1. Here the person's identity is essential to the story.

2. Lat contacted him and gave him the opportunity to comment.

3. This post simply combines two pieces of public information: (a) Wikiscanner and (b) Wachtell bios.

4. Nothing in this post is defamatory (contrary to some of the summer associate stories, IF you included names).

I don't see the problem here.

There may also be a "summer associates are different" rule at work - a sense that SAs aren't "grown-ups" yet. It would be like the justice system treating juveniles differently from adults.

Lat has included the names of "real" or full-time associates who have done notable things. E.g., Maury Saiger (the Stroock guy), the Orrick guy, Emily Pataki, etc.

Slow news day eh? I will admit that I never had heard about this wiki scanner thing (not that I really care though).

3:38, does that mean that if Lat sends [J.N.] an email asking him if he was in a homosexual relationship with Aaron Charney and Joshua doesn't respond within a few hours (perhaps because he thinks it's a ridiculous question), Lat can post that it's possible based on some remote connection (like having served as his real estate broker) that [J.N.] may not only be gay, but have been involved with Aaron Charney? Wouldn't it be great if tipsters started sending Lat emails saying, "I think I know who 3:38 PM is based on x, y, and z," and then Lat did posts based on those tips as well?

As for the defamatory nature of the post, it does make the "outed" associate seem like someone who spends his days more focused on correcting Wikipedia entries than billing away, which is probably not a good thing at a place like Wachtell. I would argue that the person who uses Wikiscanner and then spends time trying to figure out who has made various changes to Wikipedia articles comes off as a bigger tool than the guy who made the changes, but that person seems to prefer to remain anonymous. Why would he or she care if nothing in this post is defamatory?

Damnit, I really miss the days when wikipedia wasn't a household name. I remember falling in love with the site in '02, when you could trust that the people who would have a vested interest in the site had no awareness of its existence. Within two years, it'll be impossible to get untainted information on anything. That's one of my primary Internet fears... Go EFF!

4:34 = [J.N.]

(Lat, check the IP address.)

4:34, you need to lighten up. The tipster's suggestion is not a bad guess based on the circumstantial evidence. It is not as random as the Noble Black/Aaron Charney speculation.

anyone seen the weird blog that idolizes Marty Lipton? really odd but very funny too. wasted a few hours reading it the other day.

www.poison-pill.blogspot.com

It doesn't take "a few hours" to write Lat an email saying "I did not make the Wikipedia edits you mention."

(Not that it's a big deal if he did. This is just the typical random, funny, trivial stuff you'd expect to see on a site like ATL.)

I read the Marty Lipton Blog. It's completely outrageous. Do you think those guys are going to get shutdown?

www.poison-pill.blogspot.com

Anon2, of course it doesn't take a few hours to write a short response to an email. My point was that this guy wasn't obligated to drop everything he was doing to immediately respond to Lat's email.

Perhaps I was overly fired-up earlier today, but as someone who has read ATL every day for almost a year, I don't understand the current schizophrenia regarding deleting posts and closing threads to protect some people vs. stretching to get other posts by stringing together circumstantial evidence.

Stop trolling for that website. A couple of the first jokes were funny, but then it gets really old, really quickly. Move past the poison pill gag.

(BTW, this is a poor rip off of the "Bill Brasky" bit from SNL and there is at least one poorly constructed rip-off of the Simpsons there. Be more creative!)

Re: 3:38 - (poster who was trying to defend naming of alleged associate posting to wikipedia.)

It does not appear that the identity of this associate -assuming it is even correct- was crucial to the actual original story (i.e., WLRK may be using wikipedia as a means to advertise indirectly), and it appears that the associate's identity was not revealed in the referenced blog- at least not when I looked.

It was simply not necessary to include the potentially identifying specific information.

This is not journalism. Lat was a tool for a thinly veiled attempt to besmirch a good young attorney's professional reputation. At best, the tipster acted out of general mean-spiritedness or jealousy. At worst, this is a "hatchet-job" by someone with an axe to grind -- either way, the tipster (apparently correctly) counted on Lat to be his dependable flak.

There was nothing inappropriate or otherwise amusing in Naftalis's Wikipedia entries. The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit entries related to concepts, people or institutions with which they are familiar, and Naftalis's use of Wikipedia was exactly in line with the site's informative purpose.

This is to be contrasted with liberal lawyers who use Wikipedia to demonize conservative intellectuals that they dislike like Ann Coulter. Needless to say, that is an unproductive (though unsurprising) use of the site.

And, also unsurprising is the case of the New York Times reporter(s) who wrote profanities in the Wikipedia entries for President Bush, among others:

See http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/08/018249.php

There was nothing inappropriate or otherwise amusing in Naftalis's Wikipedia entries. The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit entries on concepts, people or institutions with which they are familiar, and Naftalis's use of Wikipedia was in line with the website's informative purpose.

This is to be contrasted, of course, with liberal lawyers using Wikipedia to vilify conservative intellectuals like Coulter, which is clearly an unproductive (though not surprising) use of the website.

Another more interesting (though also unsurprising) example would be that of the New York Times reporter(s) who wrote profanities in the Wikipedia entries for President Bush, among others.

See http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/08/018249.php

There was nothing inappropriate or otherwise amusing in Naftalis's Wikipedia entries. The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit entries on concepts, people or institutions with which they are familiar, and Naftalis's use of Wikipedia was in line with the website's informative purpose.

This is to be contrasted, of course, with liberal lawyers using Wikipedia to vilify conservative intellectuals like Coulter, which is clearly an unproductive (though not surprising) use of the website.

Another more interesting (though also unsurprising) example would be that of the New York Times reporter(s) who wrote profanities in the Wikipedia entries for President Bush, among others.

See http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/08/018249.php

Good for Josh for standing up for his Dad. I would have done the same were my Dad's profile on Wikipedia.

(And no, I'm not Josh, although I did go to college with him. Guess we all now know that there is no expectation of privacy when making Wikipedia entries; Josh doesn't deserve to be skewered for being the example that taught the rest of us our lesson.)

The item makes no sense without the associate's name. If edits to Gary Naftalis's Wikipedia entry are being made from a Wachtell computer, it's funny (and cute and endearing) to speculate they were made by his son.

If another blogger (Eric Turkewitz) is accusing Wachtell as a firm of making these edits, it's exonerating to the firm (and relevant to the post) to point out that they might simply have been made by a single associate acting alone (and not by anyone in firm management).

11:32 - I just read through this and went and read over the wiki changes. I agree that its rough treatment that your friend got called out for this. But if his dad were someone controversial, I could understand him "standing up for him." But his dad is by all accounts a well-respected lawyer. The edits to the wikipedia pages your friend made were largely incredibly petty; he wasn't fact checking, he was puffing his father. Also, Kramer Levin is a competing firm. I question why your friend Josh needed to add to wikipedia's entries about that firm. What does he care. And the edits about his private school being prestigious is just embarassing. If Josh is a good guy, who just made a mistake a vanity, I think everyone should give him the benefit of the doubt, because this is pretty embarassing. But if he is someone who trades on his father's name and reputation, then this is awkward. Does he have a reputation as "Gary Naftalis' son" or does he do his best to play that down and make his own mark. If it is the second, then maybe this is his outlet for having a famous father. I don't know what the deal is here, but three things are apparent to me (1) [J.N.] more likely than not made these wikipedia changes from a Wachtell computer; (2) these changes are likely embarassing to him; and (3) he is taking it on the chin for this (when others have probably done the same; he is just the notable). The answer I can't figure out is whether he deserves the abuse. I guess it depends on what kind of guy he is. If he a decent guy, I feel for him. He can't be more than a very junior associate and this can't been good at a place like Wachtell that values humility and discretion.

You've got to take it easy with "outing" people, Lat. I think that ATL has enough credibility at this point that there's no need for you to go into specifics when not necessary. Perhaps the test should whether someone's future within the legal community will be compromised. Yeah, I found this latest bit entertaining, but I'd rather not learn it from ATL if it means that Naftalis' job security at Wachtell becomes in any way endangered.

I doubt his job security with Wachtell will be in jeopardy. I would be suprised if anyone there even knows about this. I think everyone needs to relax a little bit. This was just a funny anendote at the expense of someone who is a quasi-legal celebrity (he at least is from legal celebrity parentage, a point his wiki edits make clear). He'll be just fine and hopefully laughing about being "outed" as a compulsive wikipedier. Much worse things to be outed for.

12:16 -- "...Kramer Levin is a competing firm. I question why your friend Josh needed to add to wikipedia's entries about that firm."

The obvious answer to your 'question' is that Gary Naftalis is a rather prominent partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP. The changes were not denigrating to Kramer Levin in any way. Most of them were cleanup comments, and contributed to the quality of his article.

It is not "outing" people to point out two publicly available facts: (1) edits to Gary Naftalis's Wikipedia bio were made from a Wachtell computer, and (2) Gary Naftalis's son works at Wachtell.

The first fact is publicly available on Wikiscanner. The second fact is publicly available on the WLRK website.

So how exactly is this "outing" someone?

That's assuming that the IP addy wasn't spoofed...

Josh is a very low key guy just cleaning up entries - entries personal to him - in the exact same way thousands of other people do. That is the point of Wiki. I think we should all move on. The person who point this out is the "creepy" one.

that should say "pointed".....

Lat, can you tell us if all these pro-dork responses are from WLRK addresses? This Josh guy is a fucking loser. Do some real work and stop screwing around you piece of shit.

What is more telling is that poor Josh was forced to make these changes at his office computer, since, presumably, he is not home long enough to do the same from his personal computer. Had he have just waited for that elusive moment at home, this all would have been avoided. Live in the office, die in the office.

hahaha, columbia alumni are such douches

I'm not a Columbia Law grad, and I wasn't a close friend of Josh's in college. Although I haven't seen him in about 8 years, I did spend a fair amount of time around him way-back-then. And yet, I never knew he had a famous Dad, so perhaps he's just someone who is proud of his Dad (and not someone trying to ride his Dad's reputation). Good for him.

And, to be honest, these types of edits are pretty benign. We're mocking someone for correcting entries relevant to him on Wikipedia? We all have our vices, our stupid little hangups, and our petty ways to pass downtime. (Ok, maybe superstar gunners don't have this, but normal overachievers do.) All things considered, correcting Wikipedia entries is maybe kinda nerdy, yeah, but far more endearing and praiseworthy than how I spend my time. (Oh, my goodness, I shudder to think how people would mock me if they knew that I spent my downtime reading fashion and gossip sites or posting on ATL.) Are we really in the position to mock the kinda nerdy? Is what Josh did really more petty than the tipster who spent the time to track him down?

I think Wikiscanner stinks. Fair enough if they activated the feature for future posts, and warned users that their edits could be monitored by others. But if they lead people to think that they were editing anonymously, only to take away that privacy and expose them after the fact, it's a little unfair (and a lot like Friendster suddenly activating the user-viewfinder a few years ago, which caused all sorts of social trauma for folks who had surreptiously been viewing the pages of their exes and the like). Can you imagine the chaos and harm that would be caused if Lat ever turned on the IPs for these comments???

Lat, I agree that linking to his bio seems unfair given your strict policy about summers. Summers who act like assholes generally do it in public and therefore deserve to have their names made public; people who make random remarks on the internet (like, say, oh, just about all of your readers) do so with a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Seriously, this policy is backwards.

Re 4:03pm Go Trumbul:

Wikipedia edit histories have ALWAYS been available. If you do not edit under a username, the edits are saved under your IP. Everytime you make an "anonymous" edit there is a prominent warning stating that, "You are not currently logged in. While you are free to edit without logging in, your IP address (which can be used to determine the associated network/corporation name) will be recorded publicly, along with the time and date, in this page's edit history. It is sometimes possible for others to identify you with this information. Creating an account will conceal your IP address and provide you with many other benefits. Messages sent to your IP can be viewed on your talkpage."

So it is not "after the fact." It is not unfair.

Wikiscanner is now a third-party service that harvests the information that is and always has been publicly available from Wikipedia. No problem with that!

4:03/Go Trumbul:

re Facebook -- that *totally* happened to me. Although, fortunately, it was my ex who had been looking at my page, and not I who had been looking at his. Score!

Facebook=Friendster, I can't even tell them apart nowadays...

8:26-8:27:

Yeah, you! (I caught an ex's new GF checking out my page . . . but, I had looked at a different ex's new GF's page, so I didn't derive much joy from the whole episode.)

6:46:

Fair enough. I think I only edited a wiki once in my life, so didn't know their policy. Still think it is odd that someone went through the trouble to trace the IP and collect the pages. And still don't like Wikiscanner, which by my understanding allows you to easily trace a single IP's activity across pages (rather than having to work at your stalking by going to random pages, viewing the IP edits, and happening by coincidence to find that one person had edited a variety of different pages). Am very glad that I'm not prestigious or high profile to interest someone enough to track my movements or warrant blogging about (i.e., have a very terrific, but decidedly-not-famous father, don't work at Wachtell, etc.).

At any rate, doubt Josh cares about this episode (if he's even aware of it). I'd just feel like crap if it were me.

Come on defenders. A little nerdiness is endearing. His edits go beyond nerdy to ego feeding and vanity. Adding that his prep school "is one of the most prestigious in the country;" noting that dad was an editor on the Columbia Law Review; changing Kramer Levin from "the law firm" to " the New York City law firm" (a la the Times weddings), adding his dad to a list of famous Columbia law alums - right below Davdi Stern; adding that the Journal called his dad the "Zelig of the white collar bar"; adding and removing that Eric Trump went to High School with him; adding that WLRK takes applicants from Columbia (in addition to the already listed Harvard, Yale, NYU); removing references to Wachtell as an "upstart" and accusing Cravath of defensiveness; deleting Steve Schwarzman as an alum of his high school (?! - hopefully this is because it is factually incorrect and not because Blackstone not been good to WLRK or Kramer Levin, or that Schwarzman doesn't measure up somehow - hah!); adding that "a large percentage of [his high school's] graduates attend Ivy League schools. These are not edits of the nice kind of pride - this is pride in the worst sense. It is shameless self-hype and gross elitism and really unappealing traints. If Tom Wolfe wrote a book about the MySpace age, this could certainly be an episode. I didn't use the guys' full name because I don't want him to be google-ized, but he ought to know that there are better things to do than spending his days letting the world know how prestigious he is.

This all sounds a little trumped up to me. I would bet many people check their own wikipedia entries or those of relatives or close friends. And he happens to be right about the Trinity School - it is an incredibly prestigious New York City high school, with a great track record of sending people to top colleges. Just gettting in there is an accomplishment and he is rightfully proud of that. And it is cool to have famous alums, so what's wrong with playing that up. And he works at the most prestigious and successful law firm in NYC. Clearly this guy has done well for himself, so why fault him for tooting his own horn a bit? Make fun of him know, but watch - one day he will probably become an important SDNY prosecutor and then maybe a judge, or a politician, or a big gun lawyer. This will be long forgotten.

Has anyone been able to discover any firms pumping up the wiki pages of their clients? We should have a thread on this. Also, any other sleuths been able to pinpoint the likely "wiki-editors" at the firms?

PS - After reading this thread, I would guess that the subject of the post (or his immediate friends or family) posted at least 5 posts in these comments. That's my over/under. Thoughts?