On 3/17/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/17/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
Hm. As a rule, checkuser doesn't lie.
Checkuser doesn't lie, but results can easily be misinterpreted.
Agreed. Many people still use ISPs that assign IPs dynamically. This is even true for many DSL and Broadband providers. In such cases the only thing a checkuser will tell you is that both accounts in question are (for example) Comcast users in Chicago or Bellsouth DSL users in Birmingham. A few years ago I was blocked for a month. So was every other user in Atlanta whose ISP used Level3 POPs all thanks to some dickhead called alberuni who was also an earthlink subscriber in Atlanta (or another ISP in Atlanta using Level3 POPs) . If someone suspected me of being a sockpuppet of user:alberuni, a checkuser would likely say I was.
I think there have been a number of instances of troublesome users
seizing
on an inaccurate interpretation of checkuser to contest remedies which
are
directed at the troublesome behavior shared by both accounts in question.
If both accounts are making the same kind of trouble...
If user:foo and user:bar are both being wp:dicks, then unless you are 99.998% certain then one is a sock of the other, both should be judged solely on their own dickery. If you accuse one of being a sock of the other and it turns out they are 2 separate dicks, it makes you look like the dick and the dicks look like victims.
A lot of the rants from various unrelated users on this list complaining about being blocked sound exactly alike. I simply cannot tell one from the other. This is partly a function of boredom.
This is interesting though:
"I took the offending admin to WP:AN/I and instigated a WP:RfCU against them. My RfC was closed early for some reason, apparently because I violated WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA, in my edits to WP:BJAODN. But WP:CIVIL is only a guideline, not a policy."
Couldn't it be from an experienced computer user rather than an experienced Wikipedia editor? I asked my son to get an account and edit an article on Wikipedia that needed work. Today he showed me how to do something so embarrassingly newbie that I can't ever admit it--even worse than the four months it took me to find the edit undo button. I said, "oh, you've been editing Wikipedia." Nope, he only used it that one time to edit the article I requested, then forgot all about it, but he learned what was what for the few days he spent editing.
I think Wikipedia administrators are seeing what they want to see when they look at something like this, and at check user. My son grew up on computers. He rebooted his grandmother's op system when he was 7. Learning what all these things are for a user who spends time on the Internet, and is computer savvy, or a computer gamer (like my son), probably does not take months of time.
Still, been editing for 7 months and I probably couldn't write that.
Sometimes I wonder though when I find two editors who occassionally cross my path and seem just like another editor. Today I ran across a new one who reminded me of some other editor, and I found it. Funny, how they appear to have almost cloned each other's users pages.
A quote from User:Nesbit:
Why I do Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an excellent example of how knowledge can be socially constructed. The editing and discussion tools constitute a collaborative knowledge building environment that stands as an alternative model to threaded asynchronous conferences, collaborative annotation systems, blogs, and software development systems.
A quote from User:Sue Rangell:
Why I do Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an excellent example of how knowledge can be socially constructed. The editing and discussion tools constitute a collaborative knowledge building environment that stands as an alternative model to threaded asynchronous conferences, collaborative annotation systems, blogs, and software development systems.
They also are both have a discrete number (less than twelve) of right justified, paragraph spaced rather than continually stacked, user boxes identifying both as native speakers of English, left handed, skeptical of MBTL (whatever that is), users of Mozilla firefox browsers, they both program in Pascal and HTML, and they both may, one day, become self-proclaimed professional procastinators.
As for professional interests, they both have the exact same list:
My professional interests on Wikipedia include:
Cognitive psychology
Concept mapping
Knowledge representation
Educational psychology
Educational technology
Instructional design
Interaction design
Learning object
Multivariate statistics
Meta-analysis
Multimedia
Qualitative psychological research
Self-regulated learning
Among my recreational interests are:
Artificial intelligence
European history
Northumberland
History of technology
History of science
Science fiction
Music theory
Music Synthesizers
Jazz
Computer programming
See, *this* is what I call a sock-puppet.
*Interesting enough, in light of the Essjay scandal, they both claim to be professors or educators at universities*, one a woman in the department of education at DeMoines University (sic), the other a man at a university in Canada. Only the man links to his faculty page, whereas I assume the spelling might be an issue with the woman's link--is there really a DeMoines University?
I've run across a handful of pairs like this on Wikipedia, both active editors, just like these two--Nesbit just editing a few days ago, Sue posting a poorly written snowball of an article to FAC today. They seem more like socks, to me, than the random rantors that pop up on this list every once in a while. They come up in unusual situations, like GA nominations, FAC. Sue Rangell's nomination for FAC was such a poorly written article, ridiculously made into a series of lists, that I wondered what else she had done. Not much considering she only made her user page and first edit a week ago, but has already been giving away barnstars like crazy and getting awards, too.
I suppose there is some obvious explanation for this, so I'll just ask User:Nesbit if User:Sue Rangell is his sock puppet. But like last time I asked this, I just got a denial, although the editor in question did stop supporting him/herself on GA nominations.
Am I missing something? Or is it just that some folks have two Wikipedia accounts and are various things on different accounts (American female educator on one, male Canadian professor on the other)? I suppose if the socks are not misbehaving it's not an issue, so maybe that's why administrators are not commenting upon these.
But check user? Similar whiney rants on this list? It's not like whining requires finese and originality, especially when angry.
KP