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