Was this spam faked, and if so, by whom?

Question

I got a string of what I initially thought were elaborately faked emails from Dimension10, claiming to show the other three other administrators in an actual Byzantine plot to plant this obviously fake spam message:

Welcome to 變速器! 變速器 a revolutionarry reformulation of solar wi-fi transmission! See for more knowledge on solarwifitransmission-reformulate.cn!

It's fake because the Chinese "transmission" is all wrong, it's the transmission of a car, not the transmission of electromagnetic waves. When I saw it, I was sure Dilaton wrote it. But in the email dimension10 says he wrote it. Who the heck wrote this nonsense? Who knew about it? Also, are we living in a tawdry novel?

Comments

The spam is fake, and Dim10 says he wrote it. I can't imagine anyone writing fake spam, it's the most elaborate ridiculousness I have ever seen, but there it is. Stop downvoting it and answer the question please. The question "who faked this spam?" is four words that I am sure have never been strung together in this precise order in the entire history of the English language.

Answer 1

What? I didn't "show any admins in a "byzantine plot"".

The answer to your question can be found here. The spam comment is not fake, it was certainly real. Unfortunately, nobody remembers the exact comment, but it did contain the words "reformulation", "revolutionarry" (with the mis-spelling), something about "see more knowledge", the same url, and chinese characters which translated to "transmission" on Google Translate.

Yes, the original post forgot to mention that the exact phrasing of the comment is forgotten, so I edited it in (but not after you "pointed it out", maybe after you read it, in fact, you "pointed it out" only after I told you about it).

Edit: Here's the email discussion Ron talks about, in brief, if anyone wants to judge for themselves:

polarkernel - Is it a lie that it was really the spam filter which deleted the comments of VK? If not, do you have the actual spam comment that "reformulation" mention with you?

me - No, it was certainly the spam filter. I remember having placed "reformulation" in the censored words box myself, alongside the url (...), some chinese characters translating to transmission, and the funny word "revolutionarry". Do you or Dilaton have a copy of the exact comment?

Dilaton - Nope : ( I only have vague memories of it

me - Piecing together what I recall, the comment would have looked something like this: blablabla. @polarkernel You should include this in your answer. I will mention that reformulation was in the spam filter (I added it), because Ron doesn't trust Dilaton or you for some reason.

It wasn't dishonest, at least there was no intention of it being dishonest. I think Ron is simply over-reading it, that there was some "byzantine plan".

Admittedly, I probably used words like "fake" which triggered off Ron's "dishonest alarm". But seriously, if I were dishonest, would I have forwarded it to Ron?

Comments

Are those emails actually real? You say things like "ok, I'm the only one Ron trusts, so I'll say this and that" and so on and so on. What part of TELL THE TRUTH BLUNTLY is lost on you people? Are you even pretending to be physicists? This type of honesty is second-nature to all physicists, how can you possibly write a fake spam? So your answer to "I am worried this spam filter was manipulated with" was to justify it by writing fake spam? That's going to built trust!

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@RonMaimon All I said was that it's better if I mention that it was added to the spam filter, because you'd get extremely cynical if Dilaton talks about it or someone.

It wasn't fake spam.

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@dimension10: You LIAR. Of course it is fake spam, there is no way in hell that a chinese speaker could write that. You used GOOGLE TRANSLATE to put a chinese phrase in there, then added the word "reformulation" going by a vague memory of a spam that no longer exists. Then you pretend this spam is authentic and verbatim, and when I catch you lying (requring the services of one native Chinese speaker), you say "not exactly, it was something like this, also it wasn't me who added reformulation....".

The lying was not incidental. I asked the question "what was the exact spam filter that caught reformulation", because I suspected that someone just added "reformulation" to the spam filter to get rid of Vladimir's posts. So your response is to write a fake spam, then tell polarkernel to post it as if it were authentic and verbatim, and then to claim that you yourself put the word "reformulation" in there, not Dilaton, because I trust you and not Dilaton? Don't you see that this is the worst kind of lie? You were right that I trusted you, because this incident is exactly and precisely the first time you lied. It's also the most appaling, most amateurish, and most damaging lie, because you got Polarkernel to help.

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@RonMaimon I remember adding "reformulation" alongside the other phrases such as the url very well. As I said, there was a Chinese phrase in the comment, and it google-translated to "transmission", so the phrase in the comment is a reconstruction, that's all. You're over-reading - I was just explaining why "transmission" translates incorrectly.

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When you write you own fake-ass spam, you need to say you wrote your own fake-ass spam, and that you it looked "something like this". Also, how the original spam message came to be is the subject of contention, as it could have just been reported to you as containing "reformulation", and you could have seen it, maybe not. But your credibility is totally shot as far as I'm concerned, I only trust pathological truth-tellers. Regarding your fabrication, "see more knowledge" is Chinese-English grammar error, and I can believe was in the original post. Your chosen phrase "see for more knowledge" is a Euro-English error (because of the extra "for") which is typical of whatever Euro-language Dilaton speaks. I thought it was Dilaton because of the extra "for", and I might not have caught it if you had omitted the "for". Just a heads up for the next time you want to fake some spam.
 

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@RonMaimon As I said, some emails were missed from my forwarding, and I've already stated them to you. You misinterpreted the "put reformulation in the censored words field" comment, too. As I said, it was really me who added it there, but I should be the one admitting that I put it there, and not polarkernel directly in the answer, because you would get cynical if polarkernel or Dilaton did so.

PolarKernel's answer is still completely true.

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Polarkernel's message was a LIE, when it was originally posted, because it contained this FAKE ASS CHINESE SPAM that YOU WROTE, in a big box, with NO WARNING, NO CAVEAT, and NO HINT that it was any sort of reconstruction or reinvention, or reimagining from memory. It was simply matter-of-factly presented as if it were text dug out of an archive or an old email.

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Now you are lying about the timeline. I pointed out that the thing was a lie right a few hours after I read the stupid post and downvoted it (because it was obviously a lie).

You had the balls to write a long first comment there which ended with "Edit: Just got a downvote on this. @RonMaimon I'm assuming this is you, and this is quite stupid; what's the downvote supposed to mean? That I didn't add the words? That I shouldn't have? That it wasn't me? That it wasn't foolish? That I'm not a moderator? That the comment wasn't spam? That it wasn't accidental? That "reformulation" is not a word? Or that you'd like to downvote anything that comes from Dilaton, me, and polarkernel? Seems that the latter is the most likely."

The downvote meant that I could see the spam was fake in 10 seconds. You didn't say anything at all about it until I responded to you with "This is fake spam", then I got a string of elaborate discussions regarding hoaxing this spam, and discussing about who I would trust most to say did it. Great trust-building exercize, now the whole team is busted.

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@RonMaimon Do you mean the first accusation? I thought you were talking about the email to me, my bad - anyway, the edit was uncorrelated with your comment, but of course I have no way of convincing you.

I didn't even take that first comment you wrote seriously (spam is seldom coherent after all).

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@dimension10: Can't you see how bad this looks from my point of view? The post had spam in a box, claimed to be authentic. I could see it was fake, but I thought I would look crazy if I write "this spam is fake", so I investigated the Chinese (with the help of my wife), found compelling evidence, and wrote "this is not real spam" in the comments. Even still, I suspected I must have gone crazy, as WHO THE HELL WOULD WRITE FAKE SPAM?

Then I pointed out the deductions that lead me to this, and then, a little later, you add "this is not the actual spam" to the post silently (so that nobody can see you edited it), and I get a bunch of emails revealing that you actually wrote the fake spam, and that you all discussed what spam would convince me best, and who should take responsibility for claiming to add the word "reformulation" so as to convince me best.

I am sorry Dimension10, it isn't credible, you are lying to yourself, which is worse than lying to me, because when you start lying to yourself, you can't ever catch or correct the lie.

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@RonMaimon The silent edit button was checked by accident, sorry for that.

I suppose I understand how bad and dishonest it looks to you (especially because I incorrectly used words like "fake" in the emails, and more importantly because some emails were just missed out), but I'm not lying, to you, to myself, or whoever (I know there's no way I can convince you of this). The spam was not fake, I got out whatever I could recall from the real comment.

Actually, the "box" (quote boxes) were added by me to the answer, a little before adding that it's reconstructed.

(I'm not the downvoter)

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Since you are paraphrasing the discussion, I would prefer if you just posted it in its entirety. The most innocent parts are approximately what you said, but there was more--- in particular the discussion of how to edit the spam-filter keywords "in case he checks" (he meaning me), who should take credit for the insertion ("I'll do it, I'm the only one he trusts..."), and which chinese phrase to use ("I added this chinese from google translate..."). Since I had just managed to deduce myself that the phrase was gotten from google translate (somewhat laboriously, as it was the traditional character-set and the default is simplified), I thought you were making fun of me for suspecting it was faked. By faking forwarded discussion, which were my worse paranoid fears come true regarding the three of you conspiring together to write a fake spam. I guess not. I guess you three were plotting together deciding what to write to fool me. What a treat.

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@Ron As I've told you, "in case he checks" referred to the fact that I was sure that you'd make the big deal of the fact that there are still some other words in the spam filter (from other spammers). As for the rest, I've replied to that enough.

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All right, my mind is totally at ease, and I'll remove the downvote on your moderation. But next time you coordinate, please include me in your coordination. I am sick of having to figure out what the heck is going on by detective work.

Answer 2

I've got a feeling this spam is connected somehow with physicsoverflow.com. Yes, that site really exists and has nothing to do with this one.

Translate the page into English and it's incoherent jibberish in the style of the spam message, although that might be a quirk of the translation software itself, but I doubt it. We really need to be asking who owns this other site, and why did they set it up in the first place?

Comments

But physicsoverflow.com is in Japanese, not Chinese.

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@dimension10 hmm, good point; could be just a bizarre coincidence then. The site was created 28/4/14; when was the first Chinese spam email received?

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@physicsnewbie I don't remember when it's from... I'm pretty sure that physicsoverflow.com existed before 28/4/2014, I remember it was already present when we were discussing the creation of this site on TRF.