I have a friend whose WP account was set up about a year ago. He/she has only a few edits, but a very clean record--no bans, no trolling, no vandalism. The brief user page is that of a straight arrow professional, but it's not entirely accurate. He/she wants to explore the excitement of swapping accounts with somebody.

Does anybody out there know somebody who'd like to do this?

PS - Personally, I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that anybody would want to try a thing like this. But I do what I can for my peeps.

Weird. What is your username, what is his/hers?

If anyone does want to do this, discuss it on PMs, not in here (duh).

As for whether its ethical - sure, why wouldn't it be? The reality is that most rational people would say that if a banned user comes back with a new account and is reasonable and well-behaved, then they are either reformed or shouldn't have been banned in the first place, ergo there's no problems.

It's just those pesky people who insist that you should RESPECT MY AUTHORITAE that cause the problems.

I can remember when they went to ban my "alias" Zordrac, there was a big argument going around that I was a good user, hence demonstrating reform, and they didn't want to ban me. But then those pests said that I had to be banned because I was technically evading an Arb Com ban, hence they had to make me wait it out until returning.

And of course on return, SlimVirgin just up and indef banned me, which has been apparently interpreted as being because I "run" an attack site (sorry, I don't even have admin status here). Even though the attack site policy hadn't even been proposed when SlimVirgin gave me the indef ban.

I suppose that SlimVirgin could see in to the future to see that it'd be suggested, fail, and then be secretly allowed, to justify some of her irresponsible bans.

Yeah, I would do it, except that because Yamla re-banned me my IP is blocked, so there's no point.

That's just ridiculous. Not atypical, but ridiculous nonetheless.

Al

I agree. This isn't a big deal. It might be a bigger deal it you were sharing a Wikipedia user account with real permissions such as CheckUser or Oversight, but normal accounts and regular admin accounts are pretty common and don't really have great powers.

Yeah. But admin accounts wouldn't be a big deal either (and officially, its "no big deal") except that on Wikipedia at least once you become an admin, you're suddenly immune from prosecution - usually at least.

Unless you annoy the Cabal - we've got a few examples among posters here.

For Bliss,

All anyone needs to do is login from a net cafe, and start a new account.

If his IP is hardblocked, he can ask his ISP to change the fixed IP. Done.

Of course I'd rather do it honestly. Lying sucks. In the end, you "get" to write in a place that sucks your time from you, and then they get more ammunition to hurt you. Nah. I've had enough false accusations, I don't want to give them a true one.

I'm not sure what the point of this would be or why it would be worth the effort. Each person would have to learn how the other person edited in order not to attract attention so really it would just be too much trouble. And then what if one of the persons went crazy and tried to get the account they had swapped banned? Or if they decided to change the password? Absolutely ridiculous idea.

I'm definitely too new for any of this to make sense, so forgive me. But there is currently a thread "outing" Proabivouac as an editor who is not even banned, but only on probation, and demanding some sort of action.

So how is blocking for ban evasion different than demanding a block for probation-evasion. (I suppose someone will say that Proabivouac is still editing disruptively, but really, if Zordrac hadn't acted in some way suspiciously, they never would have checked.)

Just curious.

Sorry, you've confused me. Are you suggesting that I am Proabivouac? I don't know the case, but I didn't realise I was being accused of being the same person.

Do you know why they checked my case? It was because I investigated Poetlister's ban. That was the one and only "suspicious" thing that I ever did. I had a clean sheet, nobody even hinted that I'd done anything wrong on Wikipedia, except that I thought that the Poetlister case required investigation. I didn't even take Poetlister's side over it.

I don't see how that warrants a ban at all.

There is a thread on how Proabivouac has used socks to avoid the terms of his ArbCom imposed probation in violation of WP:SOCK.


Let's put this into perspective: Proabivouac hasn't even been warned about his flaunting of ArbCom probation and Wikipedia policies, let along blocked or banned. In fact, any pages or discussions about Proabivouac's transgression are being deleted and covered up. This is being covered up because Proabivouac has people who are working to "protect" him from even the disclose of this information on Wikipedia.

It pays to have friends in high places as Proabivouac has learned.

Well, if anyone wants to see an admin account put to good use, then feel free to message me. I can supply in return a large list of autoconfirmed, unblocked, checkuser-stale user accounts.