It's been five years since my former editor died, and I still can't get over that fact whenever I think of him. I knew him way back in the Steve Saint days of the East County Community Newspapers "mini-chain", before Jay C. Harn bought it out and combined it with the Daily Californian to form The East County Californian....which Harn had to sell because the costs were too high for him; he was also running The Alpine Sun at the same time. Greg was my boss at the EC Californian for about a year before he went back to Idaho, because The Management would not let him design the front page of the paper.
He deserved his own "Mormon Jeb Bush Conservative" newspaper, but actual ownership never seemed to be his goal. He could be an annoying dork, but the world is smaller without him.
VALLE DE ORO COMMUNITY PLANNING GROUP HOLDS MEETING IN AN
ODD LOCATION; SPRING VALLEY CPG CHAIR REVEALS WHY HIS GROUP IS STILL MEETING ON
ZOOM
by Jake Christie
At their last fully staffed meeting
(date?), the Valle de Oro Community Planning Group had a special meeting
at the large but echoey multipurpose room of the Hillsdale Middle School on
Brabham St. in the Rancho San Diego community of unincorporated El Cajon. This
meeting was held in that location due to a holiday cancellation, thus only the
people involved with the various action items on the VDOCPG agenda were present.Too much emphasis on where they meet and you mention this
again at the end. This should be discussed later.The lead paragraph on this story should be
something like, “At its September ___ meeting, the Valle do Oro Community
Planning Group took action on a revitalization plan for Campo Road and proposed
changes to a pickleball court and club, also hearing a county presentation on
local impacts of SB 9, a new state law that makes it easier for most homeowners
to split their lots and build homes to help address the statewide housing
shortage.”Change the headline, too.
This is an example of a meeting that shouldn’t be
covered in chronological order.Instead,
the lead should be whichever was the most controversial item or the one of
broadest public interest, probably the Campo Road plan approval.We need much more detail on what this
includes. In earlier stories by other writers, there was talk of adding a
roundabout, angled street parking, bike lanes, a center median with trees,
connections to a nearby park, new building facades and maybe retail with
residential above up to 3 stories. I don’t know how much of that made it into
the pre-Final draft but to run this story we must have more info.
Then on the SB 9 “change” we need to explain what
SB 9 is. When you say change, do you mean SB 9 requirements for
communities?I have no idea from your
story what changes this planning group area is required to have or what the
whole goal is or any issues.Or what’s a
covenant and what’s the relevance of that?
Before the action items, the floor was opened to Nathan
King from the County, who made a presentation on new guidelines following the Senate
Bill 9 change. Explain for those not familiar with SB
9. These concerned lot design and layout and would not involve historic
homes. VDOCPG member Baillargeon pointed out that the area lacked a covenant. I don’t understand.What’s relevant about a covenant? After a number of questions and
answers, King’s presentation ended and the action items began.
The forthcoming El Pollo Loco at 9714 Campo Road (formerly
Gina’s Treasures) requested a minor deviation to the sign rules so they could
put up a 41 inch tall sign. The Pollo Loco representative, Tim Seaman, got his
approval and left after the papers were stamped.Put
this after all the other issues at the meeting, say something like, “In other
business, the El Pollo Loco on Campo Road was granted a minor deviation to put
up a 41-inch-tall sign.”This should go
after all the other more important issues that the public would care about,
including after the Hub.
Next was Mike Madrid for the “Pre-Final Draft of Campo Road
Corridor Revitalization Specific Plan” concerning the business/rental area of
Casa de Oro. VDOCPG member Herron was
the lead on this issue, and after a long discussion the item was approved.
“People don’t want to go to Casa de Oro,” said VDOCPG member Hermann. Can we please have significantly more details on what the
Campo Road Corridor Revitalization plan, as approved, actually includes?We’ve had other reporters do very lengthy
stories on the early proposals, but I don’t know what’s changed along the way.
People care about this. Shouldn’t this be the lead and title?VALLE DE ORO PLANNING GROUP APPROVES CAMPO
ROAD REVITALIZATION PRE-FINAL DRAFT?
The final issue was a change to the
still-under-construction “The Hub San Diego” pickleball court and club at 9545
Campo Road, formerly the Helix Tennis Club and a short-lived hemp dispensary.
The owners of the all-new site wanted to covert part of it to self-storage or
mini storage. According to a letter drafted by VDOCPG Chair Oday Yousif to the
County Planning Commission: “….the use under the Specific Plan would allow for
the use of as a pickleball club as well as for housing and retail. The Hub
seeks the support of the VDOCPG for an alternative use for the parcel (and
possibly neighboring parcels): self-storage or mini storage…..the [planning
group] appreciates any attempt to improve the parcel, which is an eyesore for
the Casa de Oro Community and for all those who can see the property from the
westbound side of Highway 94.” The letter was approved by the group on
September 13, 2022.
No business was undertaken at the Valle de Oro meeting in
October because the group lacked a quorum.
Add a subheader such as “Why is Valle de Oro holding
live public meetings, while Spring Valley’s planning group is only on Zoom?”
In related news, the Chairman of the Spring Valley
Community Planning Group responded to a question during
the meeting?From ECM via email or
phone?as to why his group was still
meeting on Zoom. He replied that this is mostly due to older members of his CPG
being unwilling to meet in person due to COVID-19, also the Helix Water
District was still not allowing outsiders to use their facilities.
The Valle de Oro Planners have been meeting in the
Community Room of the Rancho San Diego Library,which is
open to the public, but as of press time the Spring Valley Community
Planning Group iss still meeting by Zoom. I think this
paragraph should go above the one above it.I was confused at first and though the Valle de Oro group was still meeting
on Zoom.
Finished variant of story: https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/valle-de-oro-community-planning-group-approves-pre-final-campo-road-revitalization-draft
The
setup was very simple: register under a fake name, take photos and
video claiming to be this person (who is a journalist), conduct fake
interviews, stay as long as I can, then send the information (photos,
videos, notes) back to the guy who requested that I play Secret Squirrel
in the first place, and the whole thing is done.
No such luck.
It began simply;
I had gotten involved with a message board of ex-Wikipedians
(Wikipediocracy) because the allowed discussion of non-Wikipedia online
nonsense, and I had gone through a rough time with Reddit, so I brought
that up. Unfortunately what I didn’t really know about Wikipedia was
that it is an “online dramah” factory, and the people over at the
Wikipediocracy message board were the sort of private email poison pen
types who took to disliking people pretty quick and making certain they
can ban or harass off anybody they didn’t take a shine to. I wasn’t
liked for having a life outside of talking about Wikipedia, for taking
about things in the “offtopics” subforum, etc. My leaving Wikipediocracy
was annoying, and in reprisal I started a blog titled Wikipedia Sucks! (And So Do It’s Critics.)
I had made friends with Eric Barbour* on Wikipediocracy, he had written
a book with Professor Edward Buckner and had this massive treasure
trove of Wiki style articles in a private Wikipedia of all the
miscreants and he would send me info and leads and I would turn
that,plus some minor research angles done by myself, into articles for
the blog.After two and a half years, I had cranked out 80-or-so articles
on Wiki-pedophiles, ban warriors, sockpuppeters, Jimmy Wales’ goofy
attempts to capitalize on Wikipedia, the paid-editor problem**, the war
they had over Scientology articles, the smaller war they had on Lyndon
LaRouche articles and a LaRouche supporter editor, etc. I had guest
writers hammer away at their own targets, and I went off occasionally to
deal with Reddit or Tumblr Nazis (yes,Nazis on Tumblr are a thing) and I
ironically found out that more people are interested in Tumblr
craziness than Wikipedia nonsense, which makes sense because Wikipedia
has lost a large part of its pre-Great Recession luster; a lot of the
edits are now done by programs called ‘bots, many of the old-timers from
the golden period of 2003-2006 have ditched “the Project”, the newer
people are constricted by the binding-but-not-binding reams of online
“WikiLaw” and unwritten custom.
Mr. Barbour had clued me into the then-forthcoming Wikiconference North
America, to be held inside the San Diego public library. Unfortunately,
after I had left Wikipediocracy’s message board and started blogging
the work of Buckner and Barbour, one of the spookier/ultra-paranoid
members, whom we only know as“tarantino” (no capitals) decided that this
writer having a blog and being involved with a message board named
after the blog (I didn’t set up the forum)was juust a little too
much to take,and the scum outed me – my real name, my Wikipediocracy
handle, my blog handle,one of my email addresses. The sysop, a San
Diegan named William Burns (Wikipedia handle “StaniStani”; WO handle
“Zoloft”) did nothing to stop the“leak”, even though I was no longer a
member, or in contact with his group.Thus I had the problem of showing
up to this conference….but as whom? I kicked around being Greg
Eichelberger, a former editor when I worked at The East County Californian, the El Cajon-based successor of the venerable Daily Californian.
The only trick was that Eichelberger was hip-deep in the Mormon
hinterlands and would have no reason to drive or fly 3,000 - 4,000 miles
to a Wikipedia conference in a county he was sick of. And so I came to
Joe Naiman, presently a writer at ECC, which was the worst mistake I could make.
Joe Naiman and I had worked at Steve Saint’s East County Community
Newspapers chain in the mid-90s; Saint though that Joe was good at
covering water district board meetings and Santee little league baseball
games, but he found Joe’s attempts at doing restaurant reviews comical
because he focused more on the silverware and wall decor then the actual
food. I think Naiman is an extremely hard worker (he writes for three
or four small news publications) , but blinkered; he lives with his
brother and yet gets around by public transportation and bumming rides
even though his sibling has a car! Not that he can drive it; the guy
doesn’t have a driver’s license! The good thing was that Naiman and I
resemble each other (if you have bad vision and are looking at an ID
photo of either of us without your glasses); Caucasian, dark hair, dark
eyes, he has a beard but I don’t (and I could explain away any
differences by saying I had shaved it off). I both left answering
machine messages and an email outlining the plan with Naiman, but he
never wrote back. I decided to continue the ruse anyway; I set up a fake
email account, and Eric Barbour (via a cut-out) sent Eventbrite the $25
to cover the full event.
Saturday, October 8.
I could have showed up at the Balboa Park meet they had on Friday, but I
was busy. Instead I showed up at the library after lunch that day, only
to find after I had parked in the basement that the front patio was
empty of people wearing Wikiconference lanyards. I tried to take along
shot photo, sans flash, of a Wikipedia speech in a ground-floor
conference room by the bookstore but the lighting conditions (high
contrast) made the photo a blur. After that, I walked across the
courtyard to the amphitheatre where a large Woman in Grey was signing in
a thin black lady who was wearing“conference semi-formal” clothes: dark
jacket, black slacks, white shirt –which was interesting because it was
a hot weekend and I was sweating wearing a sportcoat and slacks. When
it came to my turn I told the Woman in Grey that I was Joe Naiman, she
fumbled around on the table, “fooling around” with the tablet she was
using for record keeping. She handed over an envelope with the name Joe
Naiman – inside were some stickers, a black lanyard, and a plastic
nametag to hang off the lanyard. She then told me that a person needed
to speak with me. Very quickly the rotund figure of James Alexander
appeared wearing jeans and a red-white-blue tartan shirt. Unfortunately
the “hidden” pen-camera I had in the front jacket pocket hadn’t come on
when I mashed the RECORD-STOP button so I have no recording of our
conversation, but it went something like this:
Him:We know you are J--e C---e and not Joe Naiman, please show your ID.
Me:I am Joe Naiman, and I don’t drive! [True for Naiman, not for me.] There’s been a mistake!
Him:We
have a letter for J--e C---e [white envelope with the name in ballpoint
pen], here is a copy of what is in the envelope [holds out crumpled
sheet saying I was banned and other key things I didn’t completely
read].
Me:I’m not J--e C---e!
Him:[Back to the line of questioning like a good cop.]
Me: [More denials of my name.]
….And
on it went for at least five minutes. All the while a street-looking
guy tried to defend me, with Alexander ignoring him completely. Man’s
name is Paul Rollins and he’s allegedly on Facebook. His photo is on my
blog.
Pretty
much Alexander (in the strongest possible unspoken way) did not want me
to go into the library, but I told him I was going in anyway and thus
the Great Chase began….. Wikiconference North America had a small number
of Redshirts ,docents/unarmed security guards/general flunkies each
wearing black pants and the red Wikiconference t-shirts. I saw three
Redshirts: the Filipino (?) guy whose name I never got, the older blonde
Sydney Poore (“FloNight” on Wikipedia;she hails from Kentucky), and the
brunette Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight. They chased me from floor to
floor, trying to get me into a corner where they could“force” me to get
into a down elevator and out of the building.Along the way I noticed
some of the Wikiconference attendees: the boyish Caucasian man with
Downs Syndrome happily flipping through a smartphone, his lanyard
signature unreadable; the wandering gangs of rail-thin Indian startup
hipsters, all wearing the same dark t-shirts, jeans, and beards; the
greybeards who seemedaloof from all of it. Finally I went to the top and
went into the Wangenheim “Room” where I ran into Paul S. Wilson, aka
“Paulscrawl” prepping for his presentation that day. I kept on saying
that I was Joe Naiman and that there had been a mistake. He was
completely baffled by the response of the organizers to keep me from
attending the conference. After a short conversation he excused himself
to return to his presentation prep. I decided to sit down at a table
across from the Wangenheim collection and shoot photos with the camera
sitting on top of my backpack. Nobody cared because it was a mixed crowd
of civilians and Wikipedians. I got to see Karen Ingraffea
(“Fluffernutter”) in the flesh,and the event organizer Kirill Lokshin
hit the roof with the two female Redshirts after the Filipino Redshirt
left (he called them on his cell phone.)Lokshin said nothing, just gave
me that “you’re ruining things, please get the hell out” look Eastern
Europeans seem to have gotten down to an art form. When one of the
Redshirts asked for ID, I took out their plastic badge with Naiman’s
name on it, and Syndey Poore grimaced. I switched sides and took more
photos,then left the floor.
Every time I moved floors they followed me, Mz. Poore constantly
pleaded “Sir, please follow us to the lobby.” I ignored her, kept on
trying to find more vantage points inside the building to take photos of
Wikipedians. It didn’t work very well. Also I was on a time deadline; I
only had about two hours before I had to start paying for parking,so I
was running around like a madman. Remember that this was a public
library I was being chased around in; it was a space they didn’t own in a
town they didn’t have an office in – it is my town and my taxes paid
for the library! Atone point I misplaced the camera and had to run two
floors up to get it back. It was a hot sweaty grind running and taking
photos.
Finally I figured that I had done what I could so I let them escort me
to the lobby in an elevator filled with Wikipedians suffering halitosis.
On the ground floor Poore and Stephenson-Goodnight told me to wait….and
Kirill Lokshin stormed up with James Alexander in tow. Kirill tried to
“forehead press” me by taking his head and trying to press it against my
forehead so he could menacingly state into my eyes and close range***,
but I was wearing a baseball cap and he mashed his forehead into the
brim. I was sarcastic the whole time while Lokshin was furious, and
Alexander dour-faced. I can’t remember what I said, but they wanted me
to LEAVE IMMEDIATELY and claimed they were “close to calling the police”
even though there was a security guard less than 100 feet away and
Sydney Poole was still there. After a lot of back and forth that I wish I
had on tape they literally walked me to the metal detector like some
Scientologists throwing and undercover reporter out of a special event;
Lokshin and Alexander mad-dog stared at me until I was out the door. As
Poole stalked away I yelled “The money will run out! The VCs [venture
capitalists] and the fanatics will stop giving you people the money!”
Sydney gave me this smug smile and walked away; Lokshin and Alexander
had already faded into the crowd.
While walking to the garage from the outside there was this short man
wearing both suspenders and a belt, bringing to mind that line by Henry
Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West “…the man can’t trust his
own pants!” He was talking to this tall, tall guy dressed in black – of
course that short guy was William“Monty” Burns. I shook his hand and
said “I send greetings from the Man in Hell. I am not him.” Then I
walked off, leaving him perplexed.
I called up Barbour and read the letter, a letter drafted by James
Alexander which bans me from any editing of Wikipedia websites foreign
or domestic, bans me from using the Wikimedia Foundation’s computers,
and bans me from attending any Wiki-meetings in (implied) perpetuity. No mention of Wikipedia Sucks!,
no long list of crimes, no claims that I was this handle or that
sockpuppet – which makes perfect sense, because I never edited Wikipedia
once. On Monday I called Joe Naiman and he was in, which is a
rarity. I asked him if he had told Wikipedia that I was coming and he
said “You went?” Pretty much he was obsessed that I was going to do
something that would ruin his reputation, said “I don’t do undercover
work – you do the undercover work” among other whinges and dodges. I
sarcastically responded “thank you for nothing” and hung up.
Wikipedia
and the Wikimedia Foundation have been around since 2001 – they have
had fifteen years to get their act together concerning awful members,
conferences,and dealing with a hostile press. I don’t think they have
actually had to deal with somebody like me at a conference: a person
whom they denied entrance and yet hung around taking photos for an
intolerable 90 minutes or less. Looking back on it, I think I would have
been better off just showing up as myself, not trying to enter the
conference, taking photos on the sly, and playing dumb if they asked.
That they made such a massive deal about me does not say good things
about the Wikimedia Foundation; I did not disrupt their speeches,
interrogate their guests, or play the showboating activist – all I did
was take pictures.
__________________________________________________________
*
This is the Eric Barbour of Metasonix, the rack-mounted tube distortion
and tube synthesizer company. He got sucked into the wooly world of
Wiki-criticism dealing with the idiot kids editing articles on radio
tubes (British readers call them “valves”) and other technical subjects
Barbour knew something about (he has a degree in Electrical
Engineering). He does not suffer fools gladly, unless they are buying
his equipment. In bulk.
**One
of the many “crimes” on Wikipedia is to edit articles, usually articles
on corporations or the biographies of famous/”notable” people, for pay
as a ghostwriter. Wikipedia critic Greg Kohs has admitted to doing such
editing,while people like Edward R. Fitzgerald have tweaked articles to
the breaking point in order to promote their bosses (in Fitzgerald’s
case it was off-Broadway dancer/choreographer David Gordon of the
Pick-Up Performance Company, which employs Ed Fitzgerald as a stage
manager.) Things that would be thrown out of a real encyclopedia for
crossing lines of notability are included in Wikipedia under the insane
concept that it isn’t a paper encyclopedia. More serious is the issue of
Wiki-pedophiles hanging around the website trying to“groom”
10-year-old-boys and using the image subsite “Commons” for exchanging
child pornography, but the WMF and Wikipedia have been desperately
burying that sordid activity.
***I
wish that stupid pen camera had worked well. I should have turned the
other camera over to video mode, and just let the chips fall where they
may.
This one was rejected because my editor sent somebody else to cover the meeting and was unwilling to warn me.
Valle de Oro Planning Group conducts special meeting on
Estrella County Park improvements
by Jake Christie
On the second day of this year, the Valle de Oro Community Planning Group
heard from two members of the San Diego Department of Planning and Development
Services on the walking park on Estrella Drive overlooking Campo Road. Estrella
County Park slopes off Estrella Drive and is shaped like a rectangle with a
notch cut out of half of the left side; it is literally nothing but a field
with a rough drainage culvert running through itand a couple of signs on the street
announcing that the field below is a park. The Otay Water District room where
the VdOCPG meets was standing room only, but unfortunately this reporter was
there to take video (which was eaten by his computer) and so no notes were
taken. KFMB-TV sent down a cameraman and KFMB reporter Abbie Alford sat in the
audience.
Robert “Bob” Yarris, Chair of the Casa de Oro Alliance group which has
been pushing for improvements along Campo Road, spoke for the project to the
planning group, but only as a member of the public and not as a presenter, and
he also was interviewed by Alford afterwards. The improvements they want to do
to the park will be to put in a walking trail and doing landscaping, but a
major sticking point is that the plans drafted by DPDS did not seem to be
Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) compliant.VdOCPG Chair Karibia Baillargeon asked a
number of questions, but the item was not up for vote, just presentation and
discussion. One of the audience members, an older woman, said she had lived
near the park for decades and was tired of its appearance.
The item will appear before the Spring Valley Community Planning Group on
January 9th at 7pm in the same room, Otay Water District
Headquarters, 2554 Sweetwater Springs Blvd in Spring Valley.
