Hi all,

As people are always asking for more transparency when it comes to enwiki checkuser, FT2 posted these statistics on checkuser usage, and provided a list of checkusers, their roles (arbcom, etc) and how many checks they have run over the last few months. While it's not exactly Glasnost, it's certainly a step in the right direction and, as a checkuser, I'm glad he did that.

Bring on more, I say ....

Let me know if you've checkusered Slimvirgin, and if so, tell us whether that account could possibly be the work of one user.

I haven't. Seriously.

JohnA: That question's out of order. I think no harm done in Allie's answer, but in general I think it's inappropriate to comment on private requests. It tends to smear innocent victims if you comment sometimes but not others. So it's best not to answer at all.

And the canonical way to unask a question like that is to affirmatively respond with, "Mu."

Nod. If I had been asked (I wasn't), that would have been my response, or else "mind your own beeswax"... depending on how grouchy I was feeling.

Horrific that Jayjg and Raul still have checkuser access. They are two of the most untrustworthy people onwiki.

I would be interested to know if I have ever been directly checkusered? CU can contact me privately if that is the case.

I have, by at least the following: Alison, Lar and Deskana. Probably lots of others but they were the only ones who told me they had, or I knew had.

Why you? How strange.

This does remind me of a proposal someone made a while back that people who have been checkusered should be able to find out that fact - various methods were proposed, including the CUs themselves contacting the user, or modifying MediaWiki so that the information would be available via a note in the preferences or somesuch. I always thought that would be a good idea.

Well I havent been contacted by anyone saying they have CUed me - doesnt mean t hasn't happened though.

Really? Slimvirgin is the most abusive admin on WP with a history of making false allegations against other editors, smearing them with lies and regularly playing tag-team with other abusive admins, AND holds the record for longest continuous edit by any person (27 hours).

Let me check the WR Official list of "Questions Which Are Out of Order" .... nope not there.

I suppose you could tell me why this one person gets a free pass to rewrite history and nobody is allowed to know if its really just one person.

I would agree that it is inappropriate. I always cringe when a WP admin lectures anyone on this forum about anything even remotely related to their role as WP admins. It is just as irritating when they are right. Maybe we would be better served if Alison would just not talk about her awesome powers on WP?.

You might want to post that to foundation-L as a request.

Alison did whilst I was editing with another account in December (I stated I was a legit sockpuppet and someone thought I was Molag Bal)

Lar did when I was reverting back to Amorrow's edits (lol @ me), apparently after a request on IRC, to see if it was really me and I wasn't compromised.

Deskana did after my RfA, when Gmaxwell lied and stated I was probably a sockpuppet of Matthew.

Those are the only people who I know for sure have. As I said, there's probably others. Raul654 may be another. But, to me they are all legit reasons to check me.

Hey Alison, how do you feel about the Grawp issue as a whole? After all, you're only one of two checkusers (the other of course being Thatcher) that I can see blocking Grawp sleepers.

Also, I can't believe how bad the MediaWiki titleblacklist has got. It's blocking so much now.

I wonder what the statistics for checkuser usage was during the Mantanmoreland Arb case and the subsequent ban discussion. Remember the hysteria around that case and the foolish block of Mackan79 as a Wordbomb sock.

That wasn't the question you asked.

How about a little focus on the fact that FT2 QUADRUPLED (at the least, it was ten times his April usage) his CU'ing in May.

From 160 to 60 to 600+?? Twenty CUs a DAY?

It wouldn't have anything to do with prominent people being in ArbCom through May, would it??

The data concerning reasons given is interesting, I suppose most of these would be multiple sock checks of one individual, but in that case why not copy and paste the same reason into every box?

There really ought to be a policy (as I believe there is on the Hungarian WP) that all checkusers must be requested publicly and have their results displayed, to the extent that privacy policy allows.

What about a policy that, as far as it is possible to ensure, each user has no more than one account (anonymous or otherwise)?

How do you enforce that from a technical aspect on any forum or community online or in real life, short of having each participant username verify with a verifiable, state-issued identification?

It's not exactly hard to whip up multiple usernames on any wiki, forum, mail list, or even some "IRL" systems.

Exactly. If Grawp (for example) can create 50 sockpuppet accounts, he can just as easily create 50 gmail accounts to do some kind of basic user validation. I shudder at the thought of making the Wikimedia Foundation office the repository for a million photocopied and faxed drivers' licenses, passports, and such. And I'm not even worried about intentional identity theft, but simple incompetence. Not to mention forget about editing from the 2/3 of the world with some form or other of authoritarian government.

These statistics are a wonderful example of several things that are broken about Wikipedia. The central one is the underlying concept of "sockpuppet" -- the idea that, in an anonymous/pseudonymous society, you can through IP tracking and other technical means, craft some reliable concept of identity ("WordBomb sock", "Runcorn sock", etc, etc). This is already absurd, and will become completely untenable in the face of future technical innovations like IPV6.

I chuckle at the hours and hours that must be spent tracking and tracing these identities, with no discussion even of the underlying problem. What's wrong with sockpuppets on Wikipedia? The short answer is WP's silly, broken, head-up-the-ass idea of "consensus". Nothing useful was ever done by consensus in a society larger than about 20, and Wikipedia is a prime example of its failure. The manipulations of the RFA/admin process by the likes of SlimVirgin and her cabal are one example of broken pseudo-consensus, and the ownership of articles on the Israel-Palestine dispute by CAMERA editors, Jayjg, and the like are another. Kelly Martin (of all people) has put forward a strong, implementable, and completely defensible proposal concerning the replacement of so-called "!vote" votes (not-votes, in the classic WP locution) by randomly-selected juries, but it has not garnered even minimal discussion. Why? Well, it is not in the interest of most of the WP powerful to truly decentralize power. They are willing to put up with sockpuppets so that they can continue to manipulate the outcome of most everything that happens.

Removing this false patina of consensus would eliminate both much of the need for checkuser and also remove much of the power of the cabal. If you remove the negative effect of vote-stacking, "me too" commentary on "consensus" topics, and replaced it with a vote by 10-50 randomly-selected and anonymous voters, then sockpuppetry is meaningless.

In this environment, an entity (logged-in user) stands for exactly that logged-in user, and nothing else -- not some possible/plausible previous identity, or some behind-the-scenes manipulator, just that entity itself. And if that entity vandalizes -- poof, blocked. If it slanders SlimVirgin -- poof, blocked. But if it argues an unpopular opinion, it isn't necessary to prove that its WordBomb or Jon Awbrey or Runcorn -- its opinion stands on its own.

But nothing like this will ever happen. The reason that Jayjg and Raul have such low checkuser stats compared to Alison and Thatcher is that Raul and Jayjg are selectively using the tools when they or a member of their posse run into someone they don't like the look of. "Some edits they don't like? Run a checkuser, see what we can dig up!"

So you have mop-and-bucket types essentially making WP safe for the elite. Perhaps someday the mop-and-bucket types will revolt (yes, some of them are already pretty revolting), but it is more likely they'll just be groomed for the dark side.

In the meantime, the knock-on effect of checkuser is that open proxies must be blocked, eliminating confidential editing from (e.g.) China, or anyone else who is rightfully concerned about their identity. More hours are spent tracking open proxies and blocking them, though a technical solution was implemented -- and then immediately disabled (because it would not blocked logged-in users using proxies). How much time and effort is wasted on Wikipedia because of this? How many people run into blocks not intended for them? How many sockpuppets accusations are in fact true, and how many the result of zealous partisans accusing their opponents? All of this forms mud in which Wikipedia is increasingly mired.

Summary: checkuser is a symptom of a broken society, like the Stazi. You should be embarrassed of it. And even if you aren't, then don't get used to it, for it will become less useful as time goes on.

Add in that its not exactly hard to photoshop a scan of a driver's license. Do I love in Los Angeles? Miami? Lake Wobegon? Is my name Joe, Frank, Ted, or Guy Noir?

Whenever possible, but less so since Heidi Fleiss went to jail.

Wouldn't that feel a bit stressful? If I was in a row with others, the last thing I would need is to hear that their mates had tried to catch me out via checkuser. I mean, that's how it might feel to me if I already felt 'got at'.

Even though I don't think they'd object to 'wannabe Bishzilla' that I made when I thought Bish had left

I'd like to know who has checkusered me and when. That's the kind of information that would be meaningful to me.

Who, when and why would probably be what is meaningful.

No, but it gets harder to whip up a lot of separate accounts with emailed passwords. And if you make each one of them wait a few days and do some vetted edits before you authorize them, then it gets harder to drive-by vandalize than it's worth (I'm presuming a shoot on sight for each account for each clear instance).

As for unpopular opinions and voting, no-- you'll never stop this. It's always worth seasoning a sock if that's what you're going to use if for. But we're not stopping that kind of thing now, and that's why Wikipedia's such a political cripple, with a junta in power and keeping it only by means of scotching thoughtcrimes from whatever direction they come from. Because they don't really know where they come from.

As to how you run a democracy without voter ID, it can't be done. To the extent that WP really wants to vote on stuff fairly (like who gets what offices and powers), they're going to have to deal with this problem.

Fortunately in most countries, banks already take care of ID issues, so WP can in theory take care of it by requiring a simple (very small) donation for every ID check. And that money can go to starving kids in Africa if you must. But there's no reason to make WP a respository of ID info-- all it needs to be is a repository of small charitable wire-transfer donations, as no doubt WMF already is. All they need do is keep track of who donates, and associate donee with username. That's one database, and not one that can be used for ID theft mischief, because WMF never possesses the ID info for that.

But the above is only necessary for voting, and voting can be drastically cut down to issues of who gets what powers, and just completely bypass it on minor editorial issues. As has been pointed out, lesser steps are needed to vet accounts for editing and opinions, since we really don't (or shouldn't) care about majority opinion for that. It's quality not quantity of opinion anyway, is it not? If we have some designated experts of various types, it doesn't matter how many socks think "otherwise" on an issue of fact.

I figured "why" was the answer I was least likely to get, in addition to being the answer that matters least to me.

Did I?? Wow ... I can't recall. Did I state at the time that the account was your sock?

Molag Bal is still about, BTW, but he mostly hangs out on Wikia now. Mr. Oompapa

No, you didn't, but if you checked me you'd have seen it was me. You simply put "unrelated" on the request.

Oh, well hi there. "Fucking bitch Alison" here Pleased to meet you an' all that ....

Anyways - the whole Grawp and Grawp-a-like thing is kinda technically interesting. Yeah, myself and Thatcher are largely doing all the CU work there - no surprises really, as well as a handful of admins doing the other stuff. You know them all already. Grawp-a-like is you, of course

Grawp, though prolific and seriously disruptive, isn't the worst by a long shot. He's not intensely malicious or anything, unlike some, and it's pretty obvious that both you and he are getting a serious kick out of the cat-and-mouse aspect of vandalizing the wiki. And as we get more adept at recognizing and heading-off attacks, you guys get better and better at socking and evading block. The upshot of all this is that the average socker/vandal is getting caught in the crossfire, and I've already seen a number of David York71 socks being discovered by accident. The deal is, of course, that those guys have a lot of catching up before they get as adept as you, and they're getting busted more often now. I also screwed up by blocking a dozen school accounts, as folks had been maxing out their 6 every single day for some time. Once they verified their email address, I went and unblocked the lot. It's in my block logs. Oops!

Does this seriously sound more like a MMORPG than ever before?! I'm beginning to agree here.

A quick scan of some of the noticeboards shows that Grawp has been somewhat influential in stuff that's been developed in MediaWiki; things like IPBlockExempt for all (theoretically!), restricting the subpage option to certain people, etc, etc. So there's no doubt that he's had quite an impact.

Anyways - you need to seriously brush up on your photoshop skillz, too- maybe try montage next time. Oh, and I'm in my 30s, for the record. You'd look like that if you'd work 28 hours straight with only 5 hours sleep

MediaWiki:titleblacklist is in a bit of a mess all right. And the more regex that's added, the slower it gets. Same with MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist. No doubt you guys are already looking at this line --> (?i:[g9q]r+[a4][vwѡ]+[pр])



Ah. Figures ...

Speaking of CheckUser, I have an ethical question to put on the table tonight.

Among the ever-growing list of Relevant Documents that swirls around the Karass-cum-Granfalloon that looms like a ticking time bomb these days is this one:

* User_talk:FeloniousMonk/Arbcom_evidence#Moulton (referenced in RfAr/C68-FM-SV and RfAr#Moulton)

This is User:FeloniousMonk's unapproved biographical sketch of me, containing allegations and evidence which he references or submits in the indicated RfAr's.

The very last reference on that page is this one: [255]

Now here's the deal...

That reference goes to my original think piece that eventually became an Op-Ed piece here on WR.

I'm not sure why FM linked to my original rather than to the Op-Ed republication here on WR, but as a result of having done so, I find three entries in my Apache server logs for that document, with the referring URL being FM's evidence page, cited above.

The three hits are from the night of 27 May and the morning of 28 May, and come from three different IPs (two in Great Britain, one in New York).

What ethical obligation, if any, do I have with respect to the information in those three entries in my Apache server logs?

Ethically you should keep the information to yourself. Take the high road, even if those you feel are arrayed against you do not.

Absolutely none. You are entitled to disseminate this information as you see fit.

I am one very much of the camp "An IP address means little in the grand scheme of things". It ain't an SSN.

By the way, I have no idea if anything in my server logs has any forensic value at all.

The main thing I learn from my server logs is how few people care to read anything I write.

As if I didn't already know that.

I believe you are correct legally, although I am not a lawyer, but I don't agree that "entitled" == "is ethically correct" in every instance

Funny how people here have to come up with a pseudointellectual reason for wanting to talk about Grawp. It "raises various metaquestions"; it's "kinda technically interesting". Sure that's true, but at least I'm honest enough to admit that I would rather just talk about Grawp for the lulz.

Interesting you should say he's "not intensely malicious". Whilst it's true that you can't take his words seriously like you might those of other sockpuppeteers, would you call someone who says "WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH GRAWP? GIANT DICK MAKE [username] HAVE HUGE ORGASMS. WARM, STICKY CUM FOUNTAIN OUT OF GIANT DICK, MAKE [username] HAPPY" non-malicious? Those could easily be taken as rape threats, and we all know that Wikipedia is serious business, given the standard procedure when, say, a school shooting threat is made.

Getting a serious kick out of vandalising the wiki? I wouldn't describe it as a strong emotion.

Gotta agree on the MMORPG factor of Wikipedia. I've never played one of these games, thank fuck... well, actually, that's not true if you include a certain top-ten website...

Also, I used MS Paint to do the image. I'm crap with images.

I think for Wikipedia's own good, admins should be conservative whilst adding things to the titleblacklist, because of course it's not the same as salting a page. Oh no. It means that no page can contain a certain combination of characters. It's not to be taken too lightly.

TL;DR? I like you, Alison. Don't take what I've said in the past personally; I am full of contradictions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...Checkuser_usage

Is interesting

Some of the checkusers who have many checks either are involved in arbitration or respond to requests for checkuser. At this time mid June 2008 I searched their edits to the "Wikipedia:" namespace for 500...

Arbitration commitee checkusers
Jpgordon -- arb & rfcu
FT2 -- arb & rfcu
Blnguyen -- arb & rfcu
Morven -- arb & rfcu
FayssalF -- arb

Deskana and below are more or less inactive


Ex-arbitration commitee checkusers
Dmcdevit -- arb & rfcu
Raul654 -- This user has done the third highest amount of checkuserings, but has done the smallest amount of arb and rfcu work of those accounts above him in this message
Jayjg -- has actually answered RFCU. Has done 2 cases in April. He has chatted on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement? but it's only been comments on user behavior and nothing about him checkusering. Most notably he did no rfcu or arb work in May but has 85 checkuser edits, which are obviously him fishing to bring down people he edit wars with. Using checkuser to fish to bring down someone you edit war with likely means such person edit wars with other accounts so their main checkuser account and bust the person they disagree with and pretend to be a neutral party.
Sam Korn -- 162 checkusers in May, but in may he's been doing many rfcu
David Gerard -- hardly any edits to Wikipedia namespace. Pulling up 500 of them makes Wikipedia's normally fast servers not answer and time out. David hasn't answered and rfcu since 29 May 2007. Talked in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration in June. David has mostly bene inactive but there were 75 unexplained checkusers in April. My guess is he checkusers people who ask him if he is Lucius Malfoy (which he looks like). In May, however checkuser is explained http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=216043834 as he was looking for JB196 socks.

Fred Bauder and below are really inactive. Rebecca actually has done no checkusering.


Other active checkusers
Thatcher -- thousands of checkusers, but massive rfcu responding. Plus he deals with Grawp
Alison -- an average of close to a thousand each month. massive rfcu responding. Plus she deals with Grawp
Lar -- arb & rfcu

Voice of All and below are really inactive. Redux has done none oddly.



Conclusions.
1) Jayjg same old fishing on behalf of edit wars
2) Most of the checkusers are doing their jobs.
3) Wikipedia is not as fast as it appears as SQL queries going back several years are slow.
4) Harry Potter is real. Lucius Malfoy is real and on Wikipedia, too. Well, after the events of Harry Potter 7, Hermione used her wand to make a laptop huge so Hagrid's little brother could use it in hopes he'd gain some education and when Grawp found Wikipedia they hoped he'd learn things, but Grawp being not so bright has been making bad edits. I think Hermione or Hagrid got the real Grawp to stop but then 4chan and ebaumsworld immitated.

I lol'd.

Correction, I am not an en:wp Arbitration Committee member, but I hold CU on two other wikis Commons and Meta) and I am a steward. (sorry if I misinterpreted what you were saying there in your analysis)

Voice of All is a developer and has been doing some significant improvement to various things of late.

(digging through the logs, seeing as other stats were published by others, I guess I can too )

Actually, apart from doing some complex checking for other checkusers (he double checked the Primetime case from the get-go for me, there was like 98 checks there, and another 70 recheck case for someone else), he was also doing a bunchload of high-profile socking cases, such as the Zippycup one, which involved almost 170 checks alone according to his own comments on the checkuser talk page, and a bunch of other 5 - 30 check cases.

Annnnd, when [[WP:IPEXEMPT]] went live in May, guess who did all the checks on the IP ranges we had lined up as potential hardblocks, and did a bunch of the checking of exemptions on the rollout? Yup!

Busy lad is our FT2

Sorry?

One of the main, and quite accurate and thus damaging, accusations against the Wiki model that is levied on these pages is that there are too many tech savvy nerds who constantly wear out the patience of subject experts and the like by gaming the system to get the type of article they prefer (high on flash graphics and not to many long words).

Now, out of the two groups (the expert/academic contributor and the edit number obsessed techo freak) who do you think is going to be the one to deploy socks to back up their arguments - on the basis of what they lack in quality they will make up in quantity? I will give you a clue... the "serious" contributor will believe that the truth, backed by references, will prevail.

No, there will not be a canceling out by opposing sides in an argument, because one side will be using such obsolete tactics as facts and well presented arguments. And they will lose, because another sock will kamikaze any time they look like winning.

Blocking for sock abuse is one of WP's better ideas.

Well it looks like somebody at wikipedia noticed the Jayjg stuff I mentioned as for the first time in many many years he answered a requests for checkuser and two of them, just today.







I see these people that routinely game the system that you speak of...I see them routinely use a technique where they falsely accuse someone of gaming the system just to get their way.






I think wikis get ruined when there's people who have an edit history full of nothing but reverts, so the whole edit history is just meaningless junk to look through. You can't tell what their real edits are, if they really edit. Then these people go and pick some targets they think are easy victims and they stalk and bully them. These folks prefer to do this to registered users who are pure content adders, but on smaller wikis they go and see an anon even try to talk and they just outright revert the anon to bully.

I think people who don't really edit and do nothing but revert and bother others are harmful to wikis. Bots are fine, though.

The behavior is transparent. FT2 would never post the stats up if they showed that he is actually trying to block the whole of China, Hong Kong and any other areas of the world that has had critical editors editing zoophilia and NLP related articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lon...use/HeadleyDown

I'm sure some admins are working hard to protect WP from real vandals etc.

Others are just sociopathically misrepresenting good editors as vandals and protecting their own interests. That much is blatantly obvious.