CreepyCrawly (Likipenia on this forum) posted two weeks ago that he was "falsely accused of being a puppet" and was indef-blocked by Raul654.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=16715

I read that post, and after hours of effort, I succeeded in convincing Raul654 to unblock. However, everyone walked away unhappy.

Raul654: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=199615699

CreepyCrawly: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=199627655

Shalom: http://yrobinso.livejournal.com/2008/03/20

The story does not end there. After continuing to read this discussion board, and based on my extensive experience as a Wikipedia insider, I discovered that CreepyCrawly was not the first user who was blocked on a completely false allegation of being a sockpuppet. There are at least three others:

User:!! is the most well-known example. Durova blocked him as a sockpuppet, without specifying who the sockpuppeteer was, because she didn't know. At least she had the good sense to unblock 75 minutes later and admit it was a "false positive." At least she had the wisdom to resign her adminship when she realized what a horrible mistake she had made. That's more than I can say of Raul654, who wrote in his final comment to CreepyCrawly that "it's possible that it's not necessarily Scibaby."

User:Gerry Lynch was blocked by Dmcdevit as a sockpuppet of Runcorn as confirmed by Checkuser. Four days later, Mr. Lynch complained on ANI (see IncidentArchive276), and Alison eventually unblocked him. Dmcdevit has not explained his actions, nor has he apologized to Gerry Lynch, as far as I am aware.

User:Mackan79 was blocked by Georgewilliamherbert because the former "self-identified as Judd Bagley / User:Wordbomb." Viridae unblocked him after one hour, and later added a line to Mackan79's block log with "Absolute proof this user isnt a sockpuppet," provided by Alison. The controversy caused a massive tempest on ANI (IncidentArchive384) and Georgewilliamherbert's talk page. To his credit, GWH eventually apologized to Mackan79. When queried further, he offered this priceless insight: "Admins who are actively fighting long term abusers have made some pretty bad missteps - Durova a few months ago, me here. I don't know if that's symptomatic of an attitude shift coming from doing too much wielding the banhammer."

Do you agree?

Can you present any other cases of innocent users who were unjustly banned as alleged sockpuppets? In order to belong on this list, a case must meet the following criteria:

1. The user must have been blocked. If the user was listed on Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets but was never actually blocked, it doesn't count.

2. The stated reason for the block must be that the user was a sockpuppet of someone else. If the user was blocked for any other reason, and was later identified as a sockpuppet, it doesn't count. (This excludes User:Molag's Ball, who was blocked for trolling and later misidentified as a sockpuppet when it didn't matter anymore. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shalom/D...nterproductive)

3. You must present convincing evidence that this user was not a sockpuppet as alleged. Simply stating that the blocking admin failed to present compelling evidence is not sufficient. (If it were, any block based on checkuser could be challenged because we can't independently confirm what the checkusers claim.)

I hope you can inform me of such cases other than the ones I already listed. Thank you in advance.

Before everyone else gets in, Poetlister. The checkuser evidence that got her was, by admission of the checkuser (Kelly Martin), very flimsy. The ban has been brought up on AN several times, and there is opposition to her ban, but she (apparently) needs to go to AC to appeal.

I've just remembered another user who was banned as a sockpuppet: Qst was banned as a sockpuppet of Molag Bal. Turns out he wasn't.

Note to prospective checkusers reading this thread: if the IP resolves as British, give it up as a bad job. One mistake is fine, two isn't.

On May 13, 2007, a checkuser was run on Molag Bal's sockpuppets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req.../Case/Molag_Bal (scroll to the bottom)

Tellyaddict and The Sunshine Man, which are account names formerly used by Qst, were included in the checkuser request, but Voice-of-All responded that "they are likely not related to the others."

Qst's block log, which begins on July 7, 2007,

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...k&page=User:Qst

refers to this case on Suspected sock puppets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sus...ock_puppets/Qst

Qst is alleged to have engaged in a revert war, using an IP address while not logged in to avoid 3RR. In a nearly simultaneous request for checkuser, where the link between Qst and Molag Bal was suggested for a second time, the result again came back negative:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...ckuser/Case/Qst (scroll to the bottom)

So I must exclude Qst from my list of innocent users unjustly banned as sockpuppets. Qst's block log does not identify him as a sockpuppet of Molag Bal, and two checkusers said he was not a sockpuppet of Molag Bal. Qst was community banned for unrelated reasons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Com....B7_contribs.29

I'll have to look into Poetlister later.

Kelly checked Poetlister and the others in 2005-6, and the evidence was inconclusive. (Actually, she appears to have been banned then unbanned.) There were new checks run in 2007 when the accounts were banned for good. Kelly was not a checkuser in 2007 so she has no idea what the evidence actually was.

I have no opinion as I have obviously not seen the evidence either, but I wanted to make sure the timeline is right. People keep holding up Kelly's blog as evidence that Poetlister was unjustly banned when it's actual value as evidence for the 2007 ban is zero.

What Kelly said was "I was convinced (pressured, really) by others to set aside my doubts regarding the reliability of the conclusion and so reported the lot of them for sockpuppetry, in what was almost certainly a miscarriage of justice." That isn't "the data were inconclusive; she may or may not have been guilty" but "almost certainly she wasn't guilty". However, Kelly said this after the second ban.

Now there cannot be any 2007 Checkuser data to link Poetlister to Runcorn, or there wouldn't be a string of checkusers and ArbCom members defending Poetlister. She was convicted because of the old link to Newport, which was not discredited at the time of the second ban. Now that it is discredited, there is no real evidence against Poetlister at all. The same, incidentally, is true of Londoneye and Taxwoman, who are also freely editing on other wikis with no objections. (I make no comment on the evidence against the others. They haven't made a public fuss, for whatever reason, so I suppose nobody's looked at it.)

Incidentally, who provided the 2007 checkuser evidence? Dmcdevit, who on the same evidence also blocked Gerry Lynch who was subsequently acquitted.

It can be seen as evidence that someone had an agenda to get her (or RachelBrown, the other name in common between the two cases) banned. Whether that makes it more likely that the ban was unjust depends on how easily you think the system can be manipulated. I know what I think on that; you can decide for yourself.

How can Kelly have been pressured by others regarding the 2007 block if she was neither a checkuser nor on Arbcom-L in 2007? She may have said it after the second ban, but she had no role in the second ban, and could not have had "doubts" about the conclusions since she was out of the loop at that point. I am quite prepared to believe that the 2005-6 evidence was shaky, because she says so and because the bans were in fact lifted. I can not offer an informed opinion one way or the other on the 2007 ban, but neither can Kelly, and I suspect she is deliberately muddying the waters if she says or implies otherwise.

I don't know about "unjustly", but User:Ray Regan was blocked as a sockpuppet of mine, and I have no idea who that guy was.

Likewise, User:Antonio Stradivari.

Absolutely User:Espio's da man had a lengthy contribution history, had nothing to do with me or my business, but he was damned as a Wikipedia Review sockpuppet. I have no idea who he is or was.

Then there's User:GonzalezM. At quick glace, he seemed to be an appropriate, non-disruptive editor focused on Cuban topics. He's banned as me. I have no clue who it really is.

Maybe GonzalezM is related to User:Laredo Bru, also blocked as a Wikipedia Review sock.

This guy got banned as a Wikipedia Review sockpuppet for just one edit! Not to sound like a broken record, but I have no idea who User:Odin clan is in real life.

This account got blocked just for creating an account! I didn't create the account. Again, no idea who did.

This should give everyone a fairly clear idea that Check User is not effective, and/or it is not even employed in a vast number of "confirmed" sockpuppetry cases. And, just to preempt the counter-argument, most Wikipediots will frankly say, "So what? It doesn't matter which puppeteer we assign the block to, they're clearly a sock of SOMEONE."

And they think that's sufficient justification.

Greg

These sockpuppet threads are always the most clueless discussions we ever waste our breath and server space on here at DaRevue. It never does the least quantum of good talking to Wikipediots with their Fantasy Of Infallibility (FOI), and all it does is perpetrate the myth that there's any reality behind the myth.

Jonny

Those last 3 examples are blocked as socks of User:CBOrgatrope, who is in turn a sock of John Awbrey, and seem to have nothing to do with you.

You aren't very good at reading submissions, I'm afraid. What Guy correctly said was that Kelly was pressured regarding the 2005 block. There was no reason at all, whatsoever, to ban Poetlister on the basis of the 2007 evidence. She was only banned because she was supposed to be linked to Newport. The same is true of RachelBrown, who had not edited for over a year before the 2007 ban. (And really, you should know the difference between a block following a checkuser as in 2005 and a ban following an alleged ArbCom case as in 2007.) Thus when Kelly Martin made her confession, the ban should have been reviewed.



Maybe they've got better things to do with their time than beat their heads on brick walls.

Riana blocked Qst because of the CU evidence linking him to Molag, from how I read the SSP.

thekohser, several of the accounts you referenced were blocked as sockpuppets of an account identified by "them" as an account of Jon Awbrey, not of you... just thought you should know.

Here is the statement of Poetlister's 2007 ban. It doesn't mention RachelBrown, but does mention seven other accounts, all of which had edits in May 2007 when the ban was instituted. Let's say that the RachelBrown identification from 2005 was wrong; that still leaves 7 other accounts that were named as sockpuppets of each other that had current edits in the checkuser database. I fail to see the relevance of Kelly's "confession" under these circumstances.

Okay.

Then, why do they each say...

sockpuppet

not of CBOrgatrope

but of Wikipedia Review?

I mean, if the greatly respected Wikipedia administrators of supreme knowledge, Morven and Krimpet, can't even come together to form a solid consensus of two, what do you think is happening with 90% of the other Check User investigations?

Furthermore, what is going on with the other non-Awbrey accounts that have been similarly plastered with my emblem of sockpuppetry? Apparently, they're ALL CBOrgotrope, whom Krimpet determined falsely was Wikipedia Review. Except for Ray Regan. His only crime was to mention Centiare.com in a thread being read by JzG and Calton. When those nitwits saw the word "Centiare", that was their own little "inside scoop" version of Check User. They didn't need evidence. ANYONE mentioning a site that was mentioned in over 180 news media outlets (including Washington Post and USA Today) just HAD to be guilty of being me.

The logic leaves me stupefied.

Mod Note: Moved to Editors forum

It could be worse. Someone could start on a rant that the "Cabal" is in fact an evil Illuminati plot to enslave us all under a New World Order. And that they are operating under evil regulations, such as being required to ban a certain number of users every week to retain their admin status.

Or maybe it's Xenu! Hail Xenu! All Glory To The Hypnotoad!!

I don't see quotas in the sockpuppet business, I just see outright insane incompetence. Not to mention some conspiracy paranoia among the admins themselves....

Things like conspiracy theories often take on a life of their own, no matter how stupid they sound.



We all do.

Are you denying that RachelBrown was banned by Dmcdevit along with the others?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ser:RachelBrown

"20:39, 30 May 2007 Dmcdevit (Talk | contribs) blocked "RachelBrown (Talk | contribs)" () with an expiry time of indefinite ?ÇÄ (Per ArbCom: abusive sockpuppetry, see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...puppets_banned) "

Are you saying that it was a mistake? If so, please unban her now.

And obviously RachelBrown was not banned on Checkuser evidence, only on her association with Newport, so how can anyone know if there is any Checkuser evidence (as opposed to the sort of evidence that Dmcdevit had against Gerry Lynch) against Poetlister, or anyone else?

Thanks, y'all. I'll come back to Thekohser's points later. Let me first address the recurring suggestion that Poetlister is innocent.

Encyclopedia Dramatica has a long item on the case of Rachel Brown, Runcorn, Poetlister, and the other "beautiful people:"

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/The_beautiful_people

The bottom of that page links to a thread on ANI where Firsfron of Ronchester, based primarily on Kelly Martin's regretful ruminations, argues that "No connection is made, however, between these accounts [Runcorn's other alleged sockpuppets] and the Poetlister account, other than an earlier sockpuppetry accusation from 2005."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...oetlister_block

Here's a link to Kelly Martin's blog post. (Someone please tell me how to use anchor text in links.)

http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/...08/regrets.html

I spent way too long reading through most of this junk. At the end, I decided to examine Poetlister's contribution log and make my own evaluation.

Having done so, I am absolutely convinced that Poetlister is a sockpuppet of Runcorn. Kelly Martin's statement that the Poetlister block was "almost certainly a miscarriage of justice" is not supported by the evidence.

Poetlister made more than 1,000 edits to Wikipedia, but only a small percentage of these were to AFD, CFD or RFA votes. Her participation in these votes aligns with parallel votes by known sockpuppets of Runcorn. When she votes "delete," they vote "delete." When she votes "keep," they vote "keep."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cat...nounced_Judaism

Holdenhurst: Comment ("I won't vote keep")
Runcorn: Comment
Poetlister: Delete

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cat...wish_Christians

Runcorn: Delete
Brownlee: Delete
Poetlister: Delete

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...nship/Acalamari

Holdenhurst: Support (number 24)
Poetlister: Support (number 25)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...Seraphimblade_2

Runcorn: Oppose (number 2)
Poetlister: Oppose (number 3)
R613vlu: Oppose (number 4)

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

Poetlister: Keep
Brownlee: Keep
Holdenhurst: Keep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...inship/Fan-1967

R613vlu: Oppose (number 19)
Poetlister: Oppose (number 22)
Runcorn: Oppose (number 30)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...Zsa_Zsa_Riordan

R613vlu: Keep
Poetlister: Keep
Brownlee: Keep

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

Poetlister: Keep

I make a point of noting that this AFD, which occurred on December 1, 2006, is the latest AFD on which Poetlister votes without any Runcorn socks. On all of the later votes, which I have tried to cite without missing any, Poetlister coordinates her vote with at least one, and usually two, sockpuppets of Runcorn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...n/Skirlaugh_AFC

Poetlister: Delete. Again, no other sockpuppets voted here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...ship/Rockpocket

Poetlister: "Support Obviously, anyone nominated by SlimVirgin must be OK."

None of the other sockpuppets voted, but for that comment alone, Poetlister has forever forfeited my sympathy.

It doesn't end there. Here Poetlister edits a subpage of RachelBrown, titled User:RachelBrown/watch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=78696448

Poetlister herself also had a subpage titled User:Poetlister/watch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Poetlister/watch

I suspect that this particular title for a user subpage is quite uncommon. The fact that both users have one, and each page follows a similar structure, adds further support to the link between Poetlister, RachelBrown, and the Runcorn sock farm.

I could continue to trawl through Poetlister's contribution history, but it's not worth my time. I've made my point clearly and unambiguously. Poetlister was a sockpuppet of Runcorn and was justifiably banned.

(Given her continuing good work on Wikiquote [assuming Poetlister there is the same person, and I think people accept that as fact], I would support allowing her to return to the Wikipedia community on the one-year anniversary of the ban, viz. the end of May 2008. People have done worse things and been banned for "only" a year, not forever. But that's a separate question.)

Is there anyone who still believes Poetlister is innocent? If I have failed to convince you, please explain why you think she is innocent. It's my understanding that Poetlister is a member of this forum: I wonder if she has anything to add to this discussion.

Poetlister is not a sockpuppet of anybody although she did vote similarly on afds/cfds- the exact same accusation could be made against SlimVirgin/Jayjg at al and noones ever bothered suggesting they were sockpuppets. Runcorn may well have been sockpuppeting, but Poetlister, Taxwoman, and Londoneye were not involved in that. To understand all this you have to look at what the user Antidote was doing back in October-November 2005 (see here, here, here, and here). Nothing was done about Antidote despite him blatantly sockpuppeting which led RachelBrown to ask her friends (who were already editing Wikipedia) to vote to keep the articles she had created.

I have no opinion as I have not reviewed the Wiki-evidence, but all you have potentially got an accusation of meat-puppeting, not socking. If organising responses to AFDs etc. is a bannable offence, and I think some might say that it was inappropriate, then there are swathes of notable editors that need to be banned as the likes of SlimVirgin, OrangeMarlin and so on do it all the time with their flash-mob techniques.

Indeed, is it not Poetlister for whom we started the "Living in England in a similar way" tag line?

I think there is a half-way house: that there are links between the editors, but that does not necessarily make then sock-puppets. The Poetlister accusation is sock-puppeting, and you have not got anywhere near showing that. You have, however, shown there is a case to answer - that Poetlister was not allowed to do with the summary ban. I have no view on the Wiki evidence, but Poetlister is a very convincing identity here.

That summary ban issue is really important: summary ban based on suspicion should be reasonably tested without the presumption of guilt.

...I don't want to sound too much like Gary Weiss, though!

Jorge, you completely missed the point. Nobody seriously challenges the fact that SlimVirgin and Jayjg are two separate people. The reason "noones [sic] ever bothered suggesting they were sockpuppets" is that such a suggestion is preposterous.

You wrote: "Runcorn may well have been sockpuppeting, but Poetlister, Taxwoman, and Londoneye were not involved in that." Actually, I just demonstrated that Poetlister voted together with Runcorn and other Runcorn socks in a number of XFDs and RFAs. I also demonstrated that, over a six-month period from December 2006 through May 2007, every single XFD or RFA that Poetlister voted on contained one or two votes from other sockpuppets of Runcorn. That cannot be a coincidence. If Poetlister were innocent, you would expect that most of the time, she would be voting independently on whatever XFD or RFA caught her interest, and her votes would only rarely intersect with Runcorn's.

Taxwoman and Londoneye did not vote with Poetlister in any of the discussions I linked in my last post, but they did vote with Runcorn in many other discussions, most famously on Jreferee's first RFA. If you analyze their contribution logs as I did for Poetlister, you will find evidence that they, too, are involved in the massive fraud that Runcorn unleashed on the Wikipedia community.

Regarding Antidote: Two wrongs do not make a right. If Antidote was socking, that's unfortunate, but it doesn't justify Runcorn's response to create sockpuppets herself, including Poetlister. It certainly doesn't justify Runcorn's abuse of those sockpuppets on many discussions where Antidote was completely uninvolved.

Therefore, my point stands. For the six-month period before Poetlister was banned, she voted in XFDs and RFAs exclusively as a sockpuppet of Runcorn, Holdenhurst, R613vlu, Brownlee, etc. Evidence linking Taxwoman, Londoneye and RachelBrown to these user accounts is also readily available and has already been presented on Wikipedia.

Mayhap you should have a quiet word with Durova?, She may have a cautionary tale for you on the dangers of non-sequitur conclusions drawn from sooper-seekrit sleuthing.

as a random thing back to the question asked at the start of this thread- which I'm now reading- there are numerous cases, that's why I think people being banned solely for being a sock shouldn't happen unless it's actually confirmed by using checkuser (not someone pretending to use it.)

The latest I know of is the users here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=197609417

were all blocked as 'sockpuppets' and master.

Basically, they were amused by a bloke's edits, so they made a tongue in cheek 'Order', pledging to serve him. TharkunColl genuinely didn't know who they were!

So he and several of them got blocked, there were a lot of people after them that ended up getting blocked themselves. A bloke who was after them pretended a checkuser had been run, so well that an admin believed him!

In the end, they were all cleared.

Now let me respond to Thekohser. You cited about six user accounts that were blocked by Morven as sockpuppets of CBOrgatrope, who is himself a sockpuppet of Jon Awbrey (Jonny Cache in this forum). Morven has checkuser access, and presumably issued these blocks, all simultaneously on November 5, 2007, based on checkuser evidence. I say "presumably" because he didn't spell it out explicitly, but for the users with one edit or zero edits, how else could he possibly have concluded these were socks of a banned user?

It was only afterward, on January 1, 2008, that Krimpet changed the sockpuppet tags to identify the sockpuppeteer as Wikipedia Review. I have no clue why she did this. The accounts had already been indef-blocked, so it didn't matter.

All of the user accounts blocked by Morven fail the criteria I laid out at the beginning of this thread. They were correctly blocked as sockpuppets, at least according to Morven. You have not convinced me that Morven got it wrong. All you have said is that Morven didn't release his evidence to the public. That, of course, is not news. The fact that Krimpet subsequently may have misidentified the sockpuppeteer doesn't make these blocked users innocent. They still appear guilty to me.

One account you mentioned, Ray Regan, deserves special mention. He was blocked by JzG after this edit to the Daniel Brandt deletion review, which was his fifth edit overall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=111056119

Such trolling deserves an indefinite block. It is clear that this user was a sockpuppet of someone, and anyway was not an innocent user trying to help write an encyclopedia. Again, the alleged misidentification of the sockpuppeteer doesn't make this user innocent. He's still guilty.

All that being said, I agree with Thekohser that misidentifications are not uncommon. I wrote a long essay about this just a few weeks ago. I already linked to it in my first post, but I'll link to it again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shalom/D...unterproductive

Do read it! You might learn something.

You must be quite bold to come into the lion's den and approach the Poetlister issue.

To respond to your inquiry, Poetlister is a member of staff here as well as a Wikiquote Bureaucrat.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Req...p/Archives/2008

I shall ask you this question then. Why was Poetlister able to become a bureaucrat on Wikiquote, with the support of a steward (Lar) and a sitting Arbitrator (FloNight) no less, if there were such serious concerns of abuse of process on Wikipedia? Is Wikiquote so substantially different than Wikipedia that a such a serious "confirmed" master sockpuppeter, who managed to hoodwink everyone and become a WP admin, can become a bureaucrat on another Wikimedia project?

Oh and Poetlister is away at the moment, so you will have to wait if you wish to be addressed by her directly.

Thanks, Wikiwhistle! Believe it or not, in the end, they were not all cleared! Look at the block log for each user cited in the checkuser case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...ase/TharkunColl

TharkunColl, ShieldDane and Vigilant Darkness were blocked as sockpuppets, then unblocked when Thatcher found they were all from different locations. Frostalf and Trynaa were also blocked as sockpuppets, but nobody bothered to unblock them. They are still blocked today, three weeks later.

Adrian Fletcher's block stands for other reasons, so it does not count on my list.

My list has now more than doubled, from four to nine. Here it is:

CreepyCrawly
!!
Gerry Lynch
Mackan79
TharkunColl
ShieldDane
Vigilant Darkness
Frostalf
Trynaa

Wow. This is truly shocking to me. You would think that (1) the administrators would wait until the checkuser responds before issuing blocks based on an open request for checkuser, and (2) when the checkuser came back negative, all of the falsely accused accounts would be unblocked, and not just three out of five.

Am I missing something here?

People who are blocked as sockpuppets without checkuser will never be completely innocent. They will have done something identified as bad, or nobody would ever think of calling them a sockpuppet.

It is a problem if people are misidentified as sockpuppets, even if they would have been blocked anyway.

Certainly it is, for several reasons:

First, at least two people have been falsely accused. Even if the accused sock is a bad editor, he doesn't deserve to accused of misconduct he didn't actually commit, and likewise for even banned accused sockmasters.

Second, it may demonstrate the accuser(s) and/or blocking administrators to be incompetent.

Finally, it erodes the community's confidence in the judgment of its leadership. Abusive socking is very widespread, even among administrators, and needs to be stopped. To do this effectively requires this confidence, which must be earned through reliable identifications and the avoidance of false ones.

You Are So Full Of Crap That You Don't Even Have A Clue How Full Of Crap You Are

Jonny

Jonny's right here. I have private evidence, just submitted to me today, which indicates that even in Shalom's long-winded exercise above, the argument is built on an entirely false premise.

Don't ask me for details, because frankly, this is so comical it is not even worth typing another word on the subject.

Greg

P.S. I didn't even bother to list the many users who were blocked from editing Wikipedia because they had the unfortunate experience of logging in on a dynamic IP that had recently been assigned to my modem. I assume that they eventually got their editing "privilege" straightened out, but I didn't track their cases religiously. They were simply collateral casualties in my personal battle for Wikipedia access rights as a donor.

They didn't ask to be unblocked, (perhaps because they didn't know how), well I hope that's the only reason why they're still blocked.

I hope they aren't kept blocked much longer as 'not here to edit constructively', which seems to be a catch-all for being blocked because people don't like the look of you.
----

As regards Runcorn etc- I thought some wikipedian did a statistical graph of the edit patterns of these alleged socks, and it looked as if it was practically impossible that they were the same person.

But believers in the theory couldn't accept that, so just said Runcorn must have superpowers or something to be able to achieve it.

Or am I getting this case mixed up with another one?

Well, I think the graph showed that if the socks were socks of Runcorn, there was a very odd pattern where the socks all got up about the same time, and it was 2 hours earlier in the AM than Runcorn himself ever did. And I suppose everybody said that Runcorn might edit only socks from home, and himself from work, but it didn't sound very likely, even to the people proposing it. I don't know what they finally did about it.

The graph of the time-of-day edits, BTW, were done by an an editor named CoolHandLuke. If he ever comes here to WR, he's going to covet gomi's avatar-pic. Or want at least some fuzzy dice.

I was unaware of the Request for Bureaucratship on Wikiquote. It is particularly noteworthy to me that Lar, Alison and FloNight all expressed doubts about the circumstances behind the ban of Poetlister on English Wikipedia. FloNight wrote that ArbCom was preparing to review the case at that time, in February 2008. I wonder if all the evidence we're dredging up over here has already been discussed over there.

Let me put it this way: I can't rule out the possibility that Poetlister is "only" a "meatpuppet" of Runcorn. I am certain that Poetlister voted in collaboration with Runcorn in some XFDs and RFAs. In particular, it is very, very hard to explain the AFD voting on Zsa Zsa Riordan as anything other than deliberately coordinated:

First AFD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...Zsa_Zsa_Riordan

Keep votes: R613vlu, Kyleall, Poetlister, Brownlee. All of these, except for Kyleall, are sockpuppets of Runcorn.
Delete votes: Dr.frog, Cate
Result: No consensus

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

Keep votes: Poetlister, Brownlee, Kyleall, Holdenhurst, Osidge. All of these, except for Kyleall, are sockpuppets of Runcorn.
Delete votes: Kolindigo, Dr.frog, Pigman, Moreschi.
Result: No consensus.

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

Keep votes: None.
Delete votes: Nine different users, not including the nominator.
Result: Delete.

It's pretty clear that Kyleall is not a sockpuppet of Runcorn. I can't say the same of Poetlister. If you remove the Runcorn sockpuppets, there's a nearly unanimous consensus to delete from the beginning. This doesn't prove Poetlister was a sockpuppet, but it certainly raises doubts about her presumed innocence. These AFDs are just two of many examples where Poetlister voted with Runcorn and his socks.

I am not afraid to discuss the Poetlister case. I fought hard to prove CreepyCrawly's innocence because I really believed, based on the evidence, that he was innocent -- and I was vindicated. If I would really believe that Poetlister was innocent, I would advocate (at least on this forum) that her good name be cleared. Unfortunately for her, I am seeing that the Arbitration Committee acted on more than just a flimsy checkuser, as many people seem to believe.

[Note: I lost my internet connection for two hours, so this message may appear out of context.]

What does this AFD have to do with Poetlister or Runcorn?

Good to see that we're relying on reliable sources.

Yes, there is evidence that Poetlister did some meatpuppeting, though scarcely on the scale of some people. But look at the three smoking guns of the case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...inship/Jreferee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...nship/Ryulong_3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...adminship/FT2_2

Where was Poetlister on those? These and Shalom's evidence conclusively proves that she was not involved in regular mass-meatpuppetry. If she deserves to be blocked for what she did do, how many other people would be?

This is in fact excelent evidence in support of Poetlister. She is a real-life friend of RachelBrown. What is more natural than that one of them came up with the idea of /watch and the other copied it? She certainly kept an eye on Rachel's articles after Rachel was bullied off, so it would be surprising if she hadn't edited it. And did Runcorn have a /watch page?

And was Jbc01 ever charged with being a sock of Taxwoman?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbc01

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Taxwoman/articles

It was the other way round; Runcorn got up much earlier than the others. However, like a good admin he edited at all hours so it's not just an "only from home" thing. The graph was of course ignored.

On the Zsa Zsa Riordan case, I am not clear why Kolindigo (who, contrary to Shalom, voted in all three) and Dr. frog wanted her deleted, but why have these two people not been charged with anything for their collusion on this issue?

Anyway, Shalom should be commended for demonstrating how strong the evidence is against Poetlister.

Shalom, Poetlister may well have been meatpuppeting on afds/cfds for RachelBrown and later Newport/Runcorn, but this is in no way different to the fact that Jayjg, SlimVirgin etc. all vote exactly the same way, often in quick succession of each other indicating that one has asked the other to "watch my back" (as Jayjg helpfully put it).

The difference is Jayjg and SlimVirgin generally did not want these Jewish lists, so quite simply it is the case that they were treated differently because they were taking a position that went against what Jayjg and SlimVirgin wanted.

For the record, no - at least, not that I can find.

I'll return to Poetlister later. I found yet another instance of a user unjustly banned as a sockpuppet, then unbanned one day later. He still writes for Wikipedia to this very day.

User:Tennis expert was blocked on December 6, 2006 by (you guessed it!) Dmcdevit as a "sockpuppet of banned user user:cute 1 4 u". Renesis unbanned him one day later with the summary, "Unfounded sockpuppet block."

Block log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...r:Tennis_expert

Here's the discussion on Tennis expert's talk page archive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ten..._for_cute_1_4_u

Tennislover was also blocked as a sockpuppet of Tennis expert and cute 1 4 u. No points for guessing who blocked him! Almost six days later, Sarah unblocked, citing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...Case/Cute_1_4_u in her unblock summary.

Here's Tennislover's block log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ser:Tennislover

Here's the archive of Tennislover's talk page. The foot-dragging by administrators is as ugly as anything I've seen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tennislover/Archive_3

Twister Twist was another innocent user caught up in this mess, and she is still blocked today! Dmcdevit blocked this account along with the others. Mackensen's checkuser showed that it wasn't a sockpuppet of cute 1 4 u, but it was a sockpuppet of Tennislover. On his talk page (see the previous link), Tennislover claims that Twister Twist is his sister. I have no reason to doubt this. See this edit by Twister Twist to Tennislover's talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=89912485. Note also that Twister Twist never tag-teamed with Tennislover, so even if this really were Tennislover and not his sister, the account should not be blocked because its activity is consistent with WP:SOCK#LEGIT. AstroHurricane001 asked on User talk:Twister Twist:

"Why is this user still blocked? User:Tennislover has been unblocked, because a checkuser proved he was not cute 1 4 u. Tennislover has said that User:Twister Twist is his sister's account, so no need to block this user." AstroHurricane001 22:33, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Twi...on_for_block.3F

Note that the timestamp on this comment is 24 days after Dmcdevit's initial block. You would think that someone would have questioned the correctness of all of Dmcdevit's blocks with the erroneous checkuser evidence on December 6, 2006. Or maybe that's too much to hope for.

Here's the link to a long discussion on the Administrators' noticeboard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...f_Tennis_expert

Tennis expert's final comment in that AN thread is worth quoting in full:

"I am glad this has been resolved in this manner, and I accept the apology.And I want to give special thanks to the users who have supported me or at least expressed skepticism about the allegations.Without Renesis, I never would have succeeded in fighting (or even been allowed to fight) the ban.He deserves phenomenal credit for taking a risk on me and then sticking to his beliefs despite being severely pressured to relent.What's even more remarkable is that he has been an administrator for just 1 week!

"Please, I'm begging you, don't put anyone else through this wringer again.The stress on me has been unbelievable.There simply has to be a better, more open, more impartial way of fighting sock puppetry.There has to be a way to allow someone who has been banned without advance notice to contest the ban in a reasonable manner, without being restricted to posting solely on his or her talk page.

"It will take me a long time to get over the stuff that's been said about me all over Wikipedia because of this incident: the presumption of my evildoing by so many different editors, the unwillingness to listen to me or the evidence I've presented, the devaluing of my contributions and character,and the unfairness of the procedures that were followed.All that stuff about me is going to be "out there" (on several different user talk pages) for anyone to see.People who were not involved will wonder about me: were the allegations really true despite the ultimate outcome?There is no practical way, to my knowledge, to ensure that the stuff is deleted.The damage is done.I cannot begin to express how appalling this whole thing has been to me." Tennis expert 20:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Finally, here's the AN thread about unblocking Tennislover:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...ock_tennislover

I therefore add the following users to my list:

Tennis expert
Tennislover
Twister Twist

And yet Tennis expert continued to contribute his slave labor to Jimbo's big bag o' non-profit (but a massage here and there) trivia.

Once again -- people with too little self-respect.

I just found another one: Piperdown. I haven't finished reading all the threads, as apparently there's been a lot of discussion about him. He was banned for almost six months, from 7 September 2007 through 27 February 2008. He cleared his name, then wisely retired.

The last comment on User talk:Piperdown is a keeper:

Somebody owes you an apology for the original block. I believe there's space here for that person to leave one, if they so choose. Cla68 (talk) 07:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. David Gerard owes Piperdown an apology. So does Georgewilliamherbert, who supported the block based on the "duck test." And so does SlimVirgin, who accused Piperdown of being a sockpuppet, then had her talk page deleted. Piperdown's complaints on ANI fell on deaf ears, except for mine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=133941208

The more I dig, the more dirt I find.

Well I hope you have a lot of time on your hands because our archives are extensive, and don't even encompass one percent of all the bad blocks that have occured.

Blocking on Wikipedia is roughly about as common as blocking in (American) football scrimmage.

In other words, it's a routine part of the game.

Please see this related discussion on the WikBack:

http://wikback.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?u...r=5149#Post5149

Why? Nobody of importance participates more than once a week or so on that ill-governed message board.

Sometimes involuntarily so... you can get one-week bans there at a drop of a pin.

What do you want as the result of your efforts on this?

I've looked further into the Runcorn case, and I should add another user to my Innocence WikiProject.

Runcorn indef-blocked User:Tellerman on May 1, 2007 as a suspected sockpuppet of User:Antidote. Isotope23 unblocked 3 days later, on May 4, 2007, after checkuser proved that Tellerman was not a sockpuppet.

Tellerman's block log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...=User:Tellerman

Tellerman reminded the community of this incident in the discussion following the block on Runcorn and his sockpuppets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...kpuppets_banned

Casey Abell in that thread linked to a discussion on the Wikiquote Village Pump, where Poetlister defended herself and retained her administrator status. (Poetlister, I know you've seen all this, but I'm writing it for my own benefit and to inform other readers.)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Vil...e_14#Poetlister

In that discussion, Poetlister writes:

"I am quite taken aback by this reaction. If you check the history, I was accused in 2005 of being a sockpuppet of RachelBrown and blocked on Wikipedia. These charges were investigated by Charles Matthews and David Gerard, and they unblocked me. Newport, also accused of being a sockpupper of RachelBrown but also subsequently unblocked, is now charged with being a sock of Runcorn. Whether or not this is true (I don't believe it), the sole "evidence" against me now is the link to Newport via the discredited allegation against me from 2005. The claim against the others is that they all edited the same articles and participated in the same AfDs; I have edited none of these articles or AfDs." (Emphasis added.)

Uncle G refutes that last point in his response on that thread:

"There are a few errors in what is written by Poetlister above. w:User:David Gerard did not unblock w:User:Poetlister, as can be seen from the block log. The initial evidence against Poetlister was a report of what CheckUser had revealed, and there has been quite a lot accrued in the time since, such as w:Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Seraphimblade 2. And yes, Poetlister, did participate in AFD discussions at Wikipedia where the other sockpuppet accounts participated. I and several other editors are currently engaged in the labourious task of reviewing them all. One such is w:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society (2nd nomination), where the "Taxwoman", "Rachel", and "Poetlister" rôles all participated." (Emphasis added.)

I already showed that in the last six months before Poetlister was banned, she voted on exactly seven AFDs and RFAs. In all seven of those, between one and three Runcorn sockpuppets also voted, always in the same or a similar direction. If that's not votestacking, I don't know what is.

It's true that Poetlister has voted on some AFDs and RFAs without her socks. That lends credence to the possibility that she may be a separate person. The fact that Taxwoman has posted to this discussion (in a substantially different tone), and the fact that they have distinct identities on other wikis, also suggests that Poetlister and Taxwoman may be two different people. Still, I am far from convinced.

I don't know why you and others assert that Poetlister was blocked solely on the discredited 2005 checkuser. Dmcdevit, in his blocking notice, noted "new and firmer technical evidence." This implies that checkuser was run again on all involved accounts, including Poetlister, right then in 2007. I don't trust Dmcdevit after the mistakes he's made with Tennis expert, Tennislover, Twister Twist, and Gerry Lynch, but I do trust Mackensen, who supported the block notice with a simple "Aye," and I do trust other people who were on the Arbitration Committee last year. If someone can point me to evidence that Poetlister was blocked based solely on 2005 checkuser evidence, where a 2007 checkuser either was not done or seemed to exonerate her, I would like to see that. It might convince me that Poetlister really is someone other than Runcorn.

Regarding my comment about Poetlister supporting an RFA because SlimVirgin nominated the candidate: that was a joke. (You forgot to quote the smiley face at the end of my sentence.) As you can see from my blog (linked from my Wikipedia userpage), I am not the biggest supporter of SlimVirgin.



I just recently looked at the Ambuj.Saxena travesty about a week ago. It was ugly. Coordination between SlimVirgin, Crum375 and Jayjg is well-known, but nobody seems to care. That doesn't make it right. I think the massive opposition to Ambuj.Saxena, Cla68 and Gracenotes after SlimVirgin decided to sink their RFAs was some kind of herd mentality: if SlimVirgin says there's a problem, there must be a problem. If you actually look at what each of those three editors said and did, it's hard to justify opposing on that basis in my opinion, though I admit to being an inclusionist for RFA voting. (I supported Gracenotes and did not vote in the other two RFAs.)

Bottom line: Is coordinated voting through real-life communication a "bannable offense"? In my opinion, it is -- not for a single occasion, but for repeated vote-stacking over many months and dozens of AFDs and RFAs. Clearly Poetlister was less involved in this scheme than Runcorn, R613vlu, Holdenhurst and Brownlee; but she was involved to a noticeable extent. The need for numerous deletion reviews and relists at AFD to repair the Runcorn votestacking is not the sort of disruption I am ready to forgive in the blink of an eye, if I may put on my "experienced Wikipedian" hat. This is a serious violation of the sockpuppet/meatpuppet policy, even if you were actually someone else. I cannot excuse it. What I can do is say that, since almost a year has passed and you have behaved properly on Wikiquote, and if I can be sure that you are not the same person as Runcorn (who, let me remind you, banned an innocent user as a sockpuppet of Antidote), then I would support allowing you back into Wikipedia. It would not exonerate you in the past, but going forward, it would allow you back into the community. Let me put it this way: it doesn't seem fair that Poetlister is banned while Mantanmoreland is not banned. That's a separate issue, but it illustrates the point that if Poetlister is really not Runcorn, but only a "meatpuppet" (I hate that word, but that's what it amounts to), it might be time to put the past behind us and give you another chance.

I wish I could support you more explicitly. If you show me more evidence that you and Runcorn are separate, I might be convinced.


N. B. I quoted Poetlister who said on Wikiquote: "The claim against the others is that they all edited the same articles and participated in the same AfDs; I have edited none of these articles or AfDs." I assume that Poetlister will argue that Wikipedians made a list of AFDs where Newport, R613vlu, Brownlee et. al. vote-stacked, and Poetlister found that she had not voted in any of those AFDs. She did vote on other AFDs alongside those socks, as Uncle G and I have pointed out. I don't think Poetlister was trying to be dishonest in her statement above, but in light of the evidence I presented, Poetlister should please clarify what her intentions were in making that denial.

Shalom, that belief is very admirable. Perhaps you'd like to suggest that Jayjg, SlimVirgin, and the other members of their group are banned for "repeated vote-stacking over many" years?

And what the hell does "real-life" communication mean, anyway? Communication is communication. An email or contact through a back-channel admin list, is the same as a phone call or a whispered deep-throat conversation in a building parking lot. None of them are public, as a post on a TALK page is. We know that a great deal of admin-communication is NOT open to the public, even though it affects Wikipedia policy-- sometimes in very personal and painful ways.

It's time Wikipedia faced the same problems that faces all democracies, eventually: what do you do about campaigning and campaign finance and campaign contributions of various kinds? But first, despite all of its voting, Wikipedia would have to admit that it functions in some sense as a democracy, and it won't do that. The hypocrisy of banning somebody for "vote-stacking" and "vote-canvassing" while denying that you're a democracy, is palpable. If you're not a democracy, what the hell do you care about how the voting process runs?

You know, in memoriam for the 40th aniversery of Martin Luther King's assassination, they ran a special on him last night. One of this major campaigns was black voter registration in states like Mississippi where half the population was black but almost no registered voters were. Now, King knew this effectively was putting more votes in the Democratic pocket, since these people were hardly going to vote for cracker Republicans. What he was doing would have gotten him banned from any Wikipedia process, for recruiting meatpuppets. Think about that for a bit.