"Lars" == Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se writes:
Lars> Uwe Brauer wrote:
- How can I find out, whether the same user has various accounts
and give the false impression that many users contribute. I presume it must be via the IP (also in case of multi user machines that might be misleading).
Lars> You cannot find this out with technical means. There is a Lars> tool called CheckUser that tries to do this, see Lars> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser
Lars> But access to CheckUser is only available to highly trusted Lars> people, and it never gives 100% accuracy anyway. Many people Lars> can use the same IP address, and one person can use many IP Lars> addresses, especially through anonymous proxies.
I see, that means that I wouldn't necessarily be qualified to use it. Well almost for sure I wouldn't since I have no idea how to become a highly trusted person.
The reason why I am asking is: on some specific wikipedia discussion pages a certain "group" of people seem to come up with almost the identical (and alas not very constructive) arguments. It has been speculated that these users are in fact one user. For me this is not a real problem, tough it is annoying, but it might be real issue when it comes to a possible vote on some decision to be taken. Having the same guy with 5 votes isn't exactly what democracy is about. Anyhow it seems that there is no easy answer.
But it seems that one could ask those trusted users if a certain suspicion exists about misuse of multiple personalities.
Thanks
Uwe Brauer