I want to see what happens if King Jimbo, Queen Slimvirgin, and the Royal Jester Jayjg are checkusered. I really want to see if Jimbo is breaking policy. Yes, the King and his court breaking the ordinances. It is speculated that SlimVirgin is Jayjg, and who knows what Jimbo will turn up. I am also not sure that the claim Jayjg makes about being in New York is correct, either. It would also be okay if Ryulong was done, rather suspicious.

You are allowed to have as many accounts as you want. Unless they don't like you, then you're a sockpuppet. Policy says as much.

Yes, sock puppets aren't illegal. Its only "abusive" sockpuppets that are. Which still doesn't explain why I've got all of these sock puppet accusations against me.

Anyway, Jayjg isn't SlimVirgin, although Jayjg obvious does whatever SlimVirgin asks him to (maybe he thinks she's pretty?). Crum375, on the other hand, does seem to be a sock puppet of SlimVirgin.

This is, I think, backwards. SlimVirgin and Jayjg have some understanding, but I believe Jayjg has the upper hand in that relationship. Crum375 is ... well, I'd have guessed the Wikipedia term would be "meatpuppet", but yeah ...

No, I mean Jimbo, SV, Ryulong, and Jayjg may be using abusive sockpuppets. Who knows? Blissyu2, why are you banned? It seems you were victimised.

There's dangerous misinformation going around about how checkuser works. It's not simply finding out if one IP is used by a bunch of users. It needs details on what kind of IP that is: static, dynamic, proxy, used by a workplace, by a home? If a static IP is shared more than once between several users, even if their regular IPs are seemingly different, it is evidence of sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry - either one is punishable. It's not hard for an expert sockpuppeteer to use seemingly different IPs if they have their hands on some (work proxies, a very dynamic ISP, or wireless internet which changes the IP based on location).

I think it went like this:

Poetlister was banned for being a sock of Newport/Runcorn.

Others like Selina (I think she was involved) and Zordrac (Blissyu2) objected.

Poetlister is freed, but those that defended her were banned and later Poetlister was banned anyway.

Zordrac (Blissyu2's WP account) was banned for a year by ArbCom, but the time expired and he was freed. SlimVirgin reblocked and it is now considered a ban until some administrator is willing to unblock Zordrac (which is unlikely to occur).

I think that's the long and short of it.

I don't see the reason for the ban. Was Poetlister an abusive sock? That is definitely an admin abuse.

Don't know if she was abusive or not, but if you want to blurt out that this was admin abuse then you're basically accusing 5 separate admins of all being in a mass conspiracy against Poetlister. Which to say the least, I think is unlikely. As there were upwards of 5 admins checking and double-checking the checkuser evidence. If any one of them had doubts, this stuff would have never been sent to arbcom, where it ended in unanimity. If Poetlister really was engaged in sockpuppetry I have no clue. There could be some sort of weird explanation to account for all of that. But was the investigation preceding the ban a diligent and precise one? Hell yes.

Obviously, admins never engage in conspiracy against people they don't like. The previous Poetlister block involving SV, JG, Kelly Martin, Mindspillage and David Gerard, based on evidence now utterly discredited, is an excellent example.



Like the previous investigation of Poetlister? Note that unlike say the Oldwindybear case, where there was a request and reply on WP:RFCU, there is no evidence that there was a checkuser.

5 admins in conspiracy together is common. I'd sure 50 in conspiracy together has happened before. If we can get a chatlogger in the admins-only channel we can probably find lots of conspiracies. Someone just needs to gain adminship, then get into that channel, then sit back and do nothing but log.

As for the Runcorn / Poetlister stuff. I don't think they ever gave Poetlister any evidence of it even though she asked for it. In fact, it's quite possible that Poetlister hasn't had an IP similarity between her and the other accounts listed as Runcorn socks. Instead, they more likely claimed she was a sock because her IP was similar five years ago (or whenever it was) but not recently.

Yes, I'd like to challenge ThisismyUsername to show me the evidence - is there even one IP used by both Runcorn and me? Put up or ...

Hahahahahhahahahaahahah

The typical Wikipedia admin has no idea of the meaning of diligent and precise investigation until they are locked up for sharing kiddy porn on emule.

Let's give everyone on Wikipedia the benefit of every possible doubt. What must have happened was:

1. Runcorn was so obsessed with Lists of Jews that he sockpuppeted to help his position. (Unlikely, given how many of his edits are to articles about obscure footballers and other unrelated matters, but still ...) Although an admin, and one who successfully uncovered several sockpuppets, he knew so little about checkuser that he got caught.

2. The checkusers then noted that the most prolific editor of such lists was Newport and that of course Runcorn and Newport are both British towns, hence Runcorn = Newport.

3. Finally, the checkusers noted that Newport had been blocked before, and several others had been blocked at the same time. Even though the evidence against them had been repudiated and they had been unblocked, it was obviously necessary to block them again. In particular, although RachelBrown had never been blocked permanently before and had not edited for many months, it was essential to block her.

Just a note, if done. Do not post a thing in public unless at least another 5-10 or more "new" admins are also loitering in the channel, to make it harder to trace back to whom the whistle blower is.

If something like this comes to pass, all WP users in good standing also need to ensure they always refer to any on-Wiki fussing about "leaks" as whistle blowing, rather than "leaking".

And by you mean finding "evidence of shared IP use"? Kelly Martin may have apologized for being too quick to confirm it without making other investigations, but nobody has denied finding some shared IPs, not only that but a confirmation of the same computer. Now one way to explain this is "friends" editing at eachother's houses. Another is sockpuppetry.



Never in the history of wikipedia has checkuser evidence been released to the public, and I doubt it will start now, so obviously I can't "show" you anything. I can tell you that everyone should be happy that checkuser evidence isn't made public since it contains a lot of private information (not simply IPs, but also user agent information, and possibly direct locations of editing at the workplace or home). Generally for banned users, all checkuser evidence isn't devulged in private either because, as has been the case many times, it gives the banned user an idea of what mistakes they made in trying to keep their sockpuppet accounts untraceable. However, some IP-related information was made public and if I find out exactly what it was, I'll gladly share.

Lies. CheckUser does no such thing. It stores ONLY IP address information, nothing with user agents. That is a standing requests with the devs to get it added as of 1-2 months ago, the last I glanced at that. CheckUser requires you to click on a username, which then divulges all recorded IPs from the recent changes table on Wikipedia (31 days). You can then click on an IP, to see all usernames and edits attached to that IP. It's connect the dots investigation. All the other side stuff is done by digging on info on the said IPs to see what other connections can be made.

Please don't make out CheckUser to be some NSA tool. It's a script to trawl the connections between IP addresses, names, and edits in the recent changes table, and nothing more than that.



No, the information isn't given out simply so that they don't realize their error, nothing more than that. Not to mention that it would be a violation of the privacy policies, which is the real reason it's not given out. Private checkusers however do and have given IP information on users to various non-CheckUser admins, which is a violation of the policy.

The day the Checkuser logs are leaked will be a glorious day, because four of the current CheckUsers are simply fucked when that occurs.

I'm not. I'm merely talking about "CheckUser evidence" which involves all that "side stuff" you mentioned. This is not to give off the impression that it is solely based on a few similar IPs.



Right. Don't know what you meant to say there.



I do think I mentioned "privacy policies." For the instances where they have given information to other admins, well that is unfortunate but pretty much off topic here. There are a few bad apples.



Oh and which four will those be?

What Kelly Martin said is that there had almost certainly been a miscarriage of justice in that case.

Doesn't the privacy policy say that info can be released with the permission of the affected user? Is there any other system of "justice" that refuses to confirm to people exactly what they have been convicted of?

While Mr. ThisismyUsername is investigating, please can he explain this:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sus...puppets/Newport

This was written by User:Bulldog123 who is allegedly not an admin, let alone a checkuser. How did he know? If there really was such a check, where is the entry on WP:RfCU that requested it and reported the results? Why was he allowed to reveal information that according to Mr. ThisismyUsername should not be released? Clearly, if his allegations are true he should be blocked and so should the checkuser who leaked. If they are not true, so much the more doubt on the whole block.

If that's true, it probably just means that they've both used Tor. It scarcely proves that they're the same person, unless checkusers believe that there's only one person in the world who uses Tor.

Part of your question is already answered on that article you linked to. On comments, it shows that the information on the page was written by a group of people through email (I think this was also mentioned by Dmcdevit or another admin on WP:AN/I afterwards). With apparently the non-admin only writing the last part on contributions overlap and submitting it. Presumably, whoever wrote the CheckUser part had CheckUser access, or perhaps it may have been someone who noticed the IPs of both of those usernames on times they accidently edited as anons. It has happened before, I'm sure. But yes, more likely somebody with CheckUser access.

Either way, it is hardly a violation of privacy principles. I believe Jayjg recently revealed on somebody's RFA that they use Tor proxies to edit, and that person was subsequently denied adminship. Why Jayjg wished to sabotage the user's RFA was controversial, but saying they used open proxies is nothing new. Saying "they both use the IP, 90.234.121.12" is a violation of privacy but saying "they use open proxies, which is forbidden" hardly is.

For the record, the Runcorn account was making pretty obvious what open proxies they use, as he was soft-blocking the ones that had recently been hard-blocked, so that usernames such as Brownlee and R613vlu could still edit while signed in under them.



Using Tor proxies isn't rare but using many of the same Tor proxies between two allegedly completely different users who are suspected of being puppets even before this evidence... that's just plain uncommon. I'm finding "it's all a coincidence" tiresome. Using Tor proxies was enough to strip a potential admin from their adminship. I, personally, find it hard to believe two different users have access to no ISP in their homes where Tor proxies aren't used. But whatever.

Perhaps I would be more inclined to trust you, Poetlister, if you simply said that you were accidentely tied in to this puppetry scandal because of SlimVirgin's accusation the first time around. But suggesting these were all innocent people banned so that you're banned... you're losing a lot of potential supporters.

I'm not quite clear what point you're making. Perhaps you have misunderstood what I've said. Let me reiterate it:

* I know perfectly well that I am who I say I am
* I know perfectly well that those blocked with me in December 2005 are who they say they are
* The evidence against us was highly dubious; this was implied by Charles Matthews and David Gerard when they agreed to unblock me, and is now confirmed by Kelly Martin who says that there was almost certainly a miscarriage of justice
* I have never met Runcorn
* I cannot swear an oath that there has been no sockpuppetry going on here
* However, if there is, I have not been associated with any of it; so far as I can remember, I have virtually no overlaps of edits with any of these new editors, or indeed with those blocked with me since our unblocks
* Runcorn has never intervened to help me in various disputes I have had in the last year, although he has frequently helped Newport and others
* Thus I have been blocked for a second time on no evidence whatever, so far as I know, other than the discredited evidence for the first block
* In the circumstnces, it is scarcely surprising if I am keener to apply WP:AGF to Newport, whom I have known in real life for some time, and Runcorn, who appears to be a good admin, than to those who have twice blocked me on dubious evidence.

Why not?

Isn't that obvious? If there are, say, six separate people involved, and Poetlister knows three of them and has never met the other three, she only has the word of the three she knows (assuming that's even given) that they weren't using multiple accounts.

And of course, she'd have no idea whatsoever regarding the activities of the three people she doesn't know...

Here's something I can recount from my own experience: I was told by someone on Uncyclopedia, using information given to that person by David Gerard, that I had used the exact same IP address that Lir had used at one point. Now, it's true that I live in the same state as Lir and use the same ISP, that ISP being the most subscribed-to broadband service in that state. But that would probably have comprised anywhere between 60,000 and 120,000 IP addresses, more if you consider the fact that the ISP draws from a national pool when it runs out of IP's reserved for the region.

Poetlister's the statistician here, but I believe the chance that any two distinct people would have used the exact same IP during, say, a six-month period, even if both of us were changing IP's every single day (and I certainly wasn't), is extremely small - probably somewhere in the area of 0.02 percent, though of course it depends on who else is changing their IP at the same time, and what the available pool is.

So I can only say there's a roughly 99.98 percent chance that Dave was lying, and therefore abusing his CheckUser privileges as well as sharing IP information with a completely different website (which at the time wasn't even owned by Wikia Corporation, though it was being hosted there). But since Dave knew about that other 0.02 percent, he got away with it.

For the sake of simple numbers... if you both changed IPs every day for 100 days, there were 100 000 IPs avaliable, and the IPs were uniformly and randomly allocated, you would actually have just over 9.5% chance of having at least one IP shared at some point. Birthday paradox, etc.

Now admittedly you wouldn't have been changing IPs so often, but then again you would have had more days, and more importantly I bet the IPs aren't randomly allocated. So it's quite possible that you would have shared IPs.

Hell, I've had the same IP three times from my (massive) ISP.

Indeed. Wouldn't it be suspicious if I could be categorical? It would imply that I know 100% what other people are up to.

Looks about right

Hmmm. Well, I did say I'm no statistician! Maybe I divided something I should have multiplied...?

Okay, let's not deal in hypotheticals, then. During the six months leading up to the incident in question, my IP probably changed about 20 times. That's a guesstimate based on the fact that I used to unplug the router whenever I left town, and I still do whenever there's an electrical storm. Occasionally I shut down the power for the whole house to mess with the wiring (but I'm only telling you that since you promised not to tell the county wiring inspector, right?)... Occasionally there are also service outages and dropped lines on the ISP's end - I've had far fewer of those recently, but back then there'd be one every few weeks.

Now, Lir has claimed that he rarely changed his IP deliberately at all, and while someone like Dave Gerard would no doubt pooh-pooh that claim, I see no reason to disbelieve him. It should also be remembered that during the entire year prior to the incident (i.e., all of 2005), Lir was banned from WP and any IP thought to be his might easily have been someone else - Iowa is chock-full of WP vandals, as is well known. They're on every street corner, etc.

Another thing is that I never use proxies, whereas I believe Lir has used them in the past - or at least he's been accused of using them. I also never posted to Uncyclopedia from an internet cafe or public access point, though I did post to it from hotel rooms on occasion. (Sorry, but there's really nothing fun to do whatsoever in some of the little towns around here.)

Taking all this into account, let's say they had all of my IP's and all of Lir's from that period - and were therefore able to compare my 20 IP's to Lir's list, and let's say (just for the sake of argument) that there were 60 IP's on his list that were from the same ISP.

So what's the probability figure? It still depends on system-wide IP usage and distribution factors to a large extent, but I'm pretty sure it's a very small number.

RFCU is a spamtrap. 90% of checks are run based on private requests (email, talk page and IRC) or based on the checkuser's own suspicions. If I were involved in this particular case I would have asked the checkuser to drop by and endorse the comment. But the fact that it is not endorsed does not make it untrue, just unverifiable.

CheckUser annoys me. Everything's all well and good if you're just entering large chunks of free content for them, but the minute you cross an admin they're running all kinds of secret checks on your identity and talking about you on back-channels somewhere.

The whole thing is vaguely sinister, and I think if it were more widely known that these untrained, unaccountable admins were getting so invasive towards ordinary contributors (who usually wish to remain anonymous), it would chill a lot of the free stuff that keeps pouring in.

Well I guess the question is then, why did CheckUser find shared IP use between all four of the originally banned users?

Can Poetlister, the statistician, fill us in? Did she and her friends all log in on the same computer within a 30-day period? It's a simple question but I haven't seen a direct answer yet.

More importantly though, if Londoneye, Poetlister, Newport, and Taxwoman were, in fact, all separate users why have their editing contributions never overlapped? Apparently this was written on that report on Newport, and it is easily verifiable for anyone who has patience or the right tools. Can we get a statistician to explain the probability of that happening... especially for people who edit frequently and for so long?

The irony is I don't think many people who contribute to Wikipedia actually know what "free" means in the context of Wikipedia. A lot of people are definitely under the impression that it is free for "educational use" only but that of course isn't the case at all as the content is totally free as in "free to be used by anyone" including commercial websites like Answers.com. So basically a lot of people are unwittingly making money for other people. It plays on people's desire to be able to create something that they can feel proud of and then have it instantly displayed to millions around the world.

Yes... YOU the average Joe or Jane can be an encyclococopedia writer and bathe in the glory of internotional fame


There is no doubt they were all separate users. There was no big mystery about why they all shared ips at various points- Londoneye was the cousin of and Newport was the flatmate of Rachel and Poetlister and Taxwoman are Rachel's friends. They just used the fact that all sometime's edited from Rachel's flat and used that as an excuse to ban them. Quite frankly the main fact was SlimVirgin had taken an instant dislike to them and they were doomed from then on.

And so this isn't meatpuppetry why? Five distinct people edit warring and participating in the same articles for deletion, yet pretending to be unrelated. Sounds like classic meatpuppetry, which is equally disallowed. And do they time their edits so they're not simultaneous too? By the way, you know all this from where? Is it somewhere on this message board?

Yes, but many WP editors are meatpuppets of others; Just look at Moreschi's contribs. , Folantin's and Makemi's contribs.
and you'll see that they're all supporting the same AFD's, the same positions on their pet projects and the others's interests when they have to.

"Meatpuppetry" on WP is either a). another way of saying that people are friends or b.) a plot which is much more widespread....In which case ( you need to ban probably about 90% of all editors on WP.

Lose the "Meat-Puppet"-speak seems to be the most constructive tactic at that point, wouldn't you say???

Well it's all a bit complicated and tedious to go over again but while there may have been meatpuppeting going on, it was in response to vast sockpuppeting activities by another user named Antidote who was trying to delete Jewish lists (for a reason he admitted to me was that he was Russian and although he had a Jewish mother he resented being called Jewish and was a proud Russian). He voted about 5 times on each afd or cfd and it was clear to me and Rachel what he was doing - I made huge pages of evidence which were pretty much ignored by administrators including Kelly Martin, SlimVirgin and Jayjg so Rachel felt she had to get more support to make sure the articles or categories weren't deleted. It wasn't the case that those people had all joined Wikipedia for that purpose as they all had all joined months prior to when Antidote started his activities.

A meat-puppet is a person who agrees with a person who is involved in a disagreement with a WP admin.

A trusted user is a person who agrees with an admin who is involved in the same dispute.

Wikipedia does not allow unverifiable information.

Nobody has claimed that - this allegation was made against Newport and the more recent users banned with her. The point is that in the case of Londoneye, Poetlister, Newport, and Taxwoman (and RachelBrown), the evidence was dismissed by Charles Matthews and David Gerard, and has now been repudiated by Kelly Martin. Nobody can now claim, on the basis of that evidence, that there is any case against these editors. Is there any new evidence against Poetlister? If not, she should be unblocked.

The problem is Newport may have been sockpuppeting/meatpuppeting to try and stop a deletion of Jewish lists again but that did not actually involve Poetlister, Taxwoman, or Londoneye so there was no reason to block them. Newport actually did a huge amount of good work so even if she was guilty of sock/meatpuppeting she shouldn't have been given an indefinite block.

There's no doubt that Newport, Brownlee and R613vlu were collaborating. Whether that counts as meatpuppetry depends on whether you agree with what they were doing. Equally, there's no doubt that Runcorn sympathised with them. That's no grounds for blocking them or desysopping him, otherwise there'd be a distinct shortage of editors and admins. Newport added dozens of articles about eminently notable people, and undoubtedly enriched Wikipedia.

As Jorge says (and I'm always pleased to agree with him), there is even less reason to block Poetlister, Londoneye and Taxwoman, and don't forget RachelBrown.

Of course, it was all just a SlimVirgin conspiracy, you guys.

It was also part of SlimVirgin's conspiracy to get six innocent and completely separate individuals (including Poetlister) so interested in Zsa Zsa Riordan, an obscure Polish figure skater, that they all participate in two AfDs to keep her article on wikipedia successfully. Only then did she have another excuse to ban Poetlister as a sock. Genius!

What's the general consensus on time overlaps?

For?

Specifically, the user accounts don't seem to edit at the same times, ever. There are innocent explanations, and non-innocent explanations. Let's hear them!

I'd like the statistical probability of that happening. If we could even get some data on it. Like frequency of overlap of two randomly selected users on wikipedia? Eh, forget it.

Like somebody said, I don't think anybody checked to see whether there is or isn't overlap for the originally banned accounts (Londoneye, Taxwoman, etc). I'd sure like to see that data. Anybody know a way to do it?

I already did that ages ago- RachelBrown, Poetlister, Taxwoman and Londoneye all edited at different times. I don't know about the newer accounts involved in the Runcorn controversy though.

Please let's get the facts straight. Here are the two AfDs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...Zsa_Zsa_Riordan
R613vlu, Poetlister, Brownlee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...d_nomination%29
Poetlister, Brownlee, Holdenhurst, Osidge

Who are these six people who participated in both reviews? Dr.frog and Kolindigo also participated in both of them, and indeed in the third AfD; have they been banned as sockpuppets?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...d_nomination%29

So Newport, Taxwoman and Londoneye aren't part of my conspiracy. Oh good, they can be unblocked immediately.

ThisismyUsername must lead a very sheltered life; there is far stronger evidence of collusion all over the AfD and CfD pages. Let's immediately desysop and block dozens of people.

I'd been getting worried that maybe Newport was guilty of something, but as the evidence slowly trickles out we can see how worthless it is. No wonder the cabal refuse to release it.

Incidentally, ThisismyUsername is a sockpuppet. Does he approve of sockpuppetry?

Who are the six people? Poetlister (1) R613vlu (2) Brownlee (3) Osidge (4) Holdenhurst (5) Runcorn (who removed the proposed deletion) (6)

I'm not even addressing the Dr.frog and Kolindigo comment. If there was reason to believe they were "sockpuppets" then a CheckUser would be run against them and they would be banned too. I only find it funny that 6 different people, who know NOTHING of eachother, are all interested in keeping an obscure figure skater, even though most of their edit histories wouldn't suggest such an interest.

Any comment aside from arguing that I can't add?




Did I hit a nerve on the allegedly cool-headed Poetlister? Tossing incivilities instead of making "positive, constructive criticisms." Good way to address accusations.

...ff they all edited at different times, then you kind of just proved there was never any editing overlap. Thanks, but I think we'd all prefer a record of that before mentioning something so big.

Sorry you're right. But really there is no doubt they are different people- that is why they were eventually unbanned and the person who actually caused all the trouble in the first place, Antidote was only banned by Runcorn who may or may not have been Newport's SP. Antidote probably then came back under who knows what username and stirred the whole Jewish list and category deletion up again which caused Newport's ban. Here is all the evidence I gathered against Antidote- as you can see it took me absolutely ages to do that and I couldn't believe it when the supposed "responsible people" at WP just seemed to ignore it and didn't even ban Antidote and his sockpuppets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...Antidote/Voting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...tribution_table

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...e/User_comments

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...omment/Antidote