Gerard Meijssen wrote: Simply using a sockpuppet to circumvent the time limit on a ban should not give rise to the use of this tool. If the sockpuppet edits responsibly he may not even be noticed. In practice they tend to repeat their crimes, and it is this repetition that will give rise to just cause. Simply suspecting that a person is reappearing before expiry of the ban is not enough. A positive correlation will not always be definitive; a negative one will almost certainly exonerate the suspect. In the latter case it should be enough to report back to the claimant that the inquiry found no match, and to do so without providing any further details. Ec

Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: Who blocked him? Why? Based on what? Was this an official decision made by one person, a small group of people, all sysops together, the entire community? If either of the first two, you evidently have natural candidates to form an official blocking group, of whom one might be appropriate to grant access to such an easily-abused tool, no? What, exactly, is the problem, then? Yours, -- James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] Mail: james(a)jdforrester.org | jon(a)eh.org | csvla(a)dcs.warwick.ac.uk IM : (MSN) jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com

James D. Forrester wrote: The decision to block and maintain this long block was done by an official vote on the nl:wikipedia. There are two sides to the argument. *There are some that want to unblock this person. This is possible when the indication that this person and the user that is also a troll are not the same. *Second, this is something that is outside the English language projects, it is a big project, many moderators that requests the use of this analysis. Why can a project as big as the nl:wikipedia not be trusted to request for the execution of this. Why should a substantial group of moderators be denied this ?? The way the nl:wikipedia is ruled is subtly different from the other projects. The nl:wikipedia has proven that it does do a proper job of having a healthy atmosphere. Given the small size of the world population speaking Dutch, we do a great job. Why should this tool not be used in this instance when the object is to allow a person that many are disgusted with to be deblocked sooner because his claim is true that he is not this other troll as well ?? If anything it is in the intrest of this person. If you do not understand this, please deny this reasonable request. If you do understand this, you realise that this a situation where it is in the intrest of the person involved that he is likely NOT to be the same person. This is similar to people in jail who claim to be innocent and are denied a DNA test. You read that this happens a lot in the US justice system. Thanks, GerardM

On Tuesday, April 12, 2005 10:38 PM, wikipedia-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org <> wrote: Yes, I know - I'm trying to help the w:nl community select people to put forward to have access to the tool. "All sysops" is far too broad (indeed, "all bureaucrats" is, too). Thus we must find a singleton (or other very small) set of people trusted sufficiently to be given access to the tool, as it is a very powerful and very easily abused tool and should not be (and will not be) given out wantonly. Am I being confusing? Sorry. Yours, -- James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] Mail: james(a)jdforrester.org | jon(a)eh.org | csvla(a)dcs.warwick.ac.uk IM : (MSN) jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com

With all the talk about stewards ...... I thought the stewardcollection would be expanded in March? Either through election or by Jimbo's choice? Waerth/Walter

Mark Williamson wrote: You are confusing the board elections Mark Waerth/Walter

I don't see what's so wrong with an election, so long as there isn't a chance of a "bad" candidate winning (which of course there always is, but the candidacy can be monitored and chances are such a person won't win an election). While I favour more community involvement in all areas of Wikimedia, I think that matters in the actual projects, such as stewards, new rules, &c, should all be democratically chosen by all Wikimedia-ans (I believe Tim made a page about the difference between people who are Wikipedians, Wiktionarians, Wikibooksians, Wikiquotians, Wikisourcians, Wikispecians, Wikinewsians, Commonsians, and/or Metans and people who are "Wikimedians" - that's why I use the term "Wikimedia-ans" to refer to participants from all projects) and I don't see a real excuse for not having this. (like the understandable excuses for not having democratic votes for all foundation matters) In matters of this sort (I keep wanting to call them "domestic issues"), I believe the old maxim "VOX POPVLI VOX DEI" should apply and that there are no plausible reasons for it not to. The CIVES VICIPAEDIANI should be allowed to decide on such "internal affairs" insofar as their/our decisions do not threaten the continued existance of the Foundation or one of the projects, and do not go against the general philosophies of Wikimedia and the open-source movement in general. But then that is just my opinion. Mark On 4/12/05, Angela &lt;beesley(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

David Gerard wrote: This sounds like a wise approach. Some ultra-zealous vandal chasers are much too quick to jump to conclusions when finding fault. Ec

David Gerard wrote: People who've asked me for sock puppet checks in the past probably know that I'm much more permissive than this. My personal guidelines have been: 1. Only research bad people. The first thing I do when I get a request is to look up the user's contributions and make sure that they have indeed been vandalising. The privacy of good users should be sacrosanct, even if they are using sock puppets. (The exception to this is RFA) 2. Do not give away IP addresses unless it's necessary. In 90% of cases I interpret the IP evidence myself and give the requester a statement such as "yes they are probably the same person" or "they share the same ISP". There are two cases where it is necessary to give away IP addresses. One is where an anonymous (logged-out) user is involved, and a link between the anonymous contributions and the logged-in contributions is required. The other is when there is a desire to make a complaint to the user's ISP. I encourage this course of action in extreme cases, despite the fact that it has never actually worked. There's at least a slight chance that the vandal will see some real-life consequences for their actions, even if it's just a stern phone call from their ISP. I've always been sympathetic to requests for sock puppet checks, because shortly before I got shell access, I was nearly driven crazy by a user with 9 sock puppets, each claiming to be a separate person. Each would demand my attention, make their own arguments and even post bogus real names and addresses to "prove" their identity. All these identities were active in the same week. It's hard to describe how hard this was for me, but suffice to say looking up the guy in the apache logs was the first thing I did when I got shell access. I resolved at that point to try to help anyone who was in a similar situation. Requests to fulfill curiosity might seem gratuitous, but it's amazing how much a simple yes or no can do for the sanity of an embattled Wikipedian. Even if you give them no solid evidence that they can repeat publically, it's still enough to allow them to deal with the problem rationally rather than be overwhelmed with uncertainty. In recent times, the number of requests for sock puppet checks has been rising, and I've had less time on my hands, so I've had to ignore many of them. I'd be very happy if a small group of users, with public logging for oversight, could take over the role that I've been filling. There are many dangers; like Ray says, some people are very quick to jump to conclusions. The danger comes when you present tenuous evidence of sock puppetry as ammunition in an argument -- that should be avoided at all costs. People with checkuser access should be careful to emphasize the uncertain nature of IP evidence. -- Tim Starling

Tim Starling wrote: I think it would help if we could separate these "hard cases" from the everyday spam and edit wars. I predict that sociology and psychology (or psychiatry?) is the next thing in wiki studies, because only now do we have the size of community where these things happen. Has anybody compiled a list of the "worst" cases and how they were dealt with? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

Tony Sidaway said: ..or would if I could! I get a maintenance lock right now. Here's the text: At discretion of arbcom, subject to veto All the gubbins seems to me to be a symptom of our understandable suspicion about abuse of this feature. The best solution to me seems to be to place this feature at the discretion of the arbitration apparatus of each individual Wiki, subject to veto, separately, by the board and Jimbo. Power to flip the appropriate bits to grant or revoke the ability to use this feature should continue to reside with whoever has it now, who as de facto custodian of user privacy would have an absolute veto. Arbcom should also be responsible for ensuring that the feature is used only according to its instructions. The log of all accesses of this feature (when used and by whom) should be public if possible. Further information should not be made available but should be available by a report run by the developers on request of arbcom. User:Tony Sidaway 15:30, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that, for the sort of cases outlined below, CheckUser could be used perhaps if the user themselves specifically said it would be OK. Mark On 28/04/05, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

If the sockpuppet is denying that it is a sockpuppet, it should be willing to give permission, ne? -- Sean Barrett | Q: What is purple and, when thrown against the sean(a)epoptic.com | wall, causes the neighbor's phone to ring? | A: Coincidence.

Phil Boswell stated for the record: No, then we're going to do what we do today. -- Sean Barrett | Deceive the rich, but don't insult them. sean(a)epoptic.com |

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tony Sidaway wrote: But how would we know if they were wrongly accused or not, unless we check? And isn't that already covered by the privacy policy? It's not like they have a right to deny - anyone who edits Wikipedia should realise that they're playing Calvinball, and they're not Calvin - and many other website respect people's privacy far less than Wikipedia does. Anyway, with dynamic IPv4 and proxy servers, an IP can mean very little. AOL users are probably more anonymous than logged in users. - -- Alphax GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis

Gerard Meijssen said: Absolutely. This is why I refer to "the arbitration apparatus" and not specifically to an all-singing all-dancing arbitration committee--I'd be pretty surprised if any other WikiMedia project had reached the stage that it required the miniature court we have on en. Again I agree. At least one person on each Wiki should have the right to grant and revoke the right to use this feature.

The Cunctator wrote: The monobook.js file I'm using (derived from [[User:ABCD/monobook.js]] and [[User:Lupo/monobook.js]] has a Javascript alert for when the Edit Summary is left blank (or doesn't change for section editing). -- Alphax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis

Sj wrote: Hoi, The more restrictions you put into place, the more you will find people reluctant to do something for you. When it is ESSENTIAL that you get specific information, you make it mandatory. But if this summary is a good idea, it is a much better idea to have compulsory license info with digital content. We do not even do that. Pictures without license info are deleted and some wonderfull people do a lot of good work to get this info. The extended descripton box is a lifesaver, it allows you to add these fields during upload time :) Yes, there are perenial proposals and there must a good reason why most of these stay that way. Thanks, GerardM

Actually, I agree that there's no need to make the poor editor's life harder. The latest proposal on the VP was to auto-fill the summary box with some of the text of the edit... perhaps prefaced by a string that makes it clear that it is an auto-summary (so you can still tell it is a 'newbie', if that's what no summary told you before). This simply lets more information about the edit drift up to the RC and history views. This conceptual change is about improving the density of information provided by those views, not about forcing people to do anything. SJ On 5/5/05, Gregory Maxwell &lt;gmaxwell(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- +sj+ _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]

Conceptually, this isn't much different from a summary. say we decide that 8-50 chars is a reasonable default summary length, and add text to shorter summaries. Some simple possible cases: 1) minor edit. one word changed, no summary. summary changed to read "'// word1 --> word2" 2) minor edit. a few words changed, summary 'typos'. summary changed to read "typos // word1 --> word2, word3 --> word4, ..." 3) major edit. a few sentences moved around. summary "rewrite". summary changed to read "rewrite // 'Start of first old changed para...' --> 'New paragraph...' " We could also add ways to see a larger chunk of changed text; this is just a simple suggestion for enhancing the current interface (and the metadata in the database) -- +sj+