Note: there are a few pieces of information that I’ve chosen to redact from this post, out of caution. Mostly, these are URLs that I am not comfortable sharing, at least not yet. When you encounter such a piece of withheld information, you will see a [REDACTED] in its place.

On Saturday, November 15th, I received this email from someone using the name Ovsk Mendov:

Hello, I recently leaked a massive quantity of sensitive information from WMF wikis and am about to release it. More info here: [REDACTED]

Are you interested in covering this?

I responded the next day, suggesting an interview. Ovsk Mendov (yes, it’s an alias, which I’ll discuss more below) sent back an email, agreeing to an interview but making it clear that a video or phone call would not be an option. Only email.

“I wish not to communicate in person,” he wrote.

From there, our emails continued until we reached what I consider to be an interview worth sharing.

But before I share what I learned by emailing with Oskv Mendov, let’s look at what I was able to learn about this mysterious stranger with whom I have begun a correspondence.

Who is Ovsk Mendov?

When I googled ovsk mendov, I found only 7 search results; all appeared related to the person who sent me the email.

The very first of these was a link to the forum Wikipedia Sucks, in which Mendov declares he has been “banned by the WMF,” i.e. blocked from editing Wikipedia (and its partner sites.)

When I looked into the details of the banning of User:OvskMendov1 (the banned account), I saw that it was for “Abusing multiple accounts/block evasion: probably LTA, trolling, no intention to contribute to the project.” Mendov’s signature on Wikipedia Sucks, meanwhile, says he was: “Globally banned” since September 5, 2023 for exposing harassment.”

Probably the weirdest thing I found was his LinkedIn profile, which I’m mostly noting because of how interesting I found it that this guy’s forum alias had a LinkedIn profile. It lists him as residing in Kazakhstan, having zero LinkedIn connections and working a job title called “None” at Wikipedia Sucks.

When I sent him this screenshot and asked him if he created this account, he said he couldn’t remember but that he probably did.

It became clear to me, by reading the few things I could find on Ovsk Mendov and his related aliases and handles (at least the ones I was able to find,) that:

1. Mendov was an alias (something he subsequently confirmed for me) and

2. He has some real beef with Wikipedia, or at least the Wikimedia Foundation (aka the WMF.)

This makes sense, considering his involvement in the Wikipedia Sucks community. Wikipedia Sucks is one of the two biggest forums dedicated to criticism of Wikipedia.

The other is Wikipediocracy, which is criticized by Wikipedia Sucks for being too pro-Wikipedia. This may initially seem ironic, as Wikipediocracy is ostensibly dedicated to Wikipedia criticism.

But while Wikipediocracy is for a mix of Wikipedia haters, skeptics, critics, and many active Wikipedia editors, Wikipedia Sucks is for people who think Wikipedia sucks. Yes, some (or many?) members of Wikipedia Sucks do seem to still edit Wikipedia when they choose to, but it is a fairly anti-Wikipedia forum.

At this point, I should note that I lurk in both Wikipedia Sucks and Wikipediocracy. I’ve read various threads within each of the sites, including ones about this very Substack, and there are times I find myself agreeing with them. I’ve also exchanged emails with forum members from both sites, who I’ve consistently found to be courteous and thoughtful.

But enough with this digression into the two anti-Wikipedia Wikipedia forums. Let’s get into my communications with the person calling himself Ovsk Mendov.

The Interview

The following interview occurred over a period of 6 weeks. Why did it take so long? We were both admittedly busy with some other stuff.

I have simplified this into the questions and answers we exchanged.

Q: You say you “leaked a massive quantity of sensitive information from WMF wikis.” Can you elaborate on what this means

A: This means I leaked deleted and oversight revisions. I cannot give information on how I did this currently.

Q: What do you intend to do with this information?

A: I plan to release it as a publicly searchable site.

Q: What motivated this?

A: The amount of times (and presumably many more that I/the Wikipedia criticism community does not know about) that deletion and oversight have been used to cover things up. These leaks will hopefully shed light on many things and reveal many previously unknown things.

Q: What do you hope that others do with this information?

A: Document and expose Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Q: I looked up the name you emailed me from. What is it that you were blocked for?

A: My story on Wikipedia is far more complicated and goes way back further than that. It’s not very relevant to this though.

Q: Are you still editing Wikipedia under a different alias and IP address or have you accepted the block?

A: I do whatever I want on Wikipedia. I’ve evaded blocks probably thousands of times by now.

Interlude

At this point, Mendov provided me with an FAQ that he had assembled. Here are a few excerpts that jumped out at me the most in it:

• I cannot give precise information currently, but it was done in a 100% legal way. No data breaches or ‘hacks’ occurred… And no copyrights were violated as all data on this was once publicly available on WMF sites, whose content is permissively licensed.

• These leaks contain page revisions that have been expunged from public view on WMF sites.

• As a sidenote, that Wikipediocracy thread - along with much else on that decrepit site - is one of the most idiotic things I have ever read. Nearly ever single post in that thread is severely wrong about something, even when they’re not talking about me.

Remember how I mentioned the feud between the two Wikipedia criticism forums? Yeah. It runs pretty deep. You’ll see more on it below.

Now, back to our questions.

Q: Based on what you’ve written in the FAQs you shared with me, what I saw in the Wikipedia Sucks thread you shared, and this general project, you obviously have beef with Wikipedia, the WMF, or both. Who or what is it in particular that you take issue with? Even if you feel that it’s irrelevant to this current subject, I think it could be enlightening.

A: There’s so much that I’m not really sure where I should begin.

Q: I could see that even if the leaked data was obtained in a legal way, it might still not be legal to have it or share it. Are you concerned about the WMF taking legal action?

A: The WMF could sue me even if it is legal. However, I have minimized this possibility because it would be hard for them to determine who I am. As for why I think it’s legal: All of the content that I am releasing was public at some point and is irrevocably licenced under a creative commons license. And I did not obtain the data using a data breach or stolen credentials.

Q: In terms of how you obtained it, I’m trying to think of ways that could’ve been done legally. I know you don’t want to or can’t go into details, so I’ll have to have my own theories. I’ll ask, and accept if you don’t answer: did an individual provide this data to you?

A: I’m very sorry but I can’t provide any details at the moment as doing so could compromise other operations of mine. I may be able to say in a few months however.

Q: Perhaps I’m getting too far ahead here, but do you intend to share this in a public way? Will the site be indexed on Google or confined to the “dark web”? And do you have a name for this website/project? (Too bad Wikileaks is already taken.)

A: Yes I do intend for it to be a publicly searchable database on the clear web. I did think about the wiki leaks thing too. The name I ended up going with was [REDACTED]

Q: This might be a dumb question, but is Ovsk Mendov your real name?

A: No, it’s one of my pseudonyms. I have different pseudonyms I use on the internet for different activities. This is the one I use for Wikipedia criticism and on politics forums.

Q: In the FAQs you shared, you mention that the posters on Wikipediocracy are generally skeptical or not approving of your actions. For anyone reading this who isn’t familiar with the Wikipediocracy and Wikipedia Sucks communities, would you mind giving your POV on what they each are and the core differences?

A: Well it all started with a much earlier forum called Wikipedia Review in the mid 2000s to very early 2010s. There was a ton of drama surrounding that forum that I can’t remember that well (it’s been a couple years since I’ve been active in Wikipedia criticism), but the important thing to know was that it was mostly dead by the early 2010s and a new forum called Wikipediocracy had appeared.

The problem with Wikipediocracy is that it is seen as essentially seen as selling out to the Wikipedia cabal and becoming essentially an slightly edgier ANI talk page. Many of its users now consist of Wikipedia insiders and admins and it has become more representative of a faction of Wikipedia insiders rather than critics.

Q: Do you see yourself as a Snowden or Assange type of figure?

A: Yes.

Q: Which do you prefer: Snowden or Assange?

A: I’m not sure.

Q: Anything else you want to make sure that I include or mention?

A: Actually there’s one thing you might want to mention. I was able to obtain additional data, but I plan to publish the leaks within a few days now, and processing that additional data proved to be too complicated and computationally expensive to get done soon. I’ve already delayed this project way too many times, so instead I’m going to add that additional data as a future update to the leaks. It mainly covers the last few years, which is where the current data is most lacking.

(The last two questions are from an email on December 29th, meaning we should be seeing this site go live any day now.)

I still do have some questions.

The above is the extent of our interview (not counting a few repetitive questions I dropped for simplicity.) As of now, his site is not live. While he has given me the URL where he intends to publish this information, I am choosing not to share it, as stated above.

(In general, I’m hesitant about providing backlinks to any website, owing to my years spent doing search engine optimization.)

I asked him if he prefers Assange or Snowden and he said he doesn’t have a preference. I personally think the comparison of Mendov to Assange makes more sense. While the stakes themselves are still not clear—as the information within these leaks is unknown and unmined—it’s fairly clear that Mendov is a third party in the style of Assange rather than a whistleblower in the style of Snowden, Manning or Christopher Wylie.

And yes, I have remaining questions. We don’t know how Mendov acquired this information. We don’t know what the information is. We don’t know the veracity of the information. In terms of the information I currently have, this is not a leak but an alleged leak. It’s the idea of a leak.

We also don’t know if there is anything incriminating in this leaked data. Are there any smoking guns? What narratives can be assembled from this leak?

Did someone inside of the WMF leak it to him? Did he guess someone’s password? Find an old server? If it was none of these things, do we even know the veracity of this data? Will they end up talking about this on Fox News or in the New York Times or in the Intercept? What is Mendov’s real name? Does he really live in Kazakhstan?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. The one thing we know for certain is that he has a vendetta against the Wikimedia Foundation. There are many people out there with vendettas against Wikipedia, as I often cover in this newsletter, but what makes Mendov different than a Musk or a Carlson or a random angry internet guy is that he has a deeper level of understanding of the subject. He didn’t just get blocked indefinitely, after all. He got straight-up globally banned by the WMF.

I’ll end this by saying that I expect to write more about this in the future and I welcome more points of view. Reach out to me if you have something to say, whether it’s concerning this (alleged) leak, Wikipedia or the WMF as a whole, the Wikipedia criticism forums, or anything else I might find interesting.

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