Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Pioneercourthouse

If you've been directed here, you're probably a well-meaning editor trying to explain why a new editor can't edit some article with the word "Pioneer" in the title. That new editor is a sock of trying to work around an abuse filter and/or semi-protection. Stop explaining and block. Thank you. (For the full history, see here.)  Wknight94  talk  12:46, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Synopsis and modus operandi
The Pioneer Courthouse Square article has been subjected to a multi-year effort to add irrelevant, non-encyclopedic, and unsourced facts. The human behind it has used dozens of sockpuppets to edit the article. Tactics include misdirection, confusion, and/or lies about their intent, in order to get the article protection reduced so they can edit it.

History
Pioneer Courthouse Square is a place in downtown Portland, Oregon affectionately referred to as "Portland's Living Room".

In October 2006, an IP editor,, added the following phrase: "The square has a somewhat negative reputation because of the many homeless persons who congregate there." The IP had made previous edits, and made subsequent edits, but tailed off by mid-2007.

This quickly turned into an edit war from multiple IPs: many times in October 2006 from 68.50.73.179, then in December from 67.189.121.234, 68.50.73.179, 141.161.12.144, and 70.58.51.131.

Finally, (aka PCH) showed up and made the same "mostly harmless" edit on 24 December 2006. PCH and traded edits over the next few days, and sockpuppets began in January 2007 with  making the same edit.

Since then, there have been dozens of confirmed or suspected sockpuppets with one or more aspects of the following modus operandi:
 * adding a variation of the same text: Pioneer Courthouse square is known to be popular among homeless. Most commit no crimes although there have occasionally been murders.
 * Posting to talk pages, asking why they are protected and claiming to have important information to add, but never sharing what the information is. Rather than going into a long explanation, this page should be given as rationale.
 * Creating large numbers of sleeper sockpuppet accounts, making small edits, and using them months later.

He has inspired many discussions on Talk:Pioneer Courthouse Square, checkuser efforts, reports to WP:ANI, and so on. The page has been permanently protected, and as of May 2009, the sock farm branched out to similarly-named articles, such as Pioneer Place (example), Pioneer Square, Seattle (example), and Pioneer Courthouse (example). These pages have been fully protected also.

He is community banned and should be blocked on sight. Abusefilter 175 was created by ; it is kept private (administrator-only) to keep the sockpuppets from discovering ways around it.

2024 update
The indefinite semi-protection of Pioneer Courthouse Square was lifted in December 2022. A new sockpuppet appeared in June 2023 to resume vandalism of the article in the same manner as past practice. The article was protected in January 2024 after continued vandalism. Pioneer has not struck the article since.

Rationale for this page
The goal of this page is to reduce time explaining the PCH sockpuppet saga to editors who haven't heard of it. While it initially appears to fail WP:DENY, the sock has been able to pull in the unfamiliar editors, causing a lot of time to be wasted. Some of PCH's socks will even write on ANI threads, troll ANI, troll the Pioneer Courthouse talk page, and claim to be a coworker and use blackmail in the trolls.

Further pages to read/parse

 * Mediation Cabal from 2006
 * Talk:Pioneer_Courthouse_Square/Archive_1, Talk:Pioneer_Courthouse_Square/Archive_2
 * Suspected_sock_puppets/Pioneercourthouse
 * Sockpuppets: confirmed, suspected, investigation archive
 * Checkuser
 * ANI: 481, 494, 496, 530, "coworker"