural. There's probably a function on photoshop, "add shadow." Permstrump (talk) 23:17, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• Picture from Aug 1967 with description, "Magic Mansion stars made frequent personal appearances for various causes. Captain Warren Chaney entertains at a special camp for the hearing impaired." Is he suggesting that there was a special camp for the children of people stationed in Okinawa who were hearing impaired?? Yep, he is, "Magic Mansion ventriloquist star Warren Chaney, performs off series at a children's hearing camp operated by US Army." Permstrump (talk) 23:20, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

  This image has even made it to ebay being sold as an 8x10 reprint. /smh Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 12:59, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

• Picture from Dec 19, 1965 that shows a banner for Magic Mansion in the background. Wow. It must be for real. Weird that the metadata has 1965 though, because this story written my Chaney on swapale says the xmas show in front of 4000 was in Dec 1966. Permstrump (talk) 23:34, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

To be fair there were literally tens of thousands of US troops on Okinawa at that time. Dbrodbeck (talk) 23:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I think the picture is actually from a live performance xmas show at stilwell fieldhouse in Okinawa b/c there are other pictures of it online. I don't think it was filmed though. Here I was pointing out that he put 2 different years on the metadata and swapsale. Permstrump (talk) 23:58, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

(Copied from Magic Mansion AFD) The metadata on some of them show they went through Photoshop (that could be innocent in itself). If you increase the color saturation (6000%) on Magic_Mansion_(Induction_Episode).jpg it seems clear that the two people and dummy have been overlaid over a separate image, and if you zoom in on the woman's hair you can see a border where the original image was cut. If you look at the shadows in Magic_Mansion_Episode-Basket_of_Deception.jpg you can see that the lighting is from top-to-bottom, except Chaney is lit from bottom to top. In MagicMansion_Episode-Rathmore's_Magic_Trunk.jpg the shadows show lighting from right to left, except the left figure is lit from left to right. If you zoom in at the bottom of the figure on the left, and Chaney's feet, you can see anomalous blurring. Alsee (talk) 06:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Supplemtary photoshop comment: The text on File:Magic Mansion Title Card.jpg is clearly computer generated, not a capture from a 1960's no-budget TV broadcast. But the most interesting detail is a close view of the MM above the doorway. The castle as a whole is grainy as hell, but the MM has a smooth hyper-resolution photoshop granite texture. The MM was a text edit overlaid onto the castle. Alsee (talk) 14:35, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I actually said the same thing above about the shadows in that picture. I don't know where to look in the metadata to confirm that someone was photoshopped. Where do you find that info? I just thought they "look fake," like someone used the "add shadow" tool in PS. You'll also notice that the metadata in a lot of the photos has conflicting dates for when the show aired. Some say 1965-1967, others say it ran until 68 and one accidentally gives dates in the 90's, which I guess we'll chalk up to a typo, but it's still not the same dates it says in the main article. Permstrump (talk) 07:18, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

You can view metadata with this link, paste in the image url: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/The_Cast_of_Magic_Mansion.jpg then click metadata. The site also lets you look at Error Analysis - which is an image processing technique that can often make image-edits stick out like a sore thumb. However I found it difficult to interpret the error analysis on these peculiar over-saturated B&W images. Alsee (talk) 07:47, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Reviewing sock edits

Sockpuppet Investigation page: wp:Sockpuppet_investigations/Sinclairindex (The previous investigation is in the Archive link, but I gave the main link in case new socks pop up.) Alsee (talk) 08:40, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

FYI I just went through most of both Buzzsawyer's and Neverland1's non-minor edits and think I removed all the promotional content outside of the main articles (e.g. lots of Amazon referral links, lots of links from the various people claimed to be connected with America, all sourced just to the official site, etc. (Sinclairindex will be the more time consuming one to go through, of course). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:56, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Just went through and pruned a bunch of Deborah Winters. Feel kind of guilty leaving the article a mess like this, but it was almost all sourced to various databases and very low quality blogs (oh, and the America site, of course). I'm going to make a list of all Chaney-related articles, since they'll probably all need review at some point and it would probably help to see what ones others have already looked at (I started to do this the other day, but apparently lost steam at the ones that seemed most problematic). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:19, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Is it worth keeping track of the IP edits that are consistent with the 4 identified socks? I've come across at least 1, but I didn't pay too much attention to it b/c the IP user had made <10 edits. Permstrump (talk) 21:06, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I would say yes. I started to when first looking for common contributors, but wound up just going by major contributors and major talk page commenters. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:10, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd be curious where they geolocate too, like, maybe Texas...... Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Can regular people (as in the general public) look up the geolocation for any IP address or is that private? @Rhododendrites: I'll start a list when I get tired of my current obsession with Magic Mansion. Permstrump (talk) 22:04, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

@Permstrump: There are external geolocation tools. What you and I don't have access to (only a particular usergroup called WP:CHECKUSER) is the IP address used by a logged in account. That's what's meant when people refer to a "checkuser confirmed socks" -- someone with that user right checked the IP addresses of the accounts and found them to be the same. When I look at an IP's contributions, there are two links at the bottom to geolocate it (it's possible this is something enabled through Special:Preferences, but I don't think so). So at Special:Contributions/69.116.69.150 there are links to this and this, which show it to be NY (I just arbitrarily clicked the last IP contributor to Deborah Winters). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:09, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Darn. Could we have put the IP user on the list for the SPI and found out if that IP address was the same as the other 4? I'm pretty sure it's closed now. I don't really care that much anyway because I'm positive that the edits grew from the same seed, even if they weren't made on the same computer. Permstrump (talk) 22:19, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia takes editor privacy extremely seriously, even when an editor engages in abusive behavior. Checkuser will not match up a username with an IP address. However IPs can be declared to be likely or obvious socks based on parallels in their editing content and behavior. (DUCK test.) Alsee (talk) 00:20, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

LawStClaire was stale and not officially linked in the sock investigation. The account isn't very important because there are zero article edits, but I noticed this edit where the user claims ownership of a comment posted as an IP. That IP geolocates to Huston Texas. I just thought it was an interesting wild coincidence that Huston Texas happens to be listed as Chaney's hometown at that time. Alsee (talk) 08:40, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Chaney draft

Hey, I was wondering if anyone would be willing to wade into a draft article with me for Chaney. I know that a few of us have said that it'd be good to just TNT the old and replace it with a new one, but I figure that we'd first have to create the draft version.

Soo... who's interested? I think that first we need to see which of the sources in the main article are actually even usable for notability purposes. Anything that's not actually able to be verified (ie, no links and nothing comes up) is automatically unusable in my opinion. Offhand his film Outing appears to be usable to establish notability (plenty of sources) and there's a handful of local sources out there like this one, but ugh... those sources in the main article. Not looking forward to going through those. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• The Who's Who mention seems to be real, however is this one of the volumes that would actually show notability? I know that there are scams out there. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:39, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• This brief mention of Broken Spur going into production can be used to establish that the film existed in some form or fashion, but cannot show notability. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• This journal article does list him as a reference. Here's the extent to which he's mentioned in the article: "Some studies (Chaney, 1981; Stephens and Chaney, 1974) conclude that reinstated workers who decide not to return to work are motivated by fear of employer reprisal." We do need to see if the guy has ever worked with Chaney before, though. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:43, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• Referenced here as well. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:44, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• Referenced here, here, here. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:49, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• Do any of you know how to verify if this is real? It's the WC upload so we can't rely on the image to be a RS, but if this can be verified through a gov't website it could be usable for notability purposes. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:57, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• He's mentioned here on page 25, but I doubt that an alumni award would give notability since it'd essentially be primary. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:59, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• @Tokyogirl79: I found the citation for this article called Paying for prestige in the criticism section of Marquis Who's Who.

Jan Margosian, consumer information coordinator for the Oregon Department of Justice, said the state has looked into these types of companies before and has put many of them on notice for false advertising over the years.

The American Biographical Institute, the International Biographical Centre and Marquis Who’s Who do not have a record of upheld complaints with the state, Margosian said. She called all three companies “pretty tacky” and said customers should be wary.

Basically they sent a letter to everyone they think might buy a book and ask if they want to be in it. You just fill out a form with whatever info you want in there. The more people they put in there, the more people they know are guaranteed to buy the book. Sounds exactly like the kind of thing someone would do who's trying build a fake resume for himself. The font is small, so it's hard to read but I cant tell that some of the dates are different in the book than in says on Chaney's BLP. The book says he got his MBA from St Mary's in TX in 1970 and the his BLP says 68. Also he was supposedly stationed in Okinawa from 1966-1968 writing, directing, producing, and starring in the famous Magic Mansion. Permstrump (talk) 06:18, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• That's kind of what I was afraid of. I know that there are some valid Who's Who books out there, but I'm not sure how to tell them apart. I'm going to go ahead and assume that this isn't one of the valid ones until someone can show otherwise. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:22, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• As an academic I get asked to be listed (for a low low price) every couple of months. Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:14, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• Hah interesting that there's a low fee to even be listed, because it sounds like where they really make their money is that they're basically guaranteed that everyone who sends in a form will buy the book. Apparently they're quite expensive. Permstrump (talk) 00:02, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

• This WP review of Outing is usable. He's mentioned in this local paper, but it's local so... Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:02, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• The litigation charges are backed up here, here, here and here. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:04, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• This is usable. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:05, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• OK, that's all of them from the article. Most of the sources were primary in one form or another. So out of 156 sources, only about 15-16 are even remotely usable. He's referenced here and there, but not heavy enough for this to really establish that he's the formost authority in this field. If I can find further evidence of this then that could help, but offhand he seems to have only received coverage for the Outing film, the legal charges brought against him and his brother, and some local coverage. I will try to see what else I can find, but offhand the socks seem to have thrown whatever is out there on the article. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:08, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• I've started in on a draft here. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:43, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• @Permstrump: @Rhododendrites:, I've made my draft. As you'd expect, what I could add into the article is pretty much less than a tenth of what's in the main article. When you eliminate all of the primary sources and dodgy ones, there's not much left. I did leave some things in despite not having any sourcing, but essentially what we have now is a stub. If you think that it'd be OK, should we TNT the old article and move this one over? Or should it go through an AfD for the old version? Also, should we even really add the legal claims into the article? It did go to trial and the charges were dropped. We typically do include legal claims that go to trial. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:40, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• Also, he's really only known for the one film. He could probably squeak through GNG as a whole, but this does make things a little dodgy. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• I've launched a discussion about this on the article's talk page at Talk:Warren_Chaney#Replacement_article. I figured that it'd be best if the discussion about whether or not to replace the article happened there, since it'd be more visible. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:54, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

From what I can see of his academic record he would fail WP:PROF. Dbrodbeck (talk) 15:43, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dbrodbeck: Good find. I can't imagine how he'd be considered notable under any of the subcategories after you eliminate all of the sources that aren't self-published or circular. TBH he's not even notable with those. It's not like anyone has ever heard of him besides Wikipedia editors, despite the number of google hits he gets. Permstrump (talk) 21:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Looking for sources

I'm making this a separate heading just for clarity's sake. I'm currently using my university's databases to search for sources on Chaney or more specifically, any of the papers he's supposed to have written. I'm currently looking at Web of Science and so far I'm not finding much. He's written in the medical field so a lack of hits on WoS isn't really a great sign. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:00, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• I did find some stuff coming up using a basic search at the Drexel library's search page. ([2]) It's not the best way to search, but it's less time consuming than going through all of the various databases. If anyone has a good idea of where to look, I'm open to searching. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:06, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• Since this whole thing started, I was sure, but couldn't prove, that he didn't have any degree in psychology. And if you look at his dissertation from 1974, it says it's for a PhD in management. I'm checking out the others on Drexel's list unless you already did, Tokyogirl79. It's weird b/c when I look him up by name in the database I have access to through work, the only 2 things that come up are the 2 anti-union articles, but when I looked up the specific titles on Drexel's list, I was able to find them. I'm pretty sure I can search all of our journals in one place, so Tokyogirl79, lmk if you want me to search something b/c it sounds like a hassle if you have to do it one by one. Permstrump (talk) 15:29, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Paranoia seems appropriate here. When you looked up specific titles, were they actually written by Chaney? Err, being more paranoid, were they written by this Chaney? Lol. Alsee (talk) 00:28, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

@Alsee: Oh geez. I thought I was being skeptical of everything. As long as they had the same middle initial, I assumed it was the same Warren H. Chaney, but it is odd that the only 3 sources by someone named Warren H. Chaney that were actually published by reputable sources don't even appear in any of his own reference lists to the best of my knowledge. Great. I don't even know how to go about looking into that. What if this Warren H. Chaney never even existed in the first place??? P.S. I saw your comment on WP:PSYCHOLOGY. Definitely dubious. I was planning to comment on it earlier, but then I got sucked back into Chaneyverse. Permstrump (talk) 02:35, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Permstrump, when I was posting that on WP:PSYCHOLOGY I had noticed your new-editor post. Grin. I was going to make a reply similar to Flyer's, that you were exactly the sort of new editor we wanted to encourage to be bold in improving the encyclopedia. I didn't because the posts were three weeks old. Major kudos to everyone working on this page.

BTW, is there some aspect of this project you could use a hand with? Maybe some related article that hasn't been examined yet or something? Just give me a ping. Alsee (talk) 17:41, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Timeline

I want to start a timeline of events b/c off the top of my head, I can already think of one example of 2 sources that give different dates for his master's and also overlap between when his BLP says he was in Okinawa and when he would have been attending St Mary's in TX for his master's. This is just stream of consciousness for now, because I'm about to run to a meeting. I'll add citations and more details in a bit. Let me know if anything popped out to anyone else. Assume it's not RS unless noted. Permstrump (talk) 16:12, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• 1942 Born (I'll take it for granted that this is true)
• 1960 Graduated from HS ranked in the top 15% of Kentucky seniors who took the college qualification tests (Kentucky New Era)

• LIKELY TRUE: New Era is unreliable source when info comes from Chaney interview, but I think this is most likely legit.

• Pre-Jan 1964 Thirty-three country entertainment tour of military installations through Europe and Asia (Warren Chaney)
• 1964 BS from Austin Peay State University with a double major in Marketing and Speech and Theatre. (Wow a double major in 3 subjects! And he had time to fit in a 36-country entertainment tour through Europe and Asia for the military) (Warren Chaney)

• "Recruited to write, direct and coproduce Magic Mansion" (Warren Chaney)

• 1964-1967 Jan 64-Jun 67: "Wrote and directed all 120 episodes of the series broadcasts." (Warren Chaney)

• During the run of the series, Chaney frequently traveled to remote outposts and field hospitals in Vietnam and Thailand to perform for the troops (Warren Chaney's BLP)

• 1965-1967 Original release dates of Magic Mansion (sidebar and title card metadata from Warren Chaney)
• 1965-1969 Okinawa in military and filming Magic Mansion (Magic Mansion)
• 1967-1969 "Chaney's final assignment was as an instructor in the Department of Army's Academy of Health Sciences located at Fort Sam Houston...While there, he authored three books (that dealt with the wartime handling of medical material) and produced multiple film and television projects for the United States Department of Army, Surgeon General's Office..." (Warren Chaney)
• 1968 MBA with a concentration in Finance and Management from St. Mary's University, Texas (Warren Chaney)
• 1969 Started using a prototype for videocassettes to film Magic Mansion (Swapsale.com)

• "In late October of that year, the lights went off and MAGIC MANSION shut its doors"(swapsale.com)
• "In late ’69, I received orders transferring me to another assignment in the states" (swapsale)
• "In late 1969, Chaney was honorably discharged receiving the Distinguished Service Medal, and Commendation Medal; and entered civilian life, but retained a reserve officer status." (Warren Chaney)

1970 MBA (Marquis Who's Who's in Health Care-1977)

• "Following his military discharge, Chaney took a position as the "National Sales Trainer" for Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo, during which time, he wrote a fourth book, an industry publication on training. He held the position until 1971." (Warren Chaney)

• 1971 "Began doctorate work at the University of North Texas" (Warren Chaney)

• While pursuing the doctorate, Chaney taught managementand marketing classes at the University of North Texas and received some media attention when he organized student classes using international business models for acquiring goods in Mexico for later resale in the United States. (The North Texan)

• LIKELY TRUE: Organizing student classes for market research in Mexico, at UNT for doctorate in 1973. Corroborated by UNT student newspaper: In one of the first spring break stories published in the NT Daily, reporter Timothy Bullard (’74) followed 33 business students to Mexico City in 1973 for a marketing research class project. Professor Warren Chaney had his students purchase merchandise ranging from Tiffany lamps to duplicates of pre-Colombian art. The students were to bring the items back to Texas to try to sell them at a profit, an attempt to find the most profitable retail items and a test of their marketing abilities. (The North Texan)
• Dubious: "using international business models"

• 1973 "Professor Warren Chaney" (The North Texan)

• Organized trip to Mexico mentioned above

• LIKELY TRUE: Some kind of TA or professor role at UNT in 1973 during his doctorate program

• 1973-1974 Western Company of North America hired Chaney as their National Director of Organizational Developmentand he remained with them until late 1974 when he left for a career in management consulting and Academia. (Warren Chaney)
• 1974 PhD from UNT (Marquis Who's Who's in Health Care-1977)

• PhD from UNT in Management and Behavioral Science (Warren Chaney)
• Dissertation for doctor of philosophy (management) at UNT (UNT Digital Library)

• LIKELY TRUE: Submitted dissertation for doctor of philosophy (management) at UNT in 1974

SuperbSpeakers

I doubt this site is anything. For starters, clicking on the Facebook or linkedIn badges redirects you to a personal page for the owner. I don't think Chaney's profile there has any value, other than in the Chaneyverse (tm). Dbrodbeck (talk) 17:16, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I was trying to find more info about it before and came up empty. The fee for the lectures seems outrageously high for people who are only listing their program on this one rando website without traction anywhere else. Well, that applies to Chaney anyway. I didn't bother to look up the other people. IMHO it seems like a scam somehow, but I can't quite figure out what the scam is. I guess just taking people's money for a worthless presentation. Sort of like that presentation he went to by Wade Cook to learn how to invest in the stock market. I'm referring to this letter from Chaney to Cook where Chaney talks about all of the success he's had since taking the class. I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say Chaney's statements in this letter aren't worth repeating/believing, but it's a little interesting, though not hard to imagine, that he seems to have fallen for a "make money quick" scam himself. I wonder if that was before or after he started charging outrageous rates on SuperbSpeakers. My guess is he saw Cook first and thought, "I could charge people money to listen to me talk." I wonder how that worked out for him. Think anyone ever registered? Permstrump (talk) 20:50, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I had added the superbspeakers profile not because it means anything in itself but because it was a convenient list of claimed credits to look into. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:05, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh I know, didn't intend it any other way. Sorry if it came across that way. Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:25, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I forgot I'd seen it anywhere else. I was just thinking aloud in response to dbrodbeck. :) Permstrump (talk) 22:00, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

University of North Texas

According to our article on the University of North Texas it wasn't called that when he was, apparently, a faculty member. Seems odd. Well odd if I was not in the Chaneyverse. Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:20, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Our hero is not listed as an emeritus faculty member [3]. Now, emeritus status depends on the institution, some places give it to pretty much everyone, some don't. Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:25, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

It occurred to me this morning that the university's name on his dissertation was different, but when I googled it and confirmed that the name and date did line up with what is now UNT, I decided it wasn't strong proof of much because the socks could understandably have updated the wording to the current name since they were linking to the site. I need to make a list of all of the colleges where he's claimed to be a prof, but I don't remember reading UNT was one of them off the top of my head. I remember one place was a satellite campus of UT. I'll add it to my timeline, but I'm on a tangent looking up stuff about the Okinawan Ryukyuan Review right now. :) Permstrump (talk) 21:58, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

"Professor Warren Chaney" is mentioned here. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 23:22, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Excellent. It doesn't mention his rank (associate or assistant, there's no way he was a full prof before having a PhD, and actually unlikely he was an associate, I think he might have been a sessional, you know, teaching a class while in grad school). Dbrodbeck (talk) 23:32, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

WHOIS

Needed a place to keep track of this. Feel free to add.

• Swapsale.com (Magic Mansion)

Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC

Updated Date: 17-dec-2013, Creation Date: 19-jan-1999

• americamovie.org (America: A Call to Greatness)

Registrant Name: Carrie Sheldon, Registrant City: Houston, Registrant Email: @yournewmind.com

Admin Name: MeZine Inc., Admin City: Vancouver, Admin Email: @mezine.com

Updated Date: 03-2015-18, Creation Date: 04-2011-18

• greatness.us (BOOK: America-A Call to Greatness by John W. Chalfant)

Registrant Name: Brandon Goetz, City: Spring, TX, Email: @tetio.net

Administrative Contact Name: John Chalfant, Organization: AMERICA - A Call To Greatness, Inc.

City: Winter Park, FL, Email: @gmail.com

Last Transferred Date: 25-May-2012

Domain Registration Date: 27-May-2005, Last Updated Date: 08-Aug-2015

• Add adjei site

Does anyone know what the relationship between the admin and the registrant usually is in terms of the whois record (see americamovie.org)? Also, if someone uses a registrar, is that usually a random company or is it that they registered under their own company's info instead of their personal info? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Permstrump (talk • contribs) 23:54, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Year ago, I used to know all this, but it's been a while. The registrant is the legal owner of the domain name. It can be a person or a company. To protect one's privacy, it's possible to use domain privacy services. These are companies that put their name in the registrant field to hide your own name. The registrar is the company with whom you contract to buy the domain itself. For example, Network Solutions. I don't remember exactly, but I think the admin fields are for web hosting companies and such. People you'd contract to admin your site, basically. Some info here. The reference desk could probably give you more details. I am very rusty on some of this stuff. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:55, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

FWIW I just added greatness.net b/c someone mentioned on one of the AFDs that he thought there was a connection between the book and the movie. I'm not sure how to connect them, but I looked up the whois data for the website and wanted to keep track of it just in case. Permstrump (talk) 06:28, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Chaney AfD

I've bitten the bullet guys and listed Chaney's page itself for AfD. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:22, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I needed that kick in the butt to stop going on research tangents. I will pull my thoughts together and add a more detailed response, but it might take me some time. :-) Do these AFDs stay up for a set period of time? Or does it just depend how long it takes whoever to decide? Permstrump (talk) 06:47, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

They tend to go seven days, but can go shorter if there is a very strong consensus emerging per WP:SNOW. Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:31, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

And if there isn't clear consensus at the end of seven days, they can be "relisted" for another seven (sometimes relisted two or three times). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:09, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

This does seem like one of those scenarios where the great complexities and varied abuses involved with a subject mean that WP:TNT is sensible, even if the page isn't obviously promotional/copyright/whatnot. Seems like it was a good idea to go into depth in the nomination, but we'll see what happens -- so far the only people to comment are those that have been following this business. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:08, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Reorganized

FYI just reorganized User:Rhododendrites/Chaney and added a bit.

• Moved contributors and relevant discussions to the top.
• Added an "Outline of poor sources" section. The idea isn't to list every single bad source used but the common trends, sources used multiple times, etc. If a source is only relevant to one article, it seems better to include it with any analysis of that article itself. In that outline are sections for user-generated content/databases, very low quality sites, and perhaps most useful a list of the Chaney-related websites (previously scattered around talk of different titles). Finally there's "Primary sources in works that don't look to belong to Chaney" -- not sure what the best place or use of this is (maybe remove)
• Section for Chaney-related topics with connectiosn to Wikipedia articles. Various Chaneyverse topics that don't have their own articles but are relevant to looking into the various connections and/or the Chaney article, I suppose
• Reformatted the full list of relevant articles. Each article has its own subsection with a space for a review so we know we've gone through everything. Then separate bullet points/pseudosections for "notes/information" and "reliable sources" (not unsurprisingly, most of the latter are blank). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:37, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

FWIW the impetus for creating the various sourcing sections was to create another centralized place to keep track of things -- and I noticed NRP added several sources to the Chaney AfD. I'm not quite sure if it's worth copying here -- will leave up to others. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:38, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree we don't need a huge list of the ones that would look like obvious crap to anyone. There have been discussions in all of the different relevant conversations about a couple of different sources that seem legit at first glance, but are actually primary/circular. So I want to keep trying to pull all of those together in one place, so if anyone else is fooled, we can send them to the list of bad sources. I think there might still be a few more missing, so I'm going back through all of the conversations now.

I want to keep track of the ones that are the most solid, so we can say: This is what we know. Chaney was a senior in HS in 1960. He was a professor at UNT in 1973, most likely during grad school because he wrote a dissertation at UNT in 1974. He was also the second author for a paper on labor unions in Labor Law journal in 1973 and published a followup paper as primary author in the same journal in 1981 (I have to add those 2). He wrote a low-budget slasher movie called The Outing (The Lamp for European release) in Year and it received <5 reviews total, all negative. He learned about user generated websites in 2011 and had a heyday (himself or by hiring someone)." That might be all we know. Still looking for legit sources though. Am I leaving any out? Permstrump (talk) 20:22, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Possibly useful SEC document

This seems worth highlighting. Dynamic Media Inc.'s 2001 SEC Registration statement. Includes a little history (and I added quite a bit about the company to the page), and showcases the various Chaney-related productions. This is another one that, to me, speaks to this (America at least) not being a hoax. Still weird, but does it seem likely that the people associated with this company would hoax the SEC? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:33, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

IDK same document also said in there that it was "critically acclaimed" and that he has "written and sold twelve screenplays, produced twelve, and directed seven others...For his efforts, Dr. Chaney has received considerable recognition and numerous industry awards, including those for best Director and screenwriter." We know those things aren't true, so I don't see any reason to believe the rest of it. Also, I don't think people normally name drop in their SEC filing forms, but what do I know? Permstrump (talk) 07:07, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I can't access the document right now; it says the site is under maintenance. There are a lot of awards organizations, and there are a lot of awards. Take a look at Category:American film awards. I'm not going to go so far as to say that you're guaranteed to win an award if you make enough films, but it's difficult not to win some kind of award at the Action On Film International Film Festival. This is their list of awards for 2015. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 10:01, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Contacting people

Hey, I thought I'd start a section for this. @Permstrump: has contacted the military people, who said that they don't keep records that far back and we need to talk to the National Archives. I was just wondering if there's anywhere else we should contact. It might seem like a little overkill, but I think that it'd be good to verify as much as possible since this could prevent his article being created in the future and to be honest, this would pretty much be required in any future recreation attempts.

Where else do you think we should contact? I suppose we can contact the universities - they can tell us if someone graduated or attended, right? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:36, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• We could probably contact the Academy of Management to verify the claims that he edited their journal Health Care Communiqué. We could also contact University of Houston at Clear Lake City to see if he worked there and received tenure. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:39, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• I've emailed the University of Houston at Clear Lake City and the Academy of Management to ask about the claims concerning either organization. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:02, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• I e-mailed the National Archives about Magic Mansion, but also the America film. I don't know if Permstrump already e-mailed them or not, but having multiple people ask couldn't hurt, right? When I was looking at the article to sum up the claims for NARA, it appears to be even more of a hoax given that it was supposed to have had a theatrical run because it did so well on TV. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:16, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• I just sent a facebook message asking about MM to AFN-Pacific, formerly AFRTS's Far East Network (FEN). Looks like Magic Mansion is pretty much the only article left in the Chaneyverse. I hope to get closure on this one b/c I'm having a hard time swallowing that Mickey Rooney and Charlton Heston actually recorded lines for America. Permstrump (talk) 17:08, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• I heard back from the AFTN saying they'll look into it, but I expect that it'll be the same as you guys- they'll say that they don't have the records. I did put down that he's putting this in his resume, so that might get them to be a bit more proactive since that means that he's claiming things under their name and plastering it everywhere. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:19, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
• I've never heard back from the National Archives, nor any of the others. Should I drop another note to them? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:32, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

@Tokyogirl79: Well, the users involved are blocked. Assuming the two PRODded articles are deleted, the whole walled garden, other than The Outing, is gone. There are enough of us with these articles on our watchlists now that it seems unlikely they could be recreated without being subject to significant scrutiny. I don't know the status of the images, but otherwise, it seems like there's not much else to do here. Without a connection to Wikipedia, it would seem this just turns into an exercise in off-wiki investigative journalism (or just satisfying curiosity), with notes that happen to be on Wikipedia. Just speaking for myself, it's not something I intend to keep pursuing. Would be curious to hear about any findings, though :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 06:47, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

• That's kind of my stance on this at this point. I'm mildly curious enough to want to know if these actually exist or not, but I think that we're all sort of winding down at this point. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:51, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

• NARA wasn't helpful. They pretty much gave me the equivalent of "check our archives yourself" and also used Google, which is frustrating given the amount of information I'd put into the request. It kind of looks like they'd only briefly scanned the message I'd sent and only picked out names rather than actually reading through the whole thing. So all we can go by is what we'd found by looking at the NARA archives website, which was nothing. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:17, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
• I got a phone call from one of the people from the video portion of NARA, who was helpful. They weren't really able to give me anything since they said that if they have anything that it might be in boxes, but they did suggest contacting SAG or one of the estates of the deceased actors to see if they did perform in America. I don't think that SAG would record something unless it actually happened, so they'd be a good place to look at next. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:04, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
• I've reached out to some of the agents representing the various people supposed to have been in America and I've also e-mailed the Okinawa military base supposed to have been one of the major filming locations. If/when I hear back from any of them, I'll let you guys know. I figured that since Gawker took a look at it and it's going to be in the Signpost, I'll do a little more electronic legwork. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:35, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Closure

Well, that was fun. I hope I can find meaning and purpose in my life again. Looks like Magic Mountain is the only page left pending replies to some messages we've sent to the National Archives, etc. asking if there's any record of it. I do have a few questions...

• When I read the WP:Snowball thing I wasn't sure how it applied to this situation. It sounded like that was in reference to stuff that was already deleted. Is that the same as TNT?
• Does that automatically remove any stragglers from wikipedia, like, all of the pictures that were uploaded and references to Chaney on some random articles about magic and ventriloquism?

Thank you to everyone for your patience with me learning the ropes about Wikipedia in the middle of all of this. Permstrump (talk) 17:19, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

The pictures will get deleted by a bot soon enough. Dbrodbeck (talk) 17:20, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

The normal rule is that deletion discussions run for a week. A WP:SNOW close means someone decided there was zero chance further discussion would lead to a KEEP result, and that it would be a waste of editor's time for anyone else to !VOTE on it. The closer Ignored the Rules and made a bold edit to close the discussion early. Our rules are for dispute resolution. We ignore rules when they uncontroversially get in the way of productive work.

Regarding cleanup of "stragglers" in other articles: That will require manual cleanup. All that is needed to do that cleanup is a good-faith belief that you're improving to the encyclopedia :) Having a closed Deletion result is obviously a powerful edit-justification, but it's not necessary. Even before the AFD closed I saw it was a SNOW, I went ahead and searched for and removed references to the America movie in any other article. I even went out to foreign languages Wikipedias and removed some (but almost certainly not all) of their references to the movie. I didn't touch Call to Greatness books, or anything related to Chaney. Give me a ping and I'll help with whatever else needs cleanup.

In the process of that work I noticed the Chaneyverse-builder went to a lot of work releasing copyrighted photos for use in Wikipedia. Several actor biographies have excellent photos that claim to be taken during the movie. They are better than any other available photo of the actors, so I left the photos in place. I did however remove the photo-captions which mentioned&linked the movie article. Alsee (talk) 20:30, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• @Alsee: I'm mildly concerned about their use. If by some chance the various films are hoaxes, even if just partially, that brings the legitimacy of those images into question. In other words, at this point we have valid reason to question whether or not the images are actually from the various productions and might just be photoshopped or something to that effect. I think that Rhododendrites and Dbrodbeck are correct in that these things likely happened but were just wildly embellished, but there's still the potential that they're not real. We should probably treat them the same way we would if there were any other images that were of questionable origin, since we don't know if they're real or not. At this point of time we just have to treat them like they're any other potentially altered or photoshopped image uploaded by a random person. We can always restore them later on if needs be. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:34, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• I also hate to say this, but if the existence of the productions are in question we also need to question whether or not the uploader actually held the copyrights or not. In other words, if they're comfortable with embellishing the truth with their films they might also be perfectly willing to claim copyrights on images that they actually do not own and we'd be assuming truthfulness by someone who has already shown that they can't really be trusted. It's awful that we have to be this suspicious but I'd rather that we CYA first and restore later if everything comes back copacetic. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:35, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Idea

Hey everyone. Once the dust has settled, it might be an interesting exercise to write this thing up as a short piece for say an education journal or something. I think a couple of us are academics, any interest? (I'm not even sure I want to....) drop me an email if you want, you can see the 'email this user' link when you go to my talk page. Sort of a cautionary tale type thing.Dbrodbeck (talk) 17:19, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Dbrodbeck: Would be interested to explore the idea, but not sure what we could actually publish. There's a story about collaboration, cross-media research, Wikipedia procedures, etc. but ultimately we don't really have any publishable conclusions regarding the subjects here. It's one thing for us to talk about it in the context of what to do with Wikipedia articles, but in the absence of that, or in an off-wiki publication, we're getting into some hairy legal/ethical territory, I think. The only thing we have for sure is a set of sock puppets writing about Chaney-related topics in a promotional, overinflated way, using copious poor sources. I don't think there's anything we can conclusively say is a hoax -- in fact I'm 75% of the mind that none of the titles themselves are hoaxes (I guess I would qualify the characterization of praise/impact/importance hoaxish, but that's not unusual for Wikipedia). There's funny business going on, but Occam's Razor tells me these are just tiny little productions with very limited release, a very tiny audience, and are hard to find because they preceded the web (for the most part). There's 25% of me that wants to keep investigating, but it's hard to justify when the articles are just about all deleted... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:49, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, fair points. Dbrodbeck (talk) 17:52, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh I think all of the stuff, minus perhaps Magic Mansion, are real. Just not notable. Dbrodbeck (talk) 17:53, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I imagine something could be written up for the Signpost at some point. I'm not volunteering, though. :) Further, I (like Chaney apparently) am from Kentucky and so I'm tempted to point the local media to this, but I don't know where's the best spot to point them to where a journalist could get to a sufficient understanding of what's happened here. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:15, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• It would certainly be cathartic to do something like that. It was a farcical example of circular reporting gone amuck. It was pretty amusing, but I see the potential for harm as well. I have concerns that this walled garden lent credibility to some highly embellished resumes that could be used to defraud investors, I'm not sure exactly how. There's a history of securities shenanigans for some of the people involved and they don't seem to have learned their lesson about honest and fair business practices. Part of me wishes there was something here that could lead to a criminal investigation, just to make sure innocent people didn't lose money investing in a former foreclosure company that rebranded itself as an educational media distributer with officers whose resumes intentionally misrepresented reality and boasted notoriety and success in the entertainment industry, yet only ever listed one DVD for sale on its website (America: A Call to Greatness), just as an example. More generally, journalists need to stop all of this circular reporting!!! It's the reason I made a Wikipedia account. Whenever I'm reading an article in the newspaper, especially if it's about a recent study, and I start clicking links to find the original source, I end up finding a whole lot of circular reporting that often sends me to a Wikipedia article with reference lists made up of links that are broken, unrelated, or say the opposite of the claim it was used to support. Permstrump (talk) 19:29, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

xkcd Citogenesis.[4] Alsee (talk) 20:29, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• I'll admit that I'm mildly interested to see what a basic person report could pull up (the kind you buy for about $30), although I doubt that it'd be usable since it'd likely just pull stuff from the Chaneyverse and there's a concern of Chaney's privacy as well, I suppose, since the findings from there would possibly need repeating somewhere and it'd likely violate his privacy. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:49, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Then this happened..... [5]. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:04, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Ain't over til it's over

Now that the socks have been blocked and the articles deleted, it is necessary to address the images. I have already deleted the uploads by Buzzsawyer as unused non-free media per WP:F5:

• File:Dynamic Mind by Warren Chaney (book cover).jpg
• File:Space Patrol Chronicles Special Edition with Trading Cards.jpg
• File:Space Ship Terra IX by Warren Chaney.jpg
• File:Space Ship Terra IX by Warren Chaney.jpg
• File:The Flagship by Warren Chaney.jpg
• File:Commander-in-Chief Jason Wainwright out side of the Space Academy.jpg
• File:The Plan by Warren Chaney.jpg
• File:Up Ship and Away - flight of the Terra IV.jpg
• File:Members of the Space Patrol by Warren Chaney.jpg
• File:Space Patrol Chronicles (Book-set).jpg
• File:Space Patrol Chronicles (Book-set).jpg

However the dozen or so images by Sinclairindex are all OTRS tagged. Therefore, I have opened a deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Files for discussion#File:Program Hosts.jpg. When the discussion here on Wikipedia is concluded, a discussion can be opened at Commons to have an administrator there delete the numerous OTRS-tagged images which were moved from WP to there. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 16:55, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• N00b question: CactusWriter, are you asking people to weigh in on the files for deletion discussion or is the fact that they were created by a confirmed sock account enough to justify it? Permstrump (talk) 17:19, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Permstrump, the only difference between Wikipedia:Files for discussion and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion discussion is that FFD is for images. In both cases, a page is nominated for deletion based on policy or criteria, then editors discuss through keep or delete !votes. All editors are welcome to comment. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 18:35, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Images collected

FYI not knowing if anything was happening about the images was bugging me, so I went ahead and made a complete list that includes Sinclairindex's and Buzzsawyer's uploads to both Wikipedia and Commons and those that have been deleted already. It looks like CactusWriter nominated all but 3 of those that have not been copied to Commons. Has anyone taken any action or looked into processes on Commons (and/or have opinions about whether that's necessary)? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:15, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

• Good work, although you missed File:MaskCar_873267.jpg. It was a rename of a .jpg.jpg upload.
• I added no-copy-to-commons on Scott Sheldon 3rdBaseman.jpg. If we were to keep one image, it would be this one. However all content relating to the Chaneyverse needs an actively skeptical level of scrutiny. I wouldn't even rely on a routine level of scrutiny from OTRS regarding copyright (or anything else) here.
• Per IAR, I added all four files to the file deletion discussion. I agree to anyone removing some/all of the added listings if there are any objections.

Everything on Commons needs to be nuked as well. I have opened a mass deletion request at Commons. Alsee (talk) 00:13, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Alsee, Thanks for opening the Commons deletion discussion. (And your analysis on a couple of the poorly photoshopped photos is quite revealing as well.) I was only waiting for the FFD discussion to close so that I could refer to it when I opened the commons discussion -- but I'm glad that you have gone ahead with it. I actually did leave out the baseball pic on purpose: my thinking being that Scott Sheldon was a business partner of Warren Chaney, the photo from a MLB game is obviously legitimate and there is an OTRS record for wherever it came from -- and since it was used in a legitimate manner, I wasn't too concerned about deleting it. However, I have no problem with simply deleting the entire mess and starting again from scratch. I'm going to reply in the same manner at the FFD. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 17:44, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

CactusWriter (or anyone else), I'm a bit overloaded to pick this up at the moment, but do you want to contact WP:OTRS and have someone there look into the records on the baseball pic? If OTRS dealt with Chaney then I'd say let the picture nuke on untrustworthy copyright status. If OTRS is alerted to the pervasive problems here, and they confidently say they have solid assignment from the baseball player and/or his wife, then I'm on board with pulling that pic out of the deletion nomination. Alsee (talk) 00:04, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Sure. I know a couple of the admins at OTRS that I can ask. From experience I know that OTRS members can reveal very little information contained in permission tickets due to strict confidentiality rules. So I don't expect to learn exactly who we are dealing with -- but the OTRS member may be able to give a vague indication on whether or not the deletion is the proper course of action in this single case. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 01:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

CactusWriter, Alsee and anyone else monitoring this. I wanted to make you aware of this RFC from a couple months ago Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 123#RfC - should we allow primary sources sent in to OTRS. While it may not apply directly to this situation IMO the same WP:V problems would exist in regard to the pix. I hope that I am not muddying the waters in how you are dealing with this but I did want you to know that there is some disagreement with relying entirely on OTRS. Thanks for your time. MarnetteD|Talk 02:49, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

MarnetteD, thanx, although if I had seen the RFC I would have just piled on Snow :) I don't think there's any Verification issue here. The photo visually matches a google search of the pictured individual. (Yep, I just double checked on that.) It doesn't have any identifiable content or significance other than as an image of the individual. The concern here is that the uploader is considered pervasively unreliable, and furthermore the uploader is presumed to engage in impressive fabrications that pass a routine level of scrutiny. We're throwing out a lot of baby with the bathwater here because the bathwater is radioactive and the baby is too tainted to trust. We're applying an overabundance of caution. This one image seemed innocent enough to maybe pull off the delete list. We wanted OTRS to put on a paranoia-cap in confirming that the copyright was assigned by the copyright holder, rather than the uploader. Alsee (talk) 11:04, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Alsee. Your way with words is bringing more than one grin to my morning :-) Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 15:09, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Would anyone mind linking to the baseball pic? I'm not sure which one on that list we're talking about. I'm sure I don't have an opinion other than agreeing with alsee, but now I'm curious to see it b/c I don't remember a baseball photo. Permstrump (talk) 16:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

It was listed in section User:Rhododendrites/Chaney#Not_nominated.2C_but_tagged_to_prevent_copying_to_Commons, and I added those four images into the in-progress deletion discussion. Image File:Scott Sheldon 3rdBaseman.jpg used in Scott_Sheldon. Alsee (talk) 16:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I requested a check on the OTRS ticket for the baseball pic, asking if the permission source was the same as the other uploads. With the holidays, we may not get a quick response and the commons discussion may close in the meantime. But we can always undelete it, if needed. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 17:34, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The OTRS check revealed nothing "nefarious", according to the checker's statement here. He did mention there was a possible problem since the subject probably doesn't own the copyright. Either way, I think it is in the best interest of Wikipedia to remove all contributions by Sinclairindex. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 22:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Behind the Mask teaser found

I'm posting this just to share the pain, chuckle. I found a 10 minute+ teaser on youtube: Behind the Mask (1992) Teaser (Opening Scenes). The first 3:45 is opening credits, where Chaney's name pops up at least three times. At about 5 minutes in something actually happens.... then you start to wish the credits had just kept going for the full 10 minutes. They were more pleasant to watch. The longer you watch the more painful it gets. LoL. The handgrenade, and the Mask's costume, were particularly memorable highlights. (Or ummm... lowlights.) Alsee (talk) 07:21, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Wow — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:36, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Also The Broken Spur — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:37, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Groundbreaking, award-winning............. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:37, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Wow! Those awards must have been for sound editing. /s Permstrump (talk) 03:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• What's interesting is that they were uploaded in 2011, the same year that all of the Chaney articles were created. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:09, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I like to refer to 2011 as the year he learned about the internet. Permstrump (talk) 06:57, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Chaneyverse [via Magic Mansion] picked up by Gawker!

This! — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:35, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Hoaxes on Wikipedia

Someone else raised this question before, but we may want to revisit whether or not we should add this to Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia. The only issue is it's not clear where the nonsense starts and its basis in reality ends. There's definitely some hoax going on, based on the number of Photoshopped images... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:22, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I think this can be included on that page -- not as a blatant outright hoax -- but as an elaborate scheme of small deceptions and embellishments. It appears to me as one of the more instructive cases of hoaxing. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 01:03, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• Do you guys think that we should write something up? I'll admit that as someone who actively archives things at the list of hoaxes page, it's kind of intriguing. I think I'm going to try writing something up and let you guys have a whack at including or correcting things that I got wrong. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:20, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

a possible puzzle piece

Edgar Bergen. His puppets look awfully familiar. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Especially the teeth of Mortimer Snerd. Good catch R! MarnetteD|Talk 22:20, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that is clearly a Mortimer Snerd replica in the picture. But I don't see that it means anything. Most amatuer ventriloquists begin with replicas of dummies made famous by big-time ventriloquists like Edgar Bergen and Paul Winchell. One company, the Juro Novelty Company, had contracts to sell these replicas from 1955 to 1977. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 00:58, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Good point. Ok. I also stumbled across some social media content that again made me think that we're just dealing with overinflated claims of significance rather than an actual hoax, too (I don't want to get into linking to social media here). Gawker renewed my interest a little, but I think that's about enough for me :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:03, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Your point is taken CW. For me it is more evidence of photoshopping as the other two dummies in the pic look very like Effie Klinker and Charlie McCarthy. Again those could be store bought and then altered but I don't remember Effie ever being popular enough to have been marketed. MarnetteD|Talk 01:06, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• I just found the Gawker article. I have to admit, I got pulled into the comments section. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:19, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
• Here's what I wrote up. I 86'd the Chaney article I'd written since I figure that it'd have to be re-written, as others had specified here. What do you guys think? I typed it up all at once, so it'll likely need a grammar check. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:32, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Looks pretty good, I'll take a longer look once Christmas winds down. I think I actually coined the phrase 'Chaneyverse' for what it is worth.... Dbrodbeck (talk) 16:14, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

• Sorry about that! Looks like Rhododendrites changed it for me! Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:49, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Found the title card image

Long-time editor who came to this through Gawker. I was so intrigued by the obvious hoax title card that I did some research. I couldn't believe the reverse image search came back with nothing, but that meant the image had to have been seriously manipulated. So I put myself in the mind of the hoaxer - if you were setting out to create this image, where would you start? I tried Googling "black and white mansion". Close, but no cigar. Then I thought - well, you might just start by Googling "magic mansion" if you were lazy. And boom, I found it: it's a slightly-altered photo of a real mansion in St Louis, Missouri, called the "Magic Chef Mansion" (Google Image search results). The person has just copied the bay window from the right hand side to the left hand side, making it just different enough for it to not be returned in a reverse image search. Just thought this might tickle you all! ninety:one (reply on my talk) 11:46, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Excellent work Ninetyone. I can't remember now - did Chaney have ties to St Louis? It seems that the Gawker writer(s) did little to no research into Chaney or into how things work here at WikiP. Thanks again for posting what you found N. MarnetteD|Talk 12:30, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Out frakking standing! Dbrodbeck (talk) 13:23, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Nice. It seems strange finding all of this bogus information and content associated with Magic Mansion...but not the rest of the titles. Maybe it's just because making old-looking images was outside of the Photoshoppers comfort zone? We might as well add the image analyses to the records. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:02, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Good work. Here is, for quick comparison, the "Magic Mansion" title card and the "Magic Chef Mansion" which a photograph was used for the Magic Mansion title card. Magic Mansion looks like a complete fabrication. The Outing from 1987 was real (and flopped); there were scenes filmed for the more recent stuff but probably nothing was ever finished or released. Just to clarify (talk) 17:37, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• Excellent! I'm actually going to e-mail AFTRS and let them know about this - they might want to take further action against Chaney. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:08, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

• @Ninetyone: That's hysterical! I got behind on what's been going on with Chaney stuff and have just been catching up today on what I missed. Tokyogirl79 Who's your contact at AFRTS? I've been DMing with someone on fb from AFN-Pacific and haven't gotten a clear answer if she's in touch with whoever checks the main AFN email. The person responding on FB is named Zoe. Last I heard, she was still asking around to see if anyone remembered it and I kind of got the feeling that she hoped it was for real. Does the person on your end seem to want to take some kind of legal action? Sounds like I should probably tell Zoe it's a lost cause? Permstrump (talk) 23:45, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

• I'd have to check the e-mail. I'm just pretty much getting some random person each time, I think, so you're likely the better person to approach them since you've got a specific person. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:10, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Found Magic_Mansion_(Induction_Episode) image

Magic_Mansion_(Induction_Episode).jpg is the one that I said reveals a photoshop overlay if you set color saturation to 6000%. RottenTomatoes.com has a page on Chaney[6], including the photoshopped mansion. Right next to the mansion is this pre-photoshop version[7] of the Induction_Episode pic. It matches the portion that shows traces of color. Alsee (talk) 07:23, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I just sent a message to Rotten Tomatoes with our info, advising them to take down all images on their Warren Chaney listing. Alsee (talk) 08:42, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

"America" deleted from Imdb

Last week I linked to this thread at Imdb.

Someone suggested America: A Call to Greatness might be a hoax per these discussions. Someone added

Wikipedia deleted this film title as well as the article on Warren Chaney..seems like it was all 'Manufactured'
I'm also noticing fake reviews added by decabner and gilkeyresearch
they should be looked into an i'm also doubting the somewhat 'perfect' reviews for this title as well ..

An Imdb rep followed up 3 days ago:

Just following up here to confirm that our title editors have now removed the title listing. Thanks again!

Indeed, the America Imdb page is gone (see archived version). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:34, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

And now it looks like another, broader hoax thread has been opened (no doubt spurred on by Gawker). It's a little concerning that people are running with the worst case scenario interpretation of the evidence. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:37, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Chaney's books

While Gamaliel looks to be preparing some sort of post-mortem for The Signpost and has suggested "Basket of Deception" as an appropriate image to memorialize the hoax, I did want people here to look closely at this image of Warren Chaney with his various books, before it is deleted, and to notice the first title: "A Messianic Pissss... ...???: A Leadership Guide", which more or less summarizes his whole enterprise. I'm actually of two minds about whether bringing after-the-fact attention to these hoaxes perhaps does more harm than good by encouraging others to attempt them. This one, with its many embedded "tells" and sticky tentacles, seems particularly egregious and a real pain to unwind. Thanks to everyone who is sleuthing it out and who continue to remove IMDB and other contentious, circular sourcing from the wider net. Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 18:48, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

It is always the conundrum Vesuvius Dogg. Are we providing a template for how to write hoax articles or are we providing examples of how to ferret out the dross. Of course, the answer is both but without the latter more of the former can fly under the radar. Well that is more than enough metaphors for one post so back to cooking the Xmas dinner. Thanks for your post V. MarnetteD|Talk 19:18, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

• I recognize the title from lurking some book wikis that also got hit. It's A_Messianic_Passover_Haggadah. Note that Google link reports ISBN numbers 0996247998 and 9780996247993. Both ISBN numbers come up as invalid. worldcat.org reports zero libraries have a copy. As usual it's hard to sort fact from hype from fiction, but I think some of his books are published by tiny religious outfits. Effectively a Self Published Book. Alsee (talk) 06:00, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
• The Spam Fighters message board at Librarything.com (a book wiki) has been notified.[8]

Openlibrary.org has been notified. I couldn't find message boards. I submitted to their spam-report link. Any response will be at my email. Alsee (talk) 06:18, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Google lists a book by Chaney with a similar, but slightly different title: A Christian Passover Haggadah. It says it was published in 1913. Wooops! That's quite the typo. Permstrump (talk) 16:44, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Editor in Okinawa

Hey, I got a message on my talk page from @Calton: saying he was in Okinawa. Hopefully he's still there and can ask around a little bit or do some legwork (if he doesn't, that's fine), but I thought I'd mention this here and ping him so he can see this page. Even if he's not, Calton - you may still be able to do some research in Japan, since Okinawa was supposed to be one of the bases of operation. There'd likely be someone who would know about Chaney and the show if it actually happened. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:47, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Website lists Magic Mansion episodes for viewing online

I found a site that lists many (or all) Magic Mansion episodes available online. The links either don't work, or they pop up a streaming viewer that shows the usual "MPAA Approved for all audiences" message except it's from a non-existent "Independent Film Rating Association of America" instead. A few seconds later it quits saying you have to sign up. Signup is allegedly free, but they DEMAND a credit card because they are only licensed to stream to certain countries. I passed on that. Then I noted the comments below the vid-player with blatantly fake comments, and this lovely bit at the bottom:

*This filename has been transmitted via an external affiliate, we can therefore furnish no guarantee for the existence of this file on our servers. streamnowmovies.com matches keywords, searched from 3rd-party sites, to affiliate-networks offering unlimited access to licensed entertainment content. streamnowmovies.com allows visitors, otherwise looking for free-content to enjoy more for less.

OMFG! Buahahahahahaha!!!! That's hysterical! Alsee (talk) 15:12, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, there are many spam/phishing sites that purport to have this or that show or movie available to stream (whether or not the show/film is real), which don't actually have anything streaming but scrape Imdb or other databases (maybe even Wikipedia's former List of Magic Mansion episodes) to bring in search results and appear reasonably legitimate. Typically have you download some phony update/media software loaded with adware, require signup, entering a credit card, or just sends you through a maze of ads. Even the ones that do stream what they purport to tend to be really sketchy. Not to be a netnanny, but I've commented out the link above, since some people may be using vulnerable browsers and there's undoubtedly bad stuff within a click or two of that page (anyone so inclined can edit the section and see it). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

The Telling: Christ in the Passover

I just noticed this title for the first time on google books. Definitely our Chaney. It says it was published in March 2015 by Bay Area Christian Publishing (which seems to exist exclusively to publish Chaney's books), but can anyone tell when this was added to google? Maybe I just overlooked it before, but I'm wondering if someone is planning a resurgence. Also want to note that it doesn't make sense that this one has 2 ISBNs, because it was published after 2007. According to the wikipedia article on ISBNs, anything published after 2007 would only have been assigned a 13 digit ISBN. Permstrump (talk) 17:18, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

• It may be sloppy input from the publisher or just a sign that the book is self published. You do tend to see a lot of things like this with self-published books like this one. Either way, it is kind of interesting that it's like this. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:49, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Contacting people part deux, the contacten-ing

I thought I'd give an update and a bit of a summary of my contacts and the ones by others:

• So far contacting the agents has been unfruitful, partially because I have to do it via a Google search, which may not be up to date. Only one has responded so far, even then only to say that she wasn't the main agent for an actor.

• The Academy of Management has been very accommodating in trying to respond and find someone who knows about the Health Care Communique. So far I've spoken to someone with the main AoM, who referred me to the Health Care Management division. The woman I spoke with stated that they have no records of the journal, since the division as it is now effectively launched in the late 90s and they have no records prior to that point. To her knowledge, there was never a journal, although she's going to check with the senior members to see if they know anything. I've also been referred to the AoM's archival department, who I've e-mailed.

• NARA doesn't have any records on the TV show as far as I can tell. They're still checking, but my basic gut reaction is that if there isn't a mention of the show anywhere and there's not even a basic description of Chaney or the show in their databases (even with a broad search) then odds are that it doesn't exist - especially with the overwhelming evidence that the images were photoshopped.

• AFRTS was contacted and they have essentially stated that they have no knowledge of the show, but are looking into it. (Correction) Permstrump is in contact with a person from AFN, per his comments below.

• I've contacted the military base in Okinawa, but haven't heard back. I may try calling them if I get free time, just for the cool factor of calling Okinawa because I'm nerdy like that.

• I've contacted one of the actors for America, but haven't heard back.

• I'd emailed the University of Houston at Clear Lake City, but never heard back. I may not any time soon because school is inbetween sessions and there's almost always a skeleton shift during this time.

I think that this is all of the people I've e-mailed. If anyone else has emailed someone, please feel free to add on to the list above. This is all likely overkill, but I figure hey: if anyone wants to recreate this article in the future then they'll have to do this anyway. Might as well spare them some time, especially on behalf of the DRV people that would have to look at this and likely do the same. On a side note, does this all remind anyone of the film Catch Me If You Can or the actor Tommy Wiseau, as far as the general gist of "just when you think you've found the truth, think again"? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:11, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

FWIW I didn't message NARA. I messaged the AFN Pacific facebook page. Last I heard, Zoe was still asking around, but she hadn't found any record of it and no one she had asked so far remembered it. Looking at NARA and the AFRTS websites, they kept such immaculate records of everything else around that time and earlier, so it's hard to imagine that Magic Mansion fell through the cracks. A while ago I considered contacting one of the gospel singers from America thinking there was more of a chance they'd respond to fan mail, but I never did. I still could. What did you ask the person from America? Permstrump (talk) 15:25, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• I corrected it. Basically, I gave them a brief rundown of what's going on and asked them if they were part of the show. So far I've had no contact from anyone. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:24, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
• Heard back from the archives arm of the AoM. They sent me a scan of the first page of the first journal issued by the Health Care Division. The journal was named after the HCD and did not show that Chaney was an editor. The archives stated that they only had the very first issue released by the HCD, so they wouldn't have any of the other issues. I've contacted the editor that was listed to ask about this, but I don't know if I'll hear back. The only address given was an AOL address and although it was on a staff listing for a university, that's not entirely a promising sign. Offhand I think that we can assume that the journal likely doesn't exist. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:45, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

• I still never wrote to any of the gospel singers b/c I got stuck trying to think of a way to explain why I was asking about it b/c my original reasons don't apply anymore. It first occurred to me to try reaching out them before I had even brought up America: A Call to Greatness on WP:FILM. "Back then" I was thinking maybe I should check with someone listed in the cast before accusing an editor of having multiple sock accounts that chatted with each other on the talk pages of articles about a fake book (Dynamic Mind) and a fake movie (America) supposedly written by the same Warren Chaney. Before I got around to it, the flood gates opened and I found all of the other articles that were each more ridiculous than the last, so I decided I could bring it up w/o the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist. When I wrote to AFN, I told them I was asking b/c we were discussing deleting the Wikipedia article on Magic Mansion and we'd want to keep it if it actually existed, but we needed a more reliable source than what is current available. Is there a "next step" or a reason (other than my personal satisfaction) for getting to the bottom of it? Don't get me wrong, I'd be excited to help reach out to as many people as needed even if the only reason was to satiate my own curiosity, but I got stuck trying to think of how to word an email to random gospel singers. What's our reason? :) Permstrump (talk) 22:34, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

• I've been a little blunt with things when I e-mail people. I try not to go into a lot of detail, but I do let them know that we're verifying the veracity of claims. I did hear back from the person I e-mailed and what I got was fairly interesting, enough to where I'll make another subsection for this. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:14, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Apropos of nothing.....

I am watching the Winds of War right now and Deborah Winters is in it (she's pretty good in it too) and I keep getting taken out of the action because the character she is married to is named Warren... Dbrodbeck (talk) 02:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Ouch - hopefully that will fade with time. OTOH the Vienna Philharmonic will perform its annual New Year's Concert Friday and if they play The Blue Danube I will still be seeing space stations and Pan Am stewardesses. MarnetteD|Talk 02:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

AoM contact

I received a response from the editor I e-mailed. I'm not sure if we can list names or not, but the person I contacted was Thomas Natellio. If anyone thinks this should be removed, feel free.

In any case, Natellio was in charge of the Academy of Management's Health Care Division and served as its chairman and editor. He also established established a Health Care Management section of the Southern Management Association and fulfilled the same function. When it comes to communications and papers, there was a call for papers before each annual meeting and selected papers would be presented at the meeting. The best of these papers would be published in the Journal of the Academy of Management. There was also a publication that would contain the papers and discussions at the meetings. If there were any exemplary papers that couldn't be accomodated at the AoM meetings, he'd direct them to the SMA or other association meetings.

Now when it comes to the Health Care Communique and Chaney, Natiello stated that he wasn't familiar with either the publication or Chaney. Given that Natiello was in charge of the division that would be publishing this, I think it's safe to assume that the HCC doesn't exist. If this was something that Chaney was trying to put out as a rival publication or circulate on his own time, odds are high that Natiello would have remembered Chaney. There's a slim chance that he could have flown under the radar, but Natiello was pretty on top of everything and Chaney's article/Linkedin page makes this seem like it was fairly prominent, so it's extremely unlikely that this would have been overlooked.

I'm going to contact the AoM to let them know about this, since it's their name that he has on his Linkedin account and from what I can surmise here, the HCC is an outright hoax. They may want to take some action against him or they may not. Either way, we now know that this is a hoax as far as Wikipedia's concerned. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:25, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Very revealing. Thanks for the update, Tokyogirl79. It's nice to receive some confirmation of our suspicions. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 17:37, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Re:Magic Mansion

I heard back from Calton and I meant to post this here sooner, but forgot since I read his post just before I had to go somewhere. Here's what he wrote on my talk page here concerning this show.

"This supposed TV show was a couple of years after my time on Okinawa (1970-73), but my own conclusion based on my memories of the time would be, yeah, completely made up. The programming on AFRTS was months-old U.S. TV shows mixed with reruns of old -- often military-oriented -- shows (Twelve O'Clock High and Combat!). The only in-house programming I recall was the nightly news program, which looked like a standard U.S. local-news broadcast except for the fact that the anchors were uniformed staff members. AFRTS reused programs a LOT -- there was one particular Yogi Bear cartoon where Yogi met an "Okinawan bear" they showed over and over -- so if "Magic Mansion" existed, AFRTS would have reran it to death. "

I figure that we all kind of assumed it didn't exist at this point in time, but I thought it'd be great to have this here as a final confirmation and just sort of here for posterity. The whole Chaney situation is pretty much done at this point though except for some last little responses here and there, though. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:45, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the update! Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:54, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey, Tokyogirl79, thanks for the update, btw. I didn't come on Wikipedia for a few weeks after the holidays, so I didn't see this in my watchlist back in Jan. That response feels very validating for me, seriously, because I went from never having heard of AFRTS to having a made-up-yet-vivid mental image of what the programming was like. And the way that person described it is almost exactly what I had been imagining. PermStrump(talk) 15:41, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

• Permstrump No problem! This is a pretty interesting scenario since it's now one of the best examples as to why we can't use IMDb as a source. The other ones I use are ones that center around women that tried to make fake profiles for themselves, one of which tried saying she was going to play She-Hulk in one of the Marvel movies. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• Tokyogirl79, what's stopping anyone from creating a completely fake filmography on IMDb? Couldn't I create my own account and start adding movies right now? I had no idea IMDb was usergenerated until the Cheneyverse. I had an inkling that actors could have input/complete control over their bios, but I assumed there was some kind of process to verify membership in the screen actors guild in order to access that feature, otherwise their bio would be at the whim of the IMDb gods. Of course, when I look at the website now, I see "edit" links all over the place, but they never registered in my brain before. PermStrump(talk) 04:52, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• Permstrump Pretty much nothing. The threshold on there is insanely low and all you really have to do is add a source. They don't verify the source in question, as it just has to seem legitimate. Even then that threshold is pretty low. One of the aforementioned women just listed a People Magazine date and article title, which searching showed clearly didn't exist. They also tried saying that she was on several Disney soundtracks. I can't remember her name, but the She-Hulk actress was named Gretel Ashzinger and her Wikipedia article claimed that she presented the "Grammy Awards best actresses". There was something similar on the IMDb page, which is amazing that they didn't pick up on that. That's how poor they are at verifying things. I've actually created two listings on there, one for an obscure student film and another for some film perpetually in development hell. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:03, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
• Now I'll have to try to find the other person so I can mention the name. It was pretty funny, since she'd also created a whole host of websites in an attempt to legitimize herself. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:06, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• Haha now I really want to know the name too so I can look it up. :-P Maybe I'm craving some drama b/c, if you think about it, it was pretty anticlimactic how Chaney (or his son/social media rep or whoever was posting on his behalf) never galvanized a troop of sockpuppets to take up his cause. They didn't put up any fight at all. PermStrump(talk) 05:36, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
• I admit that I was disappointed at that as well. I think that's probably part of their strategy. If they'd thrown a huge fit then odds are that it'd have gotten some level of media attention, given the claims and the length of time. This way it stays under the radar and a little later on down the line he can start everything back up again since there won't be a huge paper trail out there. I'd actually wager that we're likely not the first people to call him on his claims - it's just that no one went anywhere with it. Although it's also possible that he's also now worried about all of these institutions breathing down his neck, given that some of them are pretty influential. You don't really want to mess with the military. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:28, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

The lack of reliability at IMDB is appalling. I can't believe they allow any random idiot to edit there, without even making an account. 69.120.24.168 (talk) 19:22, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Harhar. :) It's almost like if Wikipedia considered itself a reliable source. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:50, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• This would make for one heck of an article, I must admit. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:09, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Kickstarter.....

OK, this is apparently a thing: [9]. Dbrodbeck (talk) 18:46, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh my - that is a lotta simoleons to raise in seven days. Thanks for letting us know about this Dbrodbeck. MarnetteD|Talk 19:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Do you think they would take the time to interview any of the fine WikiP editors that took the time to research this "unjustly (sic) forgotten artist"? MarnetteD|Talk 19:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Whoa.

Here's a fun thing: The person who started the Kickstarter campaign claims a lot of credits, and the name attached to the account, "Rachele Carolyn Bowman", returns zero relevant Google hits (and the username returns only the Kickstarter). Maybe this is setting up an elaborate performance art piece... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:37, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yep. Just someone throwing more crap onto the pile. Glad to see no one is biting. Caveat emptor. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 19:42, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Nice work Rhododendrites. I thought that the picture of "Thorni Knox" looked a bit too young to "have several years of professional writing, researching, and investigation experience." Do you think she might be Chanay's long lost granddaughter? :-) MarnetteD|Talk 19:57, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh I'm so glad to see Rachele is still doing good work! I used to love reading her novels when I was younger! Too bad they're so hard to find, because they totes existed. --User:NotASock! 20:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Ping to any page watchers

If anyone still has this watchlisted, take a look at Village Pump: Galaxy World of Alisa. It's either legit with a mysterious lack of expected sources, or it's a brazen hoax of comparable scale to Chaneyverse. Alsee (talk) 11:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I was shocked to see Chaney come up on my watchlist just now and I couldn't resist getting derailed. I will respond more on the page you linked, but looks like you and Dbrodbeck pretty much have it down to a science. PermStrump(talk) 15:28, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Nice. Looks quite a bit more straightforward than the Chaneyverse, but Wikihoaxes are fun nonetheless. Will respond at VP :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:11, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

• Same here! I love a good hoax page. I'm actually quite sorry that I missed that! Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:34, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• FYI [10]. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:30, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Follow up: via email IBTimesAU say they "could not confirm the film/show with the sources our reporter used for the story. Our records also suggest the author did not copy from Wikipedia." So it's been updated. Easy closure, I guess. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:56, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
    • Rhododendrites, I can't figure out how to find the original article that IBTimesAU was trying to verify. Is it about Chaney or just a similar example of circular reporting? PermStrump(talk) 04:58, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
      • @Permstrump: http://www.ibtimes.com.au/emilia-clarke-took-inspiration-cate-blanchetts-elizabeth-her-part-game-thrones-1479356 -- thought I had linked it from here. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:02, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
        • @Rhododendrites: Did you see the correction at the end of the article? Correction April 1, 2016: The original article erroneously stated that Clarke was a cast member of “Galaxy World of Alisa”, which is not true. The article has been corrected and the reference removed. Sure... we believe you, IBTimes. That reporter surely didn't use Wikipedia as his source. PermStrump(talk) 14:15, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Just noticed this comment

A 1:30 AM rabbit hole led me to back to the Gawker article, and I noticed a comment which is still pending approval that I didn't see before (for some reason google brought me right to this comment via direct link):

FWIW, I actually located Warren Chaney on facebook... :)

Here’s what he had to say:
“Thanks, Mark. Hadn’t seen this but have to say that I am not anymore surprised, than when they first put it up. The show (some 150 episodes) was a mere footnote in the AFRTS broadcasts, so it’s not for me to say whether it merited a mention or not. Thankfully, being retired (since 2005), it’s something that doesn’t bother me.”

So there’s that.

I have to imagine he was looking at the Gawker article rather than e.g. this page or the AfD. So there's that. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:45, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

List of hoaxes

Also noticed Tokyogirl79 just added it to Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia a few days ago. "Whoops" to forgetting to do that 6 months ago :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:59, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• No worries, I can't believe I forgot to do it either and I'm relatively meticulous about doing that with hoaxes I come across. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:39, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
• I think a lot of us forgot.... Thanks TokyoGirl! 12:02, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

AFP Photo of Chaney?

Hi, I found what appears to be a photo of Chaney taken in 2001 on Getty Images by the AFP. The description also names him as the directory of "Dynamic Media, Inc.", which was one of the articles created as part of the Chaney walled garden. What do we make of this?

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/warren-chaney-american-writer-director-of-the-china-project-news-photo/51723551#warren-chaney-american-writerdirector-of-the-china-project-talks-with-picture-id51723551

--Varavour (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

• There are more pictures. This University of North Texas student paper article from 2006 mentions that a Professor Warren Chaney (Chaney's LinkedIn page states that he was a doctoral student at UNT from 1970-73) sent his students to Mexico City for a marketing project. This is either a fifty-year hoax or merely embellishment on behalf of someone whose career is simply poorly attested to online. I am coming to the conclusion that claiming Chaney does not exist entirely is best regarded as a conspiracy theory. There's a very interesting story here about how in the 21st century, if something isn't on the internet, it might as well not exist. I'm surprised no one's written anything about this so far. --Varavour (talk) 18:03, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Here is a detailed webpage on America: A Call to Greatness --Varavour (talk) 18:23, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
    • Varavour, I think we all agree that Warren Chaney exists. He was in the military, he had a ventriloquism and magic act, and he was involved in creating some level of god-awful independent film production, but beyond that there is little that can be verified by Reliable Sources. The issue is that that we have proven that substantial content related to him is explicitly fabricated, including photoshopped images, and that someone invested an utterly staggering level of work planting fake or misleading evidence on a lot of different self-hosted and user-generated websites. The problem isn't that Chaney's "career is simply poorly attested to online", it's that his career is wildly inflated online, and we can only trust content that comes from Reliable Sources that pass extremely strict scrutiny. If you find a whole series of pages at IMDB.com, it's no more reliable than the series of fake articles we deleted from Wikipedia. If you find a photo at Rotten Tomatoes.com, you have to check whether it's a photo-shopped image that they probably got from Wikipedia, or which was might have been user-submitted. If you find a self-hosted website with photos of newspaper articles, you have to check whether those newspapers even exist, and whether they did in fact publish that article. Alsee (talk) 15:53, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh I think we all think he exists. I just don't think he's any more notable than any of us. Dbrodbeck (talk) 16:21, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Argh I couldn't help but start to fall down the rabbit's hole again.

The image returns no other hits other than Getty (says Google Images), and searching the AFP site for "chaney" returns no hits. So far nothing too weird.

The image caption is:

Warren Chaney (R), American writer/director of the China Project, talks with Jin Zhiyong (L), senior executive for China Travel, Dr. Stephen Ho (2L), co-executive producer of the China Project, and Zhong Zheng (2R) of the Shanghai Film Studios, 29 August 2001 in Hollywood at a press conference to announce the China Project, a US-Chinese media production joint venture. The China Project brings together Dynamic Media, Inc. of the US and Avalon Productions Asia of China in what will be the largest ever series of US-Chinese broadcast, DVD, and videotape productions. The China Project will begin work in September on the 'Road to Beijing,' an interactive travel guide. AFP PHOTO/Lucy Nicholson

.

A Google search for '"warren chaney" "china project"' returns only the Getty image page. Ditto various other combinations of terms.

A Google search for '"warren chaney" "stephen ho"' returns an interesting variety of sources, though.

• One is a press release seemingly about the same project. From what it says, it's surprising there's not more available: "the largest series of television broadcast, DVD, and video tape documentaries ever made in history between the two countries." Among the credits:
  • "Mr. Zhong, Zheng, Division Chief of Foreign Market Development, Beijing;" - Google returns no hits for that job title. Ok, fair enough, maybe it's because this is the only instance of it being translated as such.
  • "Mr. Wu, Yong Lin, Senior Executive/Production-China Films, Shanghai;" - a search for '"china films" "yong lin wu"', as well as variants on his name, return no hits.
  • "Dr. Stephen Ho, President Avalon Productions Inc. -- Asia;" - this search does yield results. What a coincidence that there is a company called "Avalon Productions Inc. -- Asia" registered to a Stephen Ho... in Texas. Created in the weeks just prior to that press release.
• There's also a nice review/blurb for one of Chaney's books: "“Absolutely the best book on aging ever written,” Stephen Ho, MD". Perhaps another coincidence, though.
  • Another quote is "“If Dr. Chaney wrote it, It’s for real,” J.R. Richards-Houston Astros". Fun fact, there's someone who played for the Astros named J.R. Richard, but not J.R. Richards. Perhaps just a typo. Quite an endorsement, though.
• Then there's this. A $25 million movie about paintball that will be shot in 7 countries thanks to Chaney and these legitimate-looking Chinese executives! Wait, what's going on with the tie of that second guy from the left? (Have fun with the other detective work this image invites). The film was apparently never made. The press release is copyright " Battle Line Paintball Products Inc" which looks to have done nothing other than release this statement. A trademark filed to the guy who owns D-Day Adventure Park in Oklahoma (which seems real, although Oklahoma D-Day is a promotional mess now at AfD, that my cynical Chaneyverse eye started to think might be made up... but appears to be real), though the tm was abandoned two years later when unused.

I don't have time for this again! :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:06, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

By the shadows in that pic the light is coming from at least three directions, which is interesting as it is daytime..... Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:37, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Tatooine is a desirable filming location since it started giving production companies tax breaks. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:52, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata

Wikidata has no BLP policy, no Verifiability policy, no Reliable Source policy. The Wikidata community is opposed to things like that. If you search Wikidata for "Reliable Source" you come up with Q22964187. And what is Q22964187? It's an item created by an IP edit sixteen months ago‎. It links to our page WP:Wikipedia is not a reliable source, with a description "i like apples". A month later a bot came along and helpfully expanded the item with an additional claim :instance of: Wikimedia project page. A few months later another bot came along and helpfully added an English description: Added [en] label: Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a reliable source. A year and a half later, that's the entire edit history. Two bots expanding satirical info added by an IP.

Would anyone like to take a wild guess why I am posting that random story to the Chaneyverse page?

Wikidata bot-imported everything a bot could, from Wikipedia and other user-generated sites. And of course they hoovered up everything they could from Chaneyverse articles before we deleted them. They even include a ref to source each bit of info: "English Wikipedia". Not any particular page here, just "English Wikipedia". It's impossible to find where on Wikipedia it supposedly came from. The Wikidata community has no interest Reliable Sources or actually Verifying anything, so an untraceable cite to "somewhere on English Wikipedia" is considered unusually good sourcing by their standards. Bots and humans then circularly expanded on that information.

I'll skip the rest of the Wikidata issues for brevity. I hereby dub Wikidata "The Citogenesis Engine".^[xkcd] Oh! Google says I'm the first person ever to use the phrase "Citogenesis Engine"!

I opened Wikidata:WD:Requests_for_deletions#Bulk_deletion_request:_Chaneyverse to address the related Wikidata items. Alsee (talk) 23:46, 27 June 2017 (UTC) Update: Items deleted. Alsee (talk) 07:22, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Alsee: Thanks for wrangling these. Wikidata does indeed have quite a liberal inclusion policy. There was a walled garden (though not a hoax, at least) surrounding Heaven Sent Gaming a while back. Comics, etc. company whose employees socked to create articles about itself, multiple staff members, multiple products, etc. The whole lot has been deleted (more than once), but I noticed they went to a bunch of other Wikipedias and, of course, Wikidata, to create other walled gardens of southwestern Christian comic book stuff. Mentioned it at the Wikidata village pump and discovered that if they're listed in some comics database, even if it's not a selective or very good database, then it could still be included. Anyway, that's tangential, granted, and the fact that it was strictly spammy and not a hoax makes it a different animal (this section just seemed to be a good place for general Wikidata complaints). :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:06, 28 June 2017 (UTC)