On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:52:43 +0100, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: Amorrow JB196 Daniel Brandt All left editing for a long time after it became evident that they were utterly unable to work within policy. So it seems your doubts are ill-founded. What is wrong is that in Awbrey's case it prolonged still further the tedious business of trying to get him to stop inserting original research. The average sockpuppet is traceable via IP using CheckUser and other methods, whereas witch hunts require ducking stools and the like. Raphael, I remember you from the Mohammed cartoons argument. You are not stupid, but I believe you are naive. Your post indicates a profound lack of understanding of the people we're discussing and their past history. If you want it all then I guess we can take it offline, because I'm guessing most people here know the back story well enough. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:28:54 +0100, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: Then you can rest assured. Even people who are 100% troublemakers with virtually nothing else to their name are still editing happily right now. Don't be silly. You don't need to be able to do a CheckUser in order to understand how it works, and why. Then do more analysing before pitching into this one again, eh? For example, are you aware that Amorrow was jailed? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Quoting Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>et>: I believe you are missing Guy's point. The point about how distasteful and disgusting the main opponents of Wikipedia in WR are. The point is that Amorrow, Brandt and others have gone and continue to go to do whatever it will take to destroy Wikipedia and that they are willing to harm people in the process. Frankly, if you think that "sides are so thoroughly covered in mud, how can anybody tell the good guys from the bad guys" you haven't been paying much attention. The best analogy I can think of is that if at your superficial glance both are covered in mud, further inspection will show that Brandt, Bagley, Amorrow etc. are covered in feces. The bottom line is that Guy and others are not claiming that we should stoop to their level. Indeed, quite the opposite, they are merely defending the encyclopedia. To see these as the same requires either ignorance of the situation or grotesque levels of moral relativism.

On 11/11/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: It would have been more useful for JzG to have specified what he was jailed for, but I believe it was for stalking and harassment. More to the point, I believe he has been known to stalk Wikipedia editors (real-life stalking, not the wiki-stalking that shows up on AN/I). This is *not* the sort of person who you want on Wikipedia. -- Mark

On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 09:50:50PM +0000, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: I'm worried about the people who get banned, when the only "trouble" they make is sharing the POV of a known troublemaker. IIRC not every "sock" is verified with a CheckUser. Some get blocked for being "obvious" sock-puppets. br -- Raphael

Quoting Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at>at>: Are you saying that you don't trust the people we have doing checkuser? Or that you don't trust Durova and others who are good at picking up subtle signals of socks? The first case, my response is going to be close to "well, too bad. The rest of the community trusts them. If you disagree you need a good reason"- the second case simply doesn't hold water because Durova, Guy and others are always willing to email trusted users their evidence. On multiple occasions I've asked to see copies of Durova's evidence in this sort of situation, and I've always been satisfied. I'm not the only one. The ArbCom itself is capable when necessary of judging the evidence. There are more than enough checks, balances and oversight that it is far closer to science than witchcraft (to use an analogy, just because a random person can't understand the proof to Fermat's Last Theorem doesn't make the proof witchcraft).

Quoting Raphael Wegmann <wegmann(a)psi.co.at>at>: For an example of what this sort of evidence can look like see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Agapetos_an… This isn't an ideal example since it is linking an IP address to someone outside Wikipedia and I didn't know as much about this sort of thing way back in March of 2006 as I know now. And I'm certainly not as good as picking up subtle cues as Durova is. As is I hope apparent in this particular case, the editing patterns extended not just from POV but from a unique intersection of interests as well as some linguistic quirks. Furthermore, even if admins were blocking a specific POV- so what? In order for a POV to look similar to a blocked editor it generally needs to be extreme and with no caring for NPOV. So even if such blocks were occasionally occurring we aren't losing much. Consider for example, some socks of Jason Gastrich we've blocked. At least one of those I think wasn't a Gastrich sock, but it was interested in pretty close to the same thing; spamming and promoting Louisiana Baptist University and whitewashing the article. We didn't lose much for blocking it. Note incidentally, that this isn't the sort of evidence we are talking about above- that sort is almost never wrong. And I've love to discuss this in more detail but I'm not going to do it over an open list. There's no need to give these people any more help.

Quoting Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at>at>: Up to a point. It is a popular misconception that all POVs can function on Wikipedia. There's not much we can do if someone thinks that nothing matters but spreading the TRUTH about how Republicans/Democrats/Communists/Capitalists/Israelis/Palestinians/Zionists/Pacifists/Rosicrucians/Shriners/Atheists /Grandmothers/Gerbils are evil. Certain classes of POVs don't lend themselves to writing a neutral encyclopedia. Not surprisingly, those POVs are generally extreme POVs (there occasion where moderates have the same attitude about their moderate positions but for some reason that seems to come up more rarely).

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:30:04 +0100, Raphael Wegmann <wegmann(a)psi.co.at> wrote: Some of them are not going to be discussed openly. They are known well enough to the people who are working the cases. It's best not to tell some people how they tip their hands. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG