Happy Anniversary, Judd Bagley!
Good heavens, the time passed so quickly that I almost forgot to mention it. It has been a year since Judd Bagley was hired by Overstock.com to stalk and harass critics of his boss Patrick Byrne.
Think of all that he has accomplished! Why, it is hard to imagine a company that is held in greater contempt by pretty much everyone who writes or even thinks about it. Talk about a public relations triumph.
The cover story for Bagley's hiring was a Wikipedia wanna-be called "Omuse." Bagley said in early June that this pathetic waste of bandwidth was about to come out of beta testing. Well, it hasn't, for the simple reason that very few people are willing to donate their time to writing on some company's wiki. But Omuse is more than just a typical Overstock.com disaster. In fact, there is a definite "Bagleyesque" flair to this particular disaster, as we shall be seeing.
It seems that Bagley has resolved the "no contributors" problem by having an Overstock.com employee write most of the articles. Now, is that Bagleyesque or isn't it? Has that special quality of dishonesty and creepiness that we have come to expect from Bagley.
Below is a list of every single article created by Omuse's dedicated users so far this month. All forty of them. Included are links to the articles.
What makes this list all the more interesting is that virtually all of the non-placeholders (articles with zero content) were copied, word for word, from elsewhere at the Overstock.com website. Note the disclaimer at the bottom of most of the substantive items: "The information in this guide was adapted and used with permission from Overstock.com."
So you have a choice. You can read the Ultimate Guide to Buying Pillows on Omuse, or you can read the Pillows Buying Guide on Overstock.com. Ditto for dozens of other articles on an amazing array of subjects.
The creator of the lovely pillow article is a prolific creator of Overstock-copied articles, "polyhymnia." Of the forty articles, thirty-three were created by this one user! As a matter of fact, if you look at the list, you can see that practically every article that isn't a place-holder was written by this one person.
Polyhmnia was a Greek muse, which gives the name that special little wink-wink Bagleyesque "I'm smarter than you are" touch. All in all, one gets the impression that he or she is.... dare I say it.... an Overstock employee, maybe even Sleazey McSleaze himself.
I am shocked, shocked at that prospect! Why, Judd is far too busy running his antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site, vandalizing Wikipedia under numerous sockpuppets, and contributing to anti-Wikipedia websites, to actually work on Omuse.
Given that Omuse is supposed to be written by nonpaid volunteers, in my opinion it would certainly be deceptive, perhaps even fraudulent, to inflate the page count of Omuse by using paid ringers if that was not clearly disclosed in each item. But hey, they don't call him Sleazey McSleaze for nothing.
Anyway, forty is a nice number, even if inflated. Goodness gracious! Forty in twenty-nine days. Why that's.... that's 1.37 new pages per day. At this rate, Omuse will be as big as Wikipedia in only 83,432 years.
So congratulations, Judd Bagley, and keep up the good work! And you too "polyhymnia," wherever you are (though I can guess).
Here's the list, reduced in size to minimize the waste of band width. The prolific "polyhymnia" "creations" have been put in boldface. Enjoy.
- 15:13, 29 August 2007 Interviewing Techniques (hist) [342 bytes] brainlog (Talk | contribs)
- 04:35, 29 August 2007 Women Helping Women (hist) [212 bytes] Lodgegirl (Talk | contribs)
- 04:17, 28 August 2007 Apple (hist) [5,842 bytes] podango (Talk | contribs)
- 20:43, 27 August 2007 Pearls - The Ultimate Buying Guide (hist) [13,683 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 21:35, 25 August 2007 Photography, General (hist) [159 bytes] humbleme (Talk | contribs)
- 21:06, 24 August 2007 Telescope Buying Guide (hist) [7,860 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 17:46, 24 August 2007 Golf Bag Buying Guide (hist) [4,048 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)'
- 16:16, 24 August 2007 Bicycle Buying Guide (hist) [5,150 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 15:35, 22 August 2007 Music Release Therapy (hist) [241 bytes] dendill (Talk | contribs)
- 23:23, 21 August 2007 New Media Entertainment (hist) [279 bytes] podango (Talk | contribs)
- 11:39, 19 August 2007 Getting A Grip And Holding Tight TKE! (hist) [175 bytes] tke2Talk | contribs)'
- 18:14, 13 August 2007 Precious Metal Jewelry Buying Guide (hist) [14,992 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 21:36, 9 August 2007 Childrens Clothing Buying Guide (hist) [5,583 bytes] polyhymniaTalk | contribs)
- 21:03, 9 August 2007 Treadmill Buying Guide (hist) [5,181 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 17:51, 9 August 2007 Luggage Buying Guide (hist) [5,819 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 17:21, 9 August 2007 Sweater Buying Guide (hist) [5,322 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 21:05, 8 August 2007 Womens Coats Buying Guide (hist) [7,177 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs
- 19:42, 8 August 2007 Womens Shoes Buying Guide (hist) [7,196 bytes] polyhymnia (Talkcontribs)
- 18:34, 8 August 2007 Handbag Buying Guide (hist) [5,532 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)'
- 21:41, 7 August 2007 Area Rug Buying Guide (hist) [5,885 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 22:29, 6 August 2007 Slipcover Buying Guide (hist) [6,106 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs
- 21:58, 6 August 2007 Vacuum Buying Guide (hist) [5,716 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 19:53, 6 August 2007 Faucet Buying Guide (hist) [5,210 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 19:14, 6 August 2007 Cookware Buying Guide (hist) [6,296 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
=What you need to know= - 19:42, 3 August 2007 Dietary Supplements Buying Guide (hist) [6,793 bytes] polyhymniaTalk | contribs)
- 17:38, 3 August 2007 Printer Buying Guide (hist) [4,996 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 17:12, 3 August 2007 Computer Monitor Buying Guide (hist) [5,229 bytes] polyhymniaTalk | contribs
- 16:41, 3 August 2007 Computer Buying Guide (hist) [7,260 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)'
- 16:12, 3 August 2007 Flatware Buying Guide (hist) [3,530 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs) (
- 21:28, 2 August 2007 Ink Cartridge Guide (hist) [7,701 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 20:49, 2 August 2007 Mattress Buying Guide (hist) [6,792 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 18:04, 2 August 2007 Pillows - The Ultimate Buying Guide (hist) [7,516 bytes] polyhymnia
- 17:32, 2 August 2007 Guide To Common Metals Used In Making Jewelry (hist) [4,772 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 16:51, 2 August 2007 Gemstone Treatment Guide (hist) [6,274 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 16:16, 2 August 2007 Characteristics And Care Of Colored Gemstones (hist) [4,764 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 15:48, 2 August 2007 Ring Sizing Guide (hist) [1,172 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 22:10, 1 August 2007 Sheets - The Ultimate Buying Guide (hist) [4,714 bytes] polyhymniaTalk | contribs)
- 18:13, 1 August 2007 Zodiac - Buying Gifts Based On The Recipients Sign (hist) [3,552 bytes] polyhymnia
- 17:18, 1 August 2007 Top 10 Online Security Tips (hist) [4,431 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
- 16:37, 1 August 2007 Sunglasses Buying Guide (hist) [9,433 bytes] polyhymnia (Talk | contribs)
P.S. Patrick Byrne still hasn't responded to Sam Antar's questions about his inventory accounting. No surprise here. Byrne is under SEC investigation, as is Overstock.com. And besides, he just hasn't got the guts.
A veteran Bagley-watcher, the webmaster of the O-Smear blog, adds the follwing comments:One of the things he had been working on recently was recreating deleted edits from Wikipedia. This apparently is supposed to be scandalous. Funny thing is when you check the Omuse edit history of "writerjudd", none of his edits show up!
http://omuse.overstock.com/wiki/...ions/ writerjudd
However, it appears the only thing he has bothered to create was the article about hacking online computer games.
http://omuse.overstock.com/wiki/ ...ltiplayer_Games
What does it say when a new job is created for a guy to develop a system and he himself doesn't bother to use it? Instead, he obsesses over someone else's wiki.
The Omuse usage is even worse than you describe. Most of the recent articles not created by user "polyhymnia" were SPAMs created by user "podango", which is run (in part at least) by an ex co-worker of Bagley.
http://omuse.overstock.com/wiki/...butions/ podango
© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.
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Labels: Judd Bagley, Omuse, Overstock.com
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