[WikiEN-l] Trojan admins, is it a real problem?

[jayjg]

On 6/18/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/18/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 6/15/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Trojan admin accounts can do a lot of damage. They can view and copy
> > > deleted material; unblock abusive users; unprotect pages that would be
> > > better left protected; cause endless arguments on AN/I by questioning
> > > other admins; log and hand out conversations on the admins' channel,
> > > and doubtless other things I haven't thought of.
> >
> > With all the talk about this "trojan admin" business, this question
> > has to be asked. Is there any evidence that this is actually happening
> > or has happened? Have any trojan admin accounts been desysopped and
> > blocked? I don't believe that a few idiots bragging about doing this
> > off wiki is real evidence BTW. It's more likely the bragging is either
> > to impress other trolls and/or to get us all paranoid about it.
> >
> > And multiple accounts? A disruptor would have a hard enough time
> > getting one account through all the RFA hoops. However if this really
> > is happening/will happen then it is a serious problem which is why I
> > like the idea of admins identifying themselves to the foundation like
> > checkusers do. Sure it's possible for a troublemaker to get around
> > that too but it would raise the bar for that kind of lamage.
> >
>
> We've had hacked accounts deleting the main page for one.

We also had an admin sockpuppet account un hard-blocking TOR proxies
and then soft blocking so his other sockpuppets could use them. And
somehow Wikitruth has access to every single deleted page on
Wikipedia.