re banning people for suggesting Mantan's identity -
We ban people for disruption and seeking to out the identity of pseudonymous WP accounts regardless of who is or is suspected of being on the other side of them.
Mantan and Sammi have both denied publically and privately that they are the same person(s) or that either of them is Gary Weiss.
In looking at this situation, I've considered at times that perhaps they were lying to us, that one or both accounts might be Gary, or that they're someone else but the same someone else. One would have to be an overly trusting idiot to never have the thought cross their mind, if they're paying attention to it.
It's always come down to "They have different voices in talk / discussions" and "Even if one of them is Gary Weiss, are either of them doing anything which would be really bad if it is Weiss?".
So, from time to time, I took a look at that. And always came back with "Well, it's a COI notification violation if one or both are him, but they seem to edit within policy otherwise, so it wouldn't be a big deal if it were".
If we're going to go after people on the mere presumption that they're probably someone we have suspicions about... The list of accounts I've considered for the Duck Test for Bagley's group (basically, anyone editing his POV into [[Overstock.com]] or the related articles) and which pass a first level sniff test is immense. All of them are as credibly associated with that group as Mantan or Sammi are with Weiss.
We can bring down the imperial might of bannination and be rid of both lots equally, sure. We could perma-freeze overstock.com and related articles, denying half of WRs users their levers to remain engaged with WP in the first place.
Consensus has been "Leave them alone".
I still disagree with the consensus that's developing that Sammi and Mantan are necessarily the same person. I've never seen an actual sock IDed that had that range of overlap and yet was consistently able to keep other edit patterns outside the overlap range separate. The timing analysis indicates that they're probably in the same time zone and edit in similar patterns during the day, but a wider analysis of NYC editors would probably turn up more, unrelated editors with similar patterns.
Could it be? Yeah, sure. But we all knew that months ago. We didn't have proof then. We still don't have proof.
Even if you assume the worst case, that they're the same person and that person is Weiss, the consequences in terms of sockpuppet policy violations are fairly minor. Those of you looking at that have come up with some edit patterns across months and months of edits that would be violations, including a couple of double votes I believe. That would fall into the "block the sock indef and short block and warn the main account" category. I and others would be dissapointed in Gary if it turns out that he's Mantan and/or Sammi, given that they've both assured people they aren't, but dissapointment is not actionable. We'd not trust them the same in the future, but they're not in positions of trust on the project anyways.
People seem to have fallen for Bagley's "Big Lie" here, which is that if Mantan == Weiss, then this is a Big Deal, and the evil suppression of Overstock.com on Wikipedia all these years has been due to some sort of malign conspiracy.
Even if Mantan is Weiss, that simply ain't so. Overstock.com's users are not welcome here because of truly gross and disgusting behavior, stalking and harrassment. Despite that we have a NPOV article on the company, the founder, etc.
This was not an edit war in which sides were taken. Trying to simplify it to that is an insult to all the good Wikipedians who have been slandered and stalked and attacked over this.
Bagley throws a good conspiracy theory story, but there isn't any beef.
-george
On Feb 13, 2008 1:34 AM, Cool Hand Luke failure.to.communicate@gmail.com wrote:
Twenty-six editors have agreed with pretty compelling evidence that Samiharris is a sock of Mantanmoreland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Mantanmoreland#O...
Meanwhile, it appears that several prominent users have suspected the real-world identity of Mantanmoreland since September. We've banned accounts for suggesting it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Stop_st...
I've expressed by disappointment elsewhere.
http://www.wikback.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2762#Po...
I hope not to say anything intemperate, but I'm seething and tired at the moment.
My only hope is that something good comes of this. Perhaps we should seriously rethink the concept of pseudonymous editing. At minimum it might be wise if all admins could view IP addresses themselves--this whole allowing-open-proxies-until-we-discover-them policy is an invitation to abuse.
Cool Hand Luke _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l