On 3 June 2011 22:03, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
Hmm, assuming that el-Reg article is the full extent of the issue, then there seems no reason to demand a global ban. Bad stuff happened on WP with him impersonating real people, that seems to be dealt with. Unless there is anything more, the response seems kosher...
Except other comments indicate this is not the extent of it.
Here is the problem; the el'reg article is a load of rubbish, of little information in relation to *why this person is bad news for the whole of WMF. *My inclination on these matters is, generally, to be harsh and get rid of them. But you're making it very difficult with the vague and meaningless responses to make me, personally, come out and support such an action.
No offence, but.. any of his on-wiki or within-WMF activities should be fine for public knowledge, and I fail to see why the wider majority should be asked to comment or support these actions without running over the basic details.
In case my point isn't obvious *that *is why global bans are probably seeing so much resistance. Secretive shit.
Yes, I am pushing hard here. But this sort of discussion should not be taken lightly; *what sort of activity requires a global ban*?
Tom
(p.s. the signpost link doesn't work for me - if that addresses my above issues then apologies)
What the Register article doesn't go into as much is the harm that this group of sockpuppets did on English Wikipedia and in other projects. They have been used to change the outcome of multiple discussions, including deletion discussions and requests for adminship. The Runcorn (administrator) account unblocked known harmful proxies, softblocked them, and then the sockpuppets used them. He has continued to manage to persuade various administrators and other advanced privilege users on various projects that he has reformed, but because of the negative connotations associated with his former username(s), he needs a new, secret account to contribute, thus creating further sockpuppets that have the patina of protection from respected community members. He has used those "new" accounts to SUL to various projects and send harassing and otherwise inappropriate emails to other users. (We had to go through and block email on all of the English Wikipedia accounts we're aware of because they were originally blocked before that feature was enabled.) He has promised his protectors that he will never run for adminship, and then does so, forcing his protectors to either come clean about what his previous identities are (thus harming the reputation of the protectors) or keeping quiet (creating a time bomb for the project). We will never know what information he gained or how he used it when he had checkuser access; his deception in this area is one of the reasons that the WMF is looking at ways to retain the personal information submitted by "identified" users. His off-wiki activities have focused on harming the personal reputations of various "enemies" on Wikipedia and the other projects. As recently as the beginning of this year, he was still emailing users and insisting that this is all a terrible misunderstanding, and that the accounts really are just a group of girls who know each other and are all separate individuals.
In other words, the initial harm was significant, and the deception has continued unabated to this day.
Risker/Anne