On 6/15/05, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Speaking as an arbiter (though not for the entire Committee, who are quite capable of speaking for themselves), I support David's decision. Ms. Halliwell will have to find another way to prove that she isn't a puppeteer (puppetrix?).
But why should the burden be on the user? Can you prove that it's not you who really controls Ms. Halliwell? As you are well aware, there is no way for someone to prove they aren't... Even if they show up at a meetup with people claiming to be the other accounts it's always possible that they didn't start that way.
Lets save the blocks for users who won't discuss and compromise, and save the protects for quelling active revert wars until a decision is made on the talk pages.. Votes made by people without a real contribution history should be discounted accordingly, sockpuppett or not.
We seem to spend a lot of time assigning huge importance to sockpuppets when we really can't do anything about it if the user is really trying... we shouldn't bother..
Oh I know, we'll have a wikisockpuppet test: We will send ninjas to go kill the suspected puppeteer, and if the socks never edit again we'll know we were right!