As a CCIE wan-to- be Darby Weaver is a busy one.
by Darby Weaver
His activities include providing help and advice to many upstarts and peers, author, prolific blogging, ferreting out dump sites and the occasional article for the CCIE Flyer. He is a part of an organization that values him so much he seems to always be working (that should sound familiar to CCIEs!). He was instrumental in defending a slandered CCIE last year (I am not using his name here on purpose), but when that CCIE was attacked in an article in Network World Darby lead the charge to get the article retracted and an apology posted.
Darby has been a champion of so many others that I am just wading into his activities and learning more about him. His reputation is strong and widespread. I spoke with Narbik’s students in Dubai last month and several mentioned him. I was recently in Cairo and several of the CCIEs that hosted me at the Egyptian Networkers kick-off meeting/dinner mentioned him. As I have been traveling and meeting Network Academy students I advise them about on-line sites and groups. Darby is one of these folks I mention as a resource for them. Really, I don’t lie about stuff like this, maybe the fish I have caught or the girls I have kissed, but not this!
So recently when I learned that Darby was the object of some on-line shenanigans I was infuriated. The internet is a place devoid of safeguards or any form of quality controls. One new blog is created every thirty seconds and they run the gamut of truth and lies. So I wanted to let you know about this. It has come to my attention that there is a person out there who is/has used Darby’s name and a photo of him to represent themselves as Darby. Yup, real lowlife stuff, huh?! Just like identity theft of your credit, identity theft in the virtual space can cause considerable harm to your reputation. For me it was a blogger who has no scruples or concern for truth (he uses the line “Yours Truly” so often it sounds like a used car salesman’s tag) telling lies about me; once again it was in Network World were truth is not an obstacle for printing content. For Darby it is an ugly scene which involves his credibility and reputation. But boy does it take a long time to clean up the mess. So those of you who are used to following Darby may want to get some popcorn and sit back with a cold one while Darby enters the ring again, but this time to uphold and retain his championship belt er uh reputation. (I get carried away some times!>)
So I called Darby and interrupted his day for a couple of questions.
Q: There is a site called Sadikhov.com where you helped clean up and remove the brain dumps. This activity was a long and time consuming effort. What motivated you to get started with the clean up there?
A: FS, the Site Admin gets all the credit for the cleanup. He said he wanted to clean his forum but wanted to do it kind of slowly. Well one morning someone had accidently deleted the CCNA “I passed” topics and that’s when it really started. I put it back but started cleaning it. It was some 65 pages with over 40 posts per page of very detailed and thorough posts of QA for mostly every questions and many posts showed no shame, the whole gamut was there for the world to see, verify, or rarely pass on by. Imagine 150,000 of your favorite study buddies to compare a limited question bank against, even the labs were not taboo. I’d been on Sadikhov for a while in the CCIE Forum and posting my little diary of my own studies and work activities there and the staff kept it pretty sterile of such nonsense. And NDA violations were simply not acceptable. There had been talk by the staff of moderators about how to actually do this for the rest of the forum. Some liked it and a couple did not like the idea at all.
You have to remember many came to the forum to get the very information we were about to erase.
So there was a massive conflict of interest for a long time. Massive. Well this February, the scales had changed and now FS made a statement some time earlier about the history of Sadikhov and he said his goal from the beginning was to build a forum where people could come to share knowledge… Well they did just that… copyright or NDA or whatever be damned…
What a lot of people might not realize was that over 25% of all of the posts ever made on Sadikhov were deleted and nearly 40% of the 250,000 registered members were removed due to this kind of activity way before this year. It is true. Every member gets a member number when they register with a forum and the numbers are high.
Currently over 150,000 members are registered on Sadikhov and at the time this initiative started there were over 1000+ members and guest visiting the site every single 15 minutes with over 9000 members active at one time as the record for the forum. That’s a lot of foot traffic. Well, FS and I talked, he is very well liked by his staff (only about 12-13 at any time) and he respects their opinions and vantage points. It was becoming clear that he really meant it. He was going to clean Sadikhov. So I used that knowledge and went forth with a huge vacuum cleaner and some bleach…
First, I went after the “I passed” topics in my own forums or Cisco. Then 2 other mods got with the program. T made the announcement and posted it all the forums and CH went forth and started the seemingly hopeless task of cleaning the Microsoft Forums… If Cisco was bad, then Microsoft was pure Hell…. It was Dante’s Inferno… in there.
We caught heat at every turn. We got encouragement from FS, who watched every move carefully. He had a timeline. The first moves were critical to the campaign. Absolutely critical! I led the charge since I figured I was the person who a lot of people know and one that few if any would find fault with. I was right at least initially. I caught hell later on…
Imagine that many of these 150,000+ had no place else to go for Warez, Sharez, Exam Questions, and whatever else – books, video, audio, software… It was a one-stop shop. If you knew what you were looking for…
Well within the first week or two the rest of the team was on board and like Charlemagne’s 12 Paladins… we showed little mercy has we hacked away at the threads and posts that were the old world…
Now nearly two months later, we are all battle-hardened veterans and thousands of the “dumpers” are gone from Sadikhov forever. Some came back as “Trolls” and we sliced them and diced them as fast as they came – few of their posts saw more than a few minutes before the Sadikhovian Knights took them out and banned the offender.
It was like playing whack-a-mole for a while there.
Some started a new forum called certcollection.org where they want to relive the old “glory” of Sadikhov. And that’s where we are headed next.
Q: I know that no good deed goes unpunished. You made friends doing this but what kind of bad press did you receive for this (enemies)?
A: Whew! I got called names… everything from George Bush to whatever, I was cussed and some caused a fuss. We even lost some of our privileged members and ultimately my own name was taken hostage as well as some of the other staff members like “Lord Flasheart, theDarkLord, and Faisal.Saleem and two of our veterans were threatened as well, strange, since either one was a known “Deleter” and rules enforcers with little mercy for those sharing or breaking rules.
We lost a couple of good members and as many as 3 CCIE’s joined the other team. Sad but true. True colors are hard to find. A couple of other well-known CCIE’s and CCIE Candidates also took major offense to this initiative… Ouch! Again stripes on a tiger don’t wash away.
Q: So your identity was pirated by some nefarious blogger bent on deceipt. What do you think his motives are and who is this monster?
A: Deceipt was the trump card of the day. We had our time with this one. One guy goes and registers on the other forum to take a peek and then wears a title of a moderator there. Then they got the idea they could use our own identities against us and add to the mayhem… Remember everyone is online and few members know other members. It’s hard to tell who is who and really hard when some people really play both sides for real. So yes, there are spies and there are counter-spies on both sides and things get strange in the Ether… Deception definitely was a tool employed by all.
The motive was simple. I had the notion of using the card to remove the motivation from the attackers by stripping their “hard-earned” credentials… decertification….
So they countered the blow by using my name on their forum with their words…. Or shares.. Ouch! Clever.
The names are Sadiq Saad, the Site admin of certcollection.org and Shadi (Shady) Hajjar
Q: So certcollection.com has no concern about theft of copyrighted material, identities, training manuals, or text books? What a racket. What do you think should be done with sights like this?
A: Certguard led by Robert Williams and Taylor Ripley are “The Solution” for this. They have been the tip of the spear and deserve a lot of credit for motivation, special weapons, and the generally raising the alarm all across the Internet.
http://www.certguard.com/
I think all moderators of legal forums need to band together to defy these types of forums.
I think every vendor should search their site (certcollection.org) and take responsibility for at the very least reporting their own links to the companies hosting these troves – rapidshare.com, 4-shared, megaupload, and the others.
Q: I am really shocked at this kind of behavior I must tell you. So there is a standoff where the certcollection.org folks are saying they won’t stop pirating your identity unless you support their activities as legitimate in your forums?
A: Um… yes. I asked what would be required for a “Truce”… and they sent their demands:
On March 21st these terms were received: darby
replying on the points 1) the idea of spamming came from not respecting me when i left *** , i requested to delete everything related to my account , EVERYTHING and what im discovering is they use my posts against me now hehe , so in return the spam started , we arent relying on *** to have members , there is more than 100 sites outside there
( no need darby to remove any posts , FS knows that he can delete my user account with all my 10k posts , once this is removed we will do the meant steps from our side , i wana see that *** respects this truce as i trusted it once but unfortunatelly i was just suspended once i left instead of removing all my posts so please handle this , ill log in to *** and note that no posts for me are there , after this is done we can proceed , im sorry if im ruling in this point but this is a must coz it must be done since 7 months from now Smile )
3) we can just post our link in there topsite list page , and this is ok i think ? ( this can be done as FS stated that he can refer to ANY IT FORUM and i think we arent only a dump forum Smile , this will help you folks from your side as well in the following : a) in case somebody requested for dumps , you as folks can refer them to here , and in case somebody wants a pure technical question we will refer to you just a member from your side can chekc the top sites from ur side and know that we have dumps the reason is to minimize the spam on your board as you will notice we will have a big AD here about not to spam your board BUT as i said , some members who will join will refer there friends - if you have a suggestion how to stop that im glad to do that hope this point is clear )
6) no ban for IPs from urside nor from ourside ( again this isnt for me nor for any admin here , its for your forum , how do you want people to surf your board if all of the IPs are banned , anyway this isnt a must as its related to your forum but i prefer to make the knowledge free for all )
PS : any violation , i mean it any violation will break this truce ( you have my words that no breaks will be from ourside i hope non from your side as well )
for now we are preparing the AD , removed the filteration about your site name and informed the advertisers group not to spam your board - ths was done since 3 days btw ! -
are we clear ?
im waiting so far to have my name clear from your side , permenant please
thanks for your coopration in advance and it was nice to work with u Smile
Q: What can my readers do to help you? What can I do?
A: Well at this point the most anyone can do is just start reporting their links to their ill-gotten goods. Report the site to Certification Vendors – the members of the site pas exams and tell their scores and which questions they got… and they even tell you when they took the exam… Hmm? Kill the craving and starve the eyes… empty links are depressing for the hungry pirate’s pirate…
Q: What other details would you like the readers to know about?
A: Umm… I’m not a CCIE just yet…. Not quite.
This battle did not start at Sadikhov.com and it will not end there. At the time of this writing at least one the major torrents site and another internationally large forum in the middle east are also waging site-wide cleanup efforts…
If the certification vendors and exam authors can get on board now more than ever, they can get the upper hand and turn the tide in this never-ending “World War”… and it is truly Global.
Note: They use proxies with ease, have no qualms stealing their member's information like passwords, email accounts, names/identities, and mostly anything else. It has been reported than many of their links are for ziddu and is riddled with very hard to clean malware...
Enter at your own risk and on a sacrificial machine from an obscure location... not your own home or business.
Ethics and morals are not easily found among their virtues.
Wow, I am impressed.
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