User:SebastianHelm/Sock hunt

In recent years, I noticed an increased fear of sockpuppets in the English Wikipedia. There is a climate that sometimes reminds me of a witch hunt. This threatens Wikipedia at its raison d'être: being the free encyclopedia.

During the same time, I have been a mediator-administrator in high risk areas, above all the Sri Lanka conflict, where sockpuppet allegations occupied a substantial portion of all discussions before I got involved. These discussions have almost vanished now, and I am happy to say that we have no problem with sockpuppets anymore. How did we do it? - see below.

For POV pushing sockpuppets
We built robustness against trickery into our procedures. We focus on viewpoints and edits, instead of vote counts and reversion counts. Granted, this is not a quick solution. For those who enjoy the drama of WP:AN/I, it is probably boring. It takes some patience. But I can attest that it does pay off in the long run.

In a way, this is nothing new - it's just what WP:AGF tells us to do. I'm not arguing for assuming good faith in a blue eyed, Pollyannic way. We need to always keep both, the best and the worst case in view. A wise person acts in a way that encourages the first, while always being cautious of the latter. I appeal to admins in other areas to employ the same or similar techniques to cope with sockpuppets. This is important not only because I believe it is effective, but also because the sock hunt climate has a poisoning effect on other conflict resolution efforts. (This is similar to having an organic field next to one that is sprayed with pesticides.)

General solution
If sockpuppets are really as big a problem as some editors make them out to be, then we could solve the problem by the way our software works, as many other social websites do. We chose not to do that for good reasons, such as that we wanted to allow everyone to edit. We can't have our cake and eat it, too.

Why the sockpuppet scare is bad for Wikipedia
One big problem with witch hunts is that people turn off their brains. I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me that the combination of fear and self-righteousness leads people to unapologetically not only give up any attempt to assume good faith themselves, but even deride others who do so. Any appeal to reason, such as asking the sock-hunter to back up their opinion, is treated with cynicism.

(This is just a first draft. If there is interest, I can improve it. I'd be happy about any feedback on the talk page.)