Some people wonder if it is significatn that Slim and others have sockpuppets. Of course it is not.

I asked why David Gerard, who banned one of my learned friends as a sockpuppeteer, despite there being no particular offence casued on the account, was able to boast of his own 'sockpuppet' on his user page:

Here's how the conversation went:

>>> I was blocked by David Gerard who himself has several identities on WP!

Jimmy's characteristic one word response...

>> Evidence?


(Evidence? don't waste your time giving Jimmy evidence!)

> "I also have a sock puppet of my very own: User:Querulous , my favourite
> example user. "
>
> - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard


Jimmy's equally characteristic puffed-up response:

That looks like a secondary account in keeping with policy. Don't be
disingenuous.

For those who want the meta-discussion, then, here it is:

Presumably the problem is IF an admin objects to the activities of one of these accounts. Presumably too, if an admin objected to something 'Querulous' did then David_Gerard WOULD become a 'sockpuppet'!

So a sockpuppet is a redundent concept. The offence is not having multiple accounts but something else. The penalty is then applied down the list of 'alternate accounts'.

If Jimmy says, 'that's right, what's the problem' - the problem is why talk about 'sockpuppets' then?

On the other hand, it certainly makes it easy to ban people, doesn't it?

That's why I would say Jimmy is being 'disingenuous'.

Well, Duh.

There is only one mortal sin in Wikipedism, to wit, or not, Heresy, also known as Pissing Off A Cabal Hierarch (WP:POACH).

The x-cuse marked down for your x-communication will always be anything but that, of course.

Jon

Jimmy? Disingenuous? Say it isn't so.

I'm curious to know the exact circumstances of the blocking of your "learned friends'" alternate account. You say it was not in connection with any other misdeed? So give us the diff.

Jimmy Wales continously shows intellectual dishonesty on the nets. yet another example.

i remember on WP somehow I came into a skirmish between Heatedissuepuppet and Sparkzilla.

Heatedissuepuppet's SPA was to come on WP and "out" Sparkzilla as Mark Devlin, to show that a WP:COI existed in his editing a Japanese newspaper's WP article that Devlin worked for. Somewhat justified I guess.

But that "outing" was done by an admittedly SPA sockpuppet that was doing so, from Japan btw, to hide the fact that they too probably had a COI in the topics being editing on that page (some scandal involving a drug bust).

Guess who executed/approved of this outing/banning led by this SPA Sock?

SlimVirgin. With glee.

The juxtaposition of that with JB/GW had my head spinning when it happened with Heatedissuepuppet. The hypocrisy stunned me.

Posted earlier.

It depends who you are, and whether the "linch-mob" is out to get you, or not. Wikipedia is a mob rule affair. Innocent editors are continually harassed by wily pov-pushers in "give a dog a bad name" process, and only yesterday a former long retired admin was baselessly charged with sockpuppetry, and this was only for downright spite. This ague goes on and on.

There's a good example just come to a head of sock puppetry and how the new checkusers (well, one of them) can screw things up.

I'm interested in the goings on of HighKing, the illustrious British Isles hater (see the BI Bardcom thread at Editors). Recently he's accused a couple of editors of socking - LemonMonday and BlueBugle. To cut a long story short, this went to Checkuser after a nonce admin called Jehochman "suspected" sock puppetry after HK's complaint. The mistress of the checkuser pointedly refused to get involved (she ignored the nonce's request on her talk page) so eventually a new guy, Rlevse, picked it up. He came back with "Possible" (see here). I ask you, possible, FFS What's that supposed to mean? They either are linked via a common IP (at creation or subsequent editing) or they aren't. So arguably it should be "Confirmed" or "Not Related". Maybe they used the same ISP or something, but that proves nothing. Anyway, in the best of Wikipedia AGF traditions, the nonce blocked both users on the strength of this possible

Which takes us back to the new checkuser. If he'd had the balls to say one thing or t'other, poor old LemonMonday might not now be blocked - and I can tell you, he's not best pleased!. Note the previous botched and unfounded accusation (that didn't attract an apology from the accusing admin-tosser) at the head of his talk page. Then again, maybe the nonce would have blocked him anyway.

Old Lemon Head is now threatening to become a professional sock puppet - good on him! I just hope in his new incarnation(s) he manages to get a grip of that serial buffoon HighKing.

Were LemonHead and BlueBugle socks I wonder? Maybe? It's like a court of law: "Foreman of the jury, what's your verdict on the charge of sock puppetry against LemonMonday and BlueBugle"? "Er ... Possible". "I hereby sentence you to be blocked for life". "But I'm not guilty". "You possibly are, and that's good enough for me. Take them down".

LemonMonday has now been unblocked and the checkuser case updated. Under the hood, it was pretty complex and the n00b checkuser made a bit of a bad call on it. He's brand-new at the job, in fairness, and is willing to admit when mistakes are made. I think that in itself speaks volumes.

News just in: Checkuser is not infallible and can sometimes get it wrong. No, really!

(Why do I keep wanting to type "Lemonparty"? )

Good one! Who'd have thought it. The community owns up to a mistake, well, a possible one AGF is not dead after all, but it takes the likes of the mistress checkuser to knock some sense into those stuborn admins who really never do AGF.

Gosh, checkuser is human! MG, you have ruined my narcissism theories. Oh well, back to the drawing board!

Just curious. How would SV come to be doing that? Unless part of a well-organised WP cabal... (if I can say that without falling foul of Somey's 'no conspiracy theories rule!)

The issue surrounded this article, about a British tourist convicted of trying to enter Japan with drugs and subsequently sentenced to a long stretch in the Japanese Big House. Since BLP issues were on the table, I think that's why SV got involved. I was involved also because I had read about the story and was interested in it.

Baker's family, friends, and supporters had been claiming since Baker's arrest that he was being railroaded by the Japanese justice system. A major English-language weekly in Japan, called Metropolis (formerly Tokyo Classified) was following the story, because it was of course of interest to foreigners living in Japan, like myself.

Metropolis, owned by Devlin, was at first on Baker's side. But, after investigating the matter further, Devlin and his staff found what they said were inconsistencies in Baker's claims. So, Devlin, in his weekly, pointed all of this out and indicated that Baker's supporters appeared to know all this and were operating in bad faith by trying to conceal the full truth behind Baker's story.

An apparently committed Baker supporter was trying to POV own the Baker article in Wikipedia and keep any mention of the Metropolis reporting out of it. Devlin was trying to keep it in. I took Devlin's side. HeatedIssuePuppet, who I still don't know what his/her primary account was, took Baker's side. SV got involved and more or less took Baker's supporter's side, mainly because, I think, she wasn't convinced that Metropolis was a reliable source. Also, I think she didn't like how Devlin was behaving. She finally blocked Devlin, I think because he did something she told him not to do. The next day, JzG indef blocked him. Although Devlin could have acted a little more civil, I think they went too far with banning him. If he were to return and ask to be unblocked now, I think he would be. However, he sold Metropolis about nine-months ago, so I don't think he cares about it anymore.

Or maybe she just happened to be monitoring AN/I around the time of the original 3RR claim made against David Lyons (T-C-L-K-R-D) by Sparkzilla (T-C-L-K-R-D) on the Nicholas John Baker (T-H-L-K-D) article Cla68 just mentioned. I wouldn't have bothered to look it up, but since Mr. Flash almost never bothers to look these things up, I figured it would be a good way to show off some of our new BBCode!


It's more like a "guideline."

Also, it's "no silly conspiracy theories after we let you get away with it four or five times"...

cla68, that's how i recall the sparkzilla affair as well.

i do remember petitioning Queen Mack to allow Devlin to edit the talk page but stay away from the article page - with his own name, putting forth his "COI".

Slimmy said hell no. She didn't much like the debate about reliable sources with Devlin. Yes, that is what set her off. Not that it takes anything to do that. I forget what stunt slimmy pulled that caused sparkzilla to take it to the WP:AN board, but that he had the gall to question her on something meant bansville. Devlin was in no way out of line at anytime, as I recall.

But Jossi, hey...let's let Prem Rawat's frigging PR man administrate the Rawat article. No problemo! And under an alias that any editor not familiar with his saga would know...that's he/she would be dealing with an admin on the page who is PR's PR guy. Sure you could research Jossi's userpages or subpages or whatever. Like you should have to do that. Jossi should have changed his editing name to his real name once his COI was revealed.

Even Patrick Byrne has volutarily kept his editing to the talk pages of the Byrne/Ostock/NSS articles. Which he does not have to do, btw. And he's not even an admin.

I'd even say Gary Weiss should be allowed to edit under his own name, his BLP's talk page or any article's talk page that uses him as a source of even mentions him. Or any "living person" - like Dan Brandt - should be allowed to voice their opinion/facts on the talk pages of articles that mention/feature them. Charlie Manson? Yeah, let him edit his BLP's talk page. But keep his crazytalk down to a 100 word per week limit, lol. Don Murphy? Hellfuckingyeah let em in (the talk page). Apparently WP:NOTCENSORED so Don's vocabulary would fit right.

Jeff Merkey? Um...yeah, I highly recommend he be able to edit his BLP talk page. That is going to get ugly.

Ooh, nice one!

Isn't it amazing, what a little pedantic shit Master Wales can be?
I think mayhaps he needs his diapers changed.

For that matter, how in the HELL did Mr. Gerard manage to talk himself into being Slashdot's go-to guy for all things Wikipedia? There's a new one today.

I don't think he did, actually (look at the well-deserved grief he is catching in the comments). DG is just another one of those Attention Whores of teh Internets™.

so does the WP for schools include "Anal Cream Pie", "Ass to Mouth", and David Shankbone's Not So Private Collection of Man on Man Action?

David Gerard is a paid employee of the Wikimedia Foundation (which he got by being a "cabal" [a more accurate term would be "clique"] member), and the clique members/paid employees are allowed to get away with a lot more stuff than regular admins or users.

Well, he's not on the published list of staff, and he describes himself as "Volunteer Media Contact".

You're right. Well, he's still part of the clique.

Drat, and I thought we'd nailed one of them!

There is a new amusing fracas over this topic here, which features Will Beback railing against Bishzilla and Lady Catherine de Burgh.

tony1, if I could vote, it would be for your proposal.

I'll also note that the business about



has no merit at all. People should not be editing Wikipedia, or anything else, from public internet terminals or, generally, any hardware they do not trust.

Nice comeback in that sockpuppet talk page:


Snappy.

The Meat.

Looking down the list of exceptions leaves me less than impressed.



This sounds like the need for a software hack, not a policy one. Off the top of my head, I'd say that augmenting the login to have "robot", "admin", etc, bits and these bits will be passed on to any edits made. Alternatively (or perhaps even additionally), the edit pages can be adjusted to have such bits, similar to the current "minor edit" one.



Looking closely at SlimVirgin's scenario basically shows why allowing editing from public terminals is highly stupid in the first place: when SV logs in as A, she still exposes a password to the potential keylogger, and by extension, her normal account by reputation. Why should she entertain this risk? The risk is all the more apparent because of other elements of this proposed policy would make it trivial for eavesdropper to determine the value of the "A" account: SV must bind A to herself, publicly.

In fact, editing from terminals an editor or Wikipedia can not trust with a password is probably bad enough it should be specifically forbidden by policy, and definitely not accommodated.



As Tony notes, this argument can not be taken seriously at all.

If Wikipedia were serious about protecting from password stealing, it would implement secure signon. They don't, though, which is why you can easily steal Wikipedia passwords (HTTP basic authentication on unencrypted channels -> password sent in cleartext in the form submission) if you have access to the network.

That would get in the way of anyone can edit.



Wikidiots bloody must face real-world consequences.

Absolutely it would. WP needs to consider the consequences of its actions. Why is the same terminal insecure and scary enough that certain people can use it to justify having a second account that they use to edit WP (and not "as themselves", for fear of sockpuppeting), but it's okay for other people to use it.

Either "anyone can edit" (from this terminal), or "no-one should". Currently this is used as an excuse for (typically) admins and other privileged elite to run sock puppets. "Oh, I was logged in from an untrusted terminal". I don't buy that. "I absolutely had to edit now, even though I didn't trust the computer I was on". No.

Would someone with DID (aka Multiple Personalities) having multiple accounts be considered a sock puppeteer? I find it hard to believe that someone who has an account from more than one personality is responsible or even guilty of such an offense because once a different PERSONality takes over they are no longer the same person. But then again, Fred Bauder says that someone with schizophrenia is unable to edit Wikipedia because it is more than they can handle.

When did he say that?

In an email discussing a friend's block.

On WikiEn-list?

No. Somewhere else. But I was just blocked for the very question I asked.

I am starting to favor a 2ch approach of near total anonymity with no possible investment whatsoever in fake online identities ... a near impossibility to identify individuals turn the focus instead onto the information instead.

Personally, I always give my Wikipedia user accounts the password: 111111

If anyone finds any, please feel free to use them. I have probably forgotten what they were.

As a rule I don't "sockpuppet", and certainly not vandalize, but I do not feel in anyway inhibited from making new accounts when I get bored, feel like it, or it is more interesting.

Are the scout masters able to search and identify the database by passwords, or are the passwords properly encrypted with the MySQL? (mental note: I must have a look and see ...)


FYI, under the current regime, I support "no anonymous accounts" and the tying of account to real names and identity checks, e.g. credit card, driver's license, mobile phone registration etc according to which country.

Good call. Half the time I post here, the reply is at least partially about me, no matter what I say. I loath your frequently racist posts Cock-up, but at least you've never done that. Thank you. I agree that you should keep on living the pseud high life.

Don't worry about the passwords; they've been encrypted and salted. We don't have any special access to them anyway, assuming you're talking about a certain arbitrator.

Last I checked, passwords were stored in the database as:
md5(user_id + "-" + md5(actual_password))

So if in fact your password was "111111" and your user ID number was 6047231, your password would be stored in the database as "2e43c5534239c0401068b3107b9b2e7a":

Step 1:
md5("111111") → "96e79218965eb72c92a549dd5a330112"

Step 2:
md5("6047231-96e79218965eb72c92a549dd5a330112") → "2e43c5534239c0401068b3107b9b2e7a"

These steps are repeated for the password you enter when you log in, and the result is compared against the hash stored in the database. There are two immediate consequences to this:

1. One cannot determine which accounts share the same password based on the hashes.
2. Any other password which yields the same hash result will also yield a successful log-in.

However unlike brute-forcing a hashed IP address (only 2³² possible inputs), brute forcing a password actually could take the rest of your life. While one would almost certainly find a hash collision before determining the victim's original password (thereby saving some time), there will only be a 1 in 2¹²⁸ chance of this happening.

And yes I realize some folks in the PRC figured out that hash collisions are easy enough to arrange (but only if you already know the original message which would defeat the purpose).

Please remember that schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities. Most schizophrenics are badly impaired when it comes to the sorts of high-order tasks it takes to keep sock accounts ordered and sorted and straight with no mistakes. You may think of schizophrenics as being mentally handicapped, if you want a simple model (at least it's better than the one you seem to be operating on). Any imparment of mental or physical function will tend to make you a poor executive secretary, which is the kind of skill set you need to be a good sockmaster.

Who knows if Bauder is right about editing Wikipedia? Never say never in biology. There are some small fraction of "high functioning" schizophrenics. But whatever you can say about their disease, it has nothing at all to do with any tendency to create or maintain web sockpuppet accounts. That's just not a productive idea. The idea that these people are too mentally screwed up to do what the PoetHorde did, is a better model, but that's true of the effect of just about any illness, mental OR physical.

Yes I'm am aware of the difference. I have DID, they schizophrenia. It's not hard to guess where we met each other.

I think it's funny how if you're blocked for vandalism and you are blocked indefinitely, and then create a sock-puppet account , are discovered, the message on your user page says "blocked indefinitely for abusing multiple accounts", although you were blocked indefinitely to begin with, and then under it says "abusing multiple account to evade a ban or block may result in them being extended." ,which really makes no sense. How can you extend an indefinite block?

I'm wondering how you know what these messages say.

I'm wondering why you give a fuck...

I don't.

Jolly good, now go and write something tediously dull pertaining to Manchester, those african kiddies are waiting...

I don't know of anything "tediously dull pertaining to Manchester", it's all fascinating to me.

Oh dear, please do consider resorting to hard drugs or excessive alcohol as an alternative to local history, in the long run it does less harm.

Admittedly Manchester has nothing on Boise, but I'm quite interested in the place that was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. Have you ever heard of it, the Industrial Revolution?

Ah yes the first signs of the true capitalist economy, my aint that something to be proud of...

It's certainly significant, whether it's anything to proud of or not. Your argument, what little there is of it, seems to lack cohesion though. Are you on drugs, drunk, or both?

Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me...

(This response was brought to you by the Manchester Tourism Board.)

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