-----Original Message----- From: Christiano Moreschi [mailto:moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk] Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 07:05 AM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales
Hm. As a rule, checkuser doesn't lie.
How about hopping back under the bridge?
Moreschi
Checkuser doesn't lie, but results can easily be misinterpreted. 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...
Fred
On 3/17/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Christiano Moreschi [mailto:moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk] Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 07:05 AM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales
Hm. As a rule, checkuser doesn't lie.
How about hopping back under the bridge?
Moreschi
Checkuser doesn't lie, but results can easily be misinterpreted. 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...
Fred
This is why maintaining the integrity of a User name is vital, even after ( a ) the User name is defamed in the Arbitration process; ( b ) the User name becomes identified via e-mail to Wikien-1.
Rob Smith aka User:Nobs01 & User:Nobs02
Am I the only one who sees a pattern to some of these sorts of emails?
First, they start off in Newbie Mode:
"Dear Mr Wales Sir,
I think this is the right email address to use to contact you. It's a bit strange to have to subscribe to receive all emails you get, just to send you one!"
Then, they get a little less newb:
"I started editing your encyclopedia two weeks ago. I have epilepsy and tourette's syndrome and accidentally typed some mild profanities (like 'MARK RYAN IS A DICKHEAD') on the talk pages of several users. Instead of being understanding and comforting me in my time of distress, several of your administrators said I was something called a 'sock puppet', which as I understand it means I've been using multiple accounts. I'm writing to tell you that you can't allow these administrators to do their thing any more, because I didn't do it! I trust you will remove them from their positions immediately."
And then they show their remarkably verbose knowledge of Wikipedia's internal workings, despite only being around for such a limited time:
"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."
Finally, they turn nasty:
"I thought this project was good, but then this happened. I have lost my faith in Wikipedia. I am going to Wikipedia Review, which I have found to be full of exceptionally well-balanced people who all had exactly the same experience as me! I hate Wikipedia now and want it out of my life."
And they say the thing they always say, but never seem to put into action:
"Goodbye."
No? I'm the only person who sees that a lot in emails on this mailing list?
~Mark Ryan
"I started editing your encyclopedia two weeks ago. I have epilepsy and tourette's syndrome and accidentally typed some mild profanities (like 'MARK RYAN IS A DICKHEAD') on the talk pages of several users.
I missed that - tourette's in typed form? Convenient excuse...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Mark Ryan stated for the record:
Am I the only one who sees a pattern to some of these sorts of emails?
No.
The fact that any number of us see his/her/its identity under each new name without the benefit of checkuser, only to have checkuser confirm our intuition is quite telling.
His/her/its continued attempts to get different results from the exact same behavior is most amusing.
- -- Sean Barrett | Striving for ISO 3103 compliance. sean@epoptic.com |
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.
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
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:05:56 -0700, "K P" kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
A quote from User:Nesbit: A quote from User:Sue Rangell:
I will look at their editing patterns, but straight copying of user pages has happened before,
Guy (JzG)
On 3/18/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
A lot of the rants from various unrelated users on this list complaining about being blocked sound exactly alike.
Of course because they all have something in common, they were all, justifiably or otherwise, blocked and they were all pissed off about it.
On 3/18/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/18/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
A lot of the rants from various unrelated users on this list complaining about being blocked sound exactly alike.
Of course because they all have something in common, they were all, justifiably or otherwise, blocked and they were all pissed off about it.
Yeah, Arbcom wrote something under the RfAR for an admin recently, that admins should be above the being pissed off, mostly, I assume, because of something somewhere else, a Wikipedia page where it says exactly what you say: users get ticked off when they're blocked.
A "duh" moment if ever there was one. I do think that's why so many posters sound exactly alike and then get further accused of being sock puppets, they have a DSL line, so it will be easy to find some banned user on the same ISP.
Another duh moment, when I had not thought of the obvious, is that one user is probably simply copying another user! I suspect my other ones were the same, where one user just copied another. It seems so obvious in retrospect, because copying is rampant in this day and age, why would I expect Wikipedia users to be exceptions? (Except of course for the pair involved in the GA fracus who did cut it out.)
Now that I think of it, that's also a good way to learn where to go and how to use Wikipedia quickly, look at the contributions of another editor, and just follow their paths a bit. Which could end up making you sound like the other editor, or a more experienced editor.
Yes, always nice to wake up alerted to the obvious simultaneous with your own obliviousness.
KP
On 3/18/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/18/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/18/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
A lot of the rants from various unrelated users on this list complaining about being blocked sound exactly alike.
Of course because they all have something in common, they were all, justifiably or otherwise, blocked and they were all pissed off about it.
Yeah, Arbcom wrote something under the RfAR for an admin recently, that admins should be above the being pissed off, mostly, I assume, because of something somewhere else, a Wikipedia page where it says exactly what you say: users get ticked off when they're blocked.
A "duh" moment if ever there was one. I do think that's why so many posters sound exactly alike and then get further accused of being sock puppets, they have a DSL line, so it will be easy to find some banned user on the same ISP.
Another duh moment, when I had not thought of the obvious, is that one user is probably simply copying another user! I suspect my other ones were the same, where one user just copied another. It seems so obvious in retrospect, because copying is rampant in this day and age, why would I expect Wikipedia users to be exceptions? (Except of course for the pair involved in the GA fracus who did cut it out.)
Now that I think of it, that's also a good way to learn where to go and how to use Wikipedia quickly, look at the contributions of another editor, and just follow their paths a bit. Which could end up making you sound like the other editor, or a more experienced editor.
Yes, always nice to wake up alerted to the obvious simultaneous with your own obliviousness.
That does happen, and people who think alike in ways often find each other randomly in WP and reinforce each other to some extent (there's another guy whose first name is George who edits on some similar topics to me, but he's in Australia, and I'm in California).
But, if you find two people editing very similarly, particularly the "one is blocked and another one starts up", and checkuser says they're either at the same IP or neighbors, then one has to at least very suspiciously wonder.
If there are abuses of similar sorts going along with both accounts, the odds that it's a sock appear to approach unity.
On 18/03/07, 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.
Well, no, maybe not.
An automatic unthinking comparison of the IPs would probably say you were, if it was done by someone half-asleep*. But one of the reasons there are very few people with checkuser access is to ensure that the ones who are there have sufficient clue to look at the IPs and figure out what they mean, then combine that with editing patterns and so on.
Checkuser raw data is one thing, but the result is based on more than just taking a string of numbers and seeing if any of them are the same...