Hello
May be these are very trivial question:
- 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).
- How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators, but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or something like this?
Thanks
Uwe Brauer.
1. Install the extension CheckUser (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:CheckUser) and use it. 2. What do you mean? You can ask the sysops to specify it in their user page, and there is the page Special:Listadmins. An administrator can configure his signature in talk pages to show "USERNAME (sysop)", of course, but not in the history pages.
Uwe Brauer wrote:
Hello
May be these are very trivial question:
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).
How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators, but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or something like this?
Thanks
Uwe Brauer.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
"Rotem" == Rotem Liss mail@rotemliss.com writes:
Rotem> 2. Rotem> What do you mean? You can ask the sysops to specify it in their Rotem> user page, and there is the page Special:Listadmins. An Rotem> administrator can configure his signature in talk pages to show Rotem> "USERNAME (sysop)", of course, but not in the history pages.
Well I am asking this because some time ago somebody pointed out to me don't use html structure like blockquote or lists in the discussion list etc. Etc. And it turns out this person was an sysop, which makes his comments more valid than in case it would have been a usual user.
Uwe Brauer
On 4/26/06, Uwe Brauer oub@mat.ucm.es 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).
Only users with access to CheckUser (a very small, trusted group) can check this, and it is only used in limited circumstances. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_Policy
- How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators, but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or something like this?
I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Admins are admins on the whole wiki, not just on individual pages.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
On Apr 25, 2006, at 6:05 AM, 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).
Search on meta for the CheckUser extension - perhaps somebody else could provide you with a direct link.
- How can I find out that someone is a administrator of a specific page? Right there exist a long list of administrators, but couldn't a administrator get a specific signature or something like this?
Not quite sure what you mean - an administrator ('sysop') in on place is a sysop everywhere on the wiki... What are you asking?
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).
You cannot find this out with technical means. There is a tool called CheckUser that tries to do this, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser
But access to CheckUser is only available to highly trusted people, and it never gives 100% accuracy anyway. Many people can use the same IP address, and one person can use many IP addresses, especially through anonymous proxies.
There are people with split personalities that are experts in Greek archaeology when they are Mr Hyde, and experts in hip hop music when they are Dr Jekyll. In order to maintain the illusion, such Wikipedia sock puppets can sometimes vote against each other in Wikipedia opinion polls.
There are also people who have nothing else to do, but are awake 18 hours a day, working 9 hours as Mr Hyde and 9 hours as Dr Jekyll, only leaving 6 hours for sleep. Don't get surprised!
Note that this is not forbidden. As long as Mr Hyde and Dr Jekyll both contribute to articles, this is fine. It only becomes a problem when they enter into conflict with other people.
The only 100% working solution is to get in touch with the people in real life. If they turn up at a meeting or a conference, they can prove whether they are one person or two different ones. If only Mr Hyde shows up, but never Dr Jekyll, you cannot know. Telephone and e-mail are not good enough. Unless you meet them in person, you always have to be in doubt.
You can get quite certain in cases where two characters are more famous, covered by media, etc. For example, I have never met Nelson Mandela or George Bush, but I'm quite sure they are not the same person. If they were indeed the same person, and tried to cover up this secret fact, the effort of this cover-up would be far greater than the benefit. This is not a proof, but an indication based on mathematics and probability. And that's also what you can get from CheckUser. Sometimes that's good enough.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
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).You cannot find this out with technical means. There is a tool called CheckUser that tries to do this, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser
But access to CheckUser is only available to highly trusted people, and it never gives 100% accuracy anyway. Many people can use the same IP address, and one person can use many IP addresses, especially through anonymous proxies.
There are people with split personalities that are experts in Greek archaeology when they are Mr Hyde, and experts in hip hop music when they are Dr Jekyll. In order to maintain the illusion, such Wikipedia sock puppets can sometimes vote against each other in Wikipedia opinion polls.
There are also people who have nothing else to do, but are awake 18 hours a day, working 9 hours as Mr Hyde and 9 hours as Dr Jekyll, only leaving 6 hours for sleep. Don't get surprised!
[snip]
A shared writing style, including the use of characteristic idioms, spelling mistakes and punctuation foibles, is often a dead giveaway in these cases. It's hard to consistently disguise one's writing style over a long period of time without serious effort. This is best spotted by the experienced human eye -- at the moment, there's no automated support for this kind of analysis in MediaWiki.
-- Neil
On 4/26/06, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
A shared writing style, including the use of characteristic idioms, spelling mistakes and punctuation foibles, is often a dead giveaway in these cases. It's hard to consistently disguise one's writing style over a long period of time without serious effort. This is best spotted by the experienced human eye -- at the moment, there's no automated support for this kind of analysis in MediaWiki.
There were some interesting studies that found that a machine learning based system could distinguish male from female authors based solely on the writing style. Maybe this would be a good SoC project for a computer science student?
"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
But it seems that one could ask those trusted users if a certain suspicion exists about misuse of multiple personalities.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_CheckUser
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]
Petr Kadlec wrote:
But it seems that one could ask those trusted users if a certain suspicion exists about misuse of multiple personalities.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_CheckUser
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]] _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Only use RFCU if it is on en.wiki; otherwise, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Request_for_CheckUser_information.
Essjay
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