Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giovanni33/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Giovanni33
Giovanni33 may have the longest block log in Wikipedia. He is known to have used many different sock puppets. He is currently under an Arbitration Remedy restriction of 1R/week which he has violated several times. Based on only a small part of the evidence presented below, he was blocked indefinitely for using sock puppets recently but some doubt remained and he was unblocked. A situation where Wikipedia cannot act if checkuser does not show identical internet providers seems very harmful. That would mean that users could avoid all restrictions simply by using different providers. Especially if using wireless providers, as in this case, which are difficult to locate. Much additional evidence and several new sock puppets as stated below now clearly demonstrates Giovanni33's abuse of sock puppets and his unfortunately rather successful long term systematic breaking of Wikipedia policies. As such Giovanni33 and his methods are harmful to Wikipedia.

All of the following accounts and IPs come from the same geographic area as Giovanni33 who is located in San Francisco. They are essentially SPA with few edits. They edit a very narrow range of related articles that Giovanni33 is interested in. Such as Allegations of state terrorism by the United States (edited by all), State terrorism, Terrorism, William Blum, Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Church Committee, Guatemalan Civil War, and 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. By using these accounts and IPs Giovanni33 systematically violates his 1R/week restriction as well as other aspects of WP:SOCKS by using them in votes and in talk page discussions in order to give a false impression of support.

Rafaelsfingers
Edits from the same same geographic area as Giovanni33. Mostly from a wireless device. SPA with few edits reverting to Giovanni33 earlier versions and repeating his arguments. Examples: Here Rafaelsfingers reverts to Giovanni33's version in the US state terrorism article. Here Rafaelsfingers reverts to Giovanni33's exact version in the Guatemalan Civil War article. Not to one of the 13 intermediate different versions by different editors in some cases having the same POV but not the exactly identical text as that of Giovanni33.

In addition to violating 1R/week, also violates WP:SOCK by voting at the same time as Giovanni33 in an AfD regarding the US state terrorism.

When Rafaelsfingers was blocked it was Giovanni33 pleaded for unblocking on Rafaelsingers own talk page. Not Rafaelsingers until an administrator remarked that this looked bad and asked for a reply by Rafaelsfingers.

Supergreenred
Edits from the same geographic area Giovanni33. Has made a few edits from Rafaelsfingers's ISP early in his history. Has made at least one edit from San Jose using a dial-up connection and stated access to dynamic IP address. One of Giovanni33's indefinitely blocked sock puppets, User:MikaM, has also edited from San Jose and his earlier sock puppet farm also used a variety of internet connections and locations to avoid detection (see below).

SPA with few edits reverting to Giovanni33 earlier versions and repeating his arguments. Examples: Here Supergreenred reverts to Rafaelsfingers's (another sock puppet, see above) exact version in the US state terrorism article. Here Supergreenred reverts to an IP in the same geographic area as Giovanni33 in the William Blum article. Here Giovanni33 reverts to Supergreenred's exact version in the William Blum article:

Giovanni33 has a long dispute with user:John Smith. Here Supergreenred deletes a talk page edit by John Smith stating "John Smith is not welcome here." Strange reaction by an editor with supposedly only a dozen edits at this time and who had never encountered John Smith before. But Giovanni33 has a long history of deleting John Smith's edits.

Linguistic similarities:
 * S: "Source calls him a historian, but you remove that." Supergreenred stating "remove" instead of "removed".
 * G: "you remove "historian' despite what the sources say." Giovanni33 stating "remove" instead of "removed".
 * S: "you are cherry picking only selective facts to paint a POV picture."
 * G: "You are cherry picking what information to include and exclude on the basis of POV."
 * S: "Allow time for discussion and consensus before mass deletions."
 * S: "Allow consensus for what to properly remove first."
 * G: "Allow for editors imput and consensus first please."
 * G: "Please allow for consensus before re-adding back."

DrGabriela
Edits from the same geographic area Giovanni33.  SPA (before the RfA started) with few edits, despite being created on July 2007, reverting to Giovanni33 earlier versions and repeating his arguments. Examples: Here DrGabriela reverts to Giovanni33's exaxt version in the Chuch Committe article:. Here Giovanni33 reverts to DrGabriela's version in the State terrorism article. Here DrGabriela reverts to Giovanni33's version in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état article. Here Giovanni33 reverts to the same paragraph text as DrGabriela in the Terrorism article.

In addition to violating 1R/week, also violates WP:SOCK by voting at the same time as Giovanni33 in an AfD regarding the US state terrorism.

76.102.72.153
IP from the San Francisco. Used to revert to Giovanni33's preferred version. Examples: Here reverts to Giovanni33's exact version in the William Blum article. Here Giovanni33 reverts to this IP in the US state terrorism article.

76.126.64.74
IP from San Francisco. Used to revert to Giovanni33's preferred version. Examples: Here makes similar reverts using the same arguments as Giovanni33 in the Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki article. Here Giovanni33 reverts to this IP's exact version on the US state terrorism article.

67.188.208.203
IP from the San Francisco. Used to revert to Giovanni33's preferred version. Examples: Here reverts to Giovanni33 exact version in the US state terrorism article.. Blocked for violating the the 3RR rule. This not including Giovanni33's reverts.

67.188.208.91
IP from the San Francisco. Has made a single edit in Wikipedia which was to the US state terrorism article. Like Giovanni33 has an aversion to the word "claim" when describing views favored.

67.180.59.86
IP from San Francisco. Has made a single edit in Wikipedia which like Giovanni33 a few days earlier removed an entire section from the US state terrorism article.

71.204.160.68
IP from San Francisco. Five edits in Wikipedia all to US state terrorism article. Like another of Giovanni33's IPs it removes Red Army Fraction terrorism against the US.

69.36.228.50
IP is not from San Francisco but from Palo Alto, California. But Giovanni33 is known to previously have moved away from San Francisco to avoid detection. See "Older accounts, IPs, and second chance" below. This edit to User talk:Bigtimepeace where 69.36.228.50 accepts a proposal made to Giovanni33 by Bigtimepeace shows that this IP is Giovanni33 editing from Palo Alto.

64.118.111.137 and 64.118.113.49
and IPs not from San Francisco but from North Fork, California. Appeared during a week when Giovanni33 could not revert due to his 1R/W. 64.118.111.137 made 9 reverts to the US state terrorism article and was blocked for 3RR. Obviously an experienced editor familiar with WP policies since he made references to AfD, speedy keep, good faith, POV, and featured status in his first talk page edit. As usual for Giovanni33 made numerous claims of reverting to consensus which was particularly strange in this case. 5 hours after the last edit and being blocked another of Giovanni33's IPs, now from San Francisco, continued reverting to exactly the same version.

For completeness I should also point out other long term sock puppeters on this article, which has seen more than its fair share of those, which may possibly be useful when evaluating the network evidence which I cannot see. Editing from New York: Indefinitely banned User:SevenOfDiamonds aka User:NuclearUmpf aka User: Zer0faults. Editing from San Antonio, Texas: User:Inclusionist aka User:Travb aka User:Divestment. Editing from unknown location but not the same area as Giovanni33: Indefinitely banned User:Bmedley Sutler aka User:Fairness And Accuracy For All. Editing from Taipei, Taiwan: indefinitely banned User:Stone put to sky who used numerous sock puppets to edit this article..

IPs that have edited Allegations of state terrorism by the United States
IPs that have edited Allegations of state terrorism by the United States from the start of February 2008 and until this RfA. A period when I have continuously edited and followed the development and edits made to the article. As shown the IPs above are not some selectively selected for resemblance to Giovanni33 but are all the IPs from California that have edited the article during this period.

San Francisco, California: 76.102.72.153, 67.180.59.86, 76.126.64.74, 67.188.208.203, 71.204.160.68, 67.188.208.91. As per above.

Palo Alto, California: 69.36.228.50. As per above.

North Fork, California: 64.118.111.137, 64.118.113.49. As per above.

Taipei, Taiwan: 118.165.217.88, 118.165.219.98, 118.165.219.150, 118.165.218.235, 118.165.217.93, 220.134.17.21. Likely indefinitely blocked User:Stone put to sky as per above.

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia: 60.48.29.10. Four edits.

Astoria, New York: 208.120.68.62. One edit.

Osaka, Japan: 86.156.111.207. One edit.

Manila, Philippines: 124.106.194.69. One edit.

Saint Louis, Missouri: 207.206.136.29. One edit.

Older accounts, IPs, and second chance
The above does not include the much older confirmed sock puppets User:BelindaGong, User:Professor33, User:NeoOne, user:Freethinker99, and User:CleanSocks as well as the indefinitely blocked suspected sock puppets, User:FionaS, User:HK30, User:Kecik, User:Mercury2001, User:MikaM, User:NPOV77, and User:RTS. A total of twelve indefinitely blocked sock puppets. This not including other suspected sock puppets and IPs coming from the same geographic area as Giovanni33.

Of particular interest is indefinitely blocked user:MikaM, a SPA used to avoid 3RR and revert to Giovanni33' version in the articles he was interested in then. MikaM as is the case now was not an obvious sock puppet based on IP alone and at least once edited from San Jose instead of San Francisco showing the considerable efforts Giovanni33 makes to hide his sock puppetry. Another sock puppet has edited from 38.114.145.148 or Concord, California. Also interesting is the use of a T-Mobile IP, 208.54.15.129, to revert to Giovanni33's versions. As well as the claim made by one of his indefinitely blocked sock puppets that some of his reverts have been made by his wife and a friend, also discussed on the checkuser page, which if true would be meatpuppetry but would also make checkuser more difficult.

AnnH made this comment on the first Checkuser which still applies "All in all, there is a very disturbing pattern of new users with no prior history at Wikipedia arriving and coming to all the pages he edits, agreeing with him on the talk page, reverting to his version, claiming consensus where none exists, and following him to other articles and voting for whatever he votes for."

There is a long old WP:ANI discussion regarding Giovanni33 and his many sock puppets where large scale sock puppetry was confirmed and he came very close to being indefinitely blocked but was given a second chance. Which he has ignored as shown above.

Response to Giovanni33
Giovanni33 states that 69.107.7.138 does not resolve to San Jose. It does using these IP localization services: Giovanni33 does not say what service he used but presumably it is the same he uses regarding an IP by Merzbow. This service localizes 69.107.7.138 to Castro Valley, California. Maybe Giovanni33 did not state which service he used because the map from this service shows that Castro Valley is closer to San Fransisco than San Jose. IP localization is not 100% accurate but these services agree on the same general area.

Regarding the "Tables Turned?" section, I agree with Merzbow. Giovanni33's linguistic evidence based on one edit by Supergreenred after the RfA started is quite obviously faked. Such very glaring linguistic similarities between Supergreenred and Merzbow should have been present also before the RfA started if not faked. But from then there are none. Is instead yet more evidence of why Giovanni33 should not edit Wikipedia.

Response to Bigtimepeace
Bigtimepeace argues that the accounts have some similarities to sock puppeter Stone put to sky and thus could be his sock puppets. See Merzbow's reply below for why this very unlikely as compared to being Giovanni33's sock puppets. I will point out another possibility. Shared sock puppet accounts. Giovanni33 is willing to go to considerable lengths regarding his sock puppetry as shown by the varied methods used by his previous sock puppet farm and and now attempts to present meat puppets in a meeting. There have already been several strange attempts to falsify and obscure the evidence like the faked evidence of sock puppetry by Merzbow presented by Giovanni33 and the faked attempts to indicate medical knowledge by DrGabriela shown to merely be quotes from dictionaries as described elsewhere.

Giovanni33 and Stone put to sky share the same view and as known sock puppeters have already shown that they are willing to use to deception. To further obscure the evidence it would be easy for them to simply email passwords of accounts/material to post to one another. This may have occurred even before the RfA since the accusations of sock puppetry against both of them came earlier. If so, then some of the posts by the accounts may have been by Stone put to sky or by Giovanni33 using material supplied by Stone put to sky, or Giovanni33 taking over an old Stone put to sky sock puppet account, to obscure the evidence. This does not change the overwhelming evidence presented here, such as that regarding linguistics and other behavior typical of Giovanni33 by these accounts, showing that Giovanni33 has used these accounts to break policy by sock puppetry.

response to evidence
If this is the best merzbow can offer, i'd hate to read his other contributions. Time and location correlations is an unpersuasive argument (the timestamps are unsubstantial, in any case.) With this logic, think about how many innocent people would be banned for a new news worthy event in a particular city. Yes, we all know about multiple ISP's, the admins here i'm sure are quite familiar with the internet, but no IP addresses have been linked! I've taken the suggestions of other admins and have ventured to other topics.

Response to questions
In response to the question of using the 'paint a POV' phrase. The only way I can explain how I came up with that expression, is how most of learn terminology and adopt it to express our own point of views. I can assure everyone, once again, I am not Giovanni. I simply heard that expression used by supergreenred and thought it captured the essence of what I was trying to say. Similar to 'ping me' or 'rtfm', just a learned phrase.

In regards to the editing with a wireless device, this is fishing very deep for evidence. I have used my cell to access Wikipedia, because, simply, my work is very restrictive when it comes to accessing non work related web pages. That is why I use my wireless device at work. Btw, there is good news for this person Giovanni - I am editing this from my main computer (not my wireless device).

In order so no innocent people are treated unfairly, I am willing to provide 'real life' evidence to a neutral minded admin to prove I the other person is not my 'sock puppet' or vice versa.Rafaelsfingers (talk) 06:19, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

List of accounts
For easy reference, here are links to the users mentioned below in my section (all suspected socks/meats of Giovanni33):



Edit timelines support charge of puppetry
I am going to present a timeline analysis here for each day on which G33 and one of the other accounts both had substantial edits. With two exceptions (analyzed in-line), it turns out all time periods of substantial editing activity are disjoint from one another. Occasionally a single edit will appear outside, and a couple times the beginning or end of adjacent time periods will overlap by a few minutes, but in general, they slot neatly and usually tightly between each other, even on days when more than two of the accounts are editing.

The below pattern can be explained by one person at one location, using different browsers or a second computer to edit. An RFCU noted that Rafaelsfingers was on a wireless device, and almost everyone in the Bay Area has cell phones that can do this (you can often route your computer's connection through it also). And one can easily have a desktop on a Comcast cable connection and a laptop on a DSL connection; or Remote Desktop into a work computer. With what I personally have, I could roleplay accounts from three different ISPs: one from my iPhone, one from cable, one from connecting through my work machine. But they would all be noted as coming from the same geographic area, as all these accounts do.

(Number in parens is the number of edits made in that time period).

2007-07-19
 * Giovanni33: 17:10:50 <-> 19:46:36 (19)
 * DrGabriela: 20:38:01 <-> 23:24:25 (20)

2008-03-09
 * Giovanni33: 10:49:33 <-> 11:18:20 (3)
 * 67.188.208.203: 15:36:09 <-> 18:43:59 (21)
 * Giovanni33: 19:23:57 <-> 01:19:36 (43)

2008-03-15
 * Giovanni33: 11:26:03 <-> 13:37:05 (8)
 * 76.126.64.74: 18:10:09 <-> 18:41:39 (11)
 * Supergreenred: 18:39:53 <-> 19:01:38 (8)
 * Giovanni33: 20:35:18 <-> 03:44:32 (23)

2008-04-02
 * Giovanni33: 14:07:46 <-> 17:19:56 (8)
 * 76.102.72.153: 19:14:25 <-> 19:52:38 (15)

2008-04-09
 * Giovanni33: 12:41:57 <-> 18:07:06 (14)
 * 76.102.72.153: 19:01:14 <-> 22:14:50 (11)
 * Giovanni33: 23:23:28 <-> 02:04:41 (6)

2008-04-12
 * Giovanni33: 11:12:09 <-> 11:17:09 (3)
 * Rafaelsfingers: 16:56:15 <-> 22:22:53 (14)
 * Giovanni33: 23:37:01 <-> 23:58:18 (3)

2008-04-13
 * Supergreenred: 01:05:44 <-> 02:21:34 (6)
 * Giovanni33: 01:02:10 <-> 02:42:48 (11)
 * Giovanni33: 10:11:17 <-> 11:29:59 (9)
 * Supergreenred: 14:07:48 <-> 17:17:05 (22)
 * Giovanni33: 18:21:24 <-> 18:24:41 (5)

The early-morning shared time period is an outlier. The fact that the start time is within 3 minutes, and the end time within 21 minutes, lends credence that this was done deliberately by one person at one location. Note the reversion to form in the evening.

2008-04-15
 * Supergreenred: 02:40:16 <-> 04:31:39 (19)
 * Giovanni33: 14:49:59 <-> 14:50:50 (2)
 * Rafaelsfingers: 20:14:09 <-> 22:02:38 (4)
 * Giovanni33: 21:53:07 <-> 00:26:53 (18)

2008-04-17 and 2008-04-18
 * Giovanni33: 09:46:07 <-> 23:22:31 (34) (also single edit at 01:23:01 on 18th)
 * DrGabriela: 23:56:16 <-> 02:08:40 (19)
 * Giovanni33: 02:29:06 <-> 10:22:22 (4)
 * Rafealsfingers 10:54:11 <-> 11:27:26 (8) (with single edits at 16:01:17 and 21:33:57, in the middle of 1-2 hour bouts of G33 inactivity).
 * Giovanni33: 12:32:54 <-> 23:42:04 (38)

2008-04-19
 * Giovanni33: 11:36:11 <-> 14:05:07 (14) (also single edit at 18:43:11)
 * Rafaelsfingers: 17:15:57 <-> 21:21:26 (24)

2008-04-20
 * Giovanni33: 01:01:23 <-> 04:37:38 (19) (also single edit at 06:26:03)
 * DrGabriela: 00:13:02 <-> 04:00:51 (16)
 * Giovanni33: 13:28:25 <-> 21:03:11 (26)
 * DrGabriela: 23:23:21 <-> 02:46:30 (40)

Another early-morning outlier, same analysis as above (i.e. start and end times close together). One deliberately-generated outlier for Super and another for Gabriela, on different days, showing the same M.O. Yup, looks like ass-covering. (And once again, reversion to form in the evening).

2008-04-21
 * DrGabriela: <- 02:46:30 (per previous day)
 * Giovanni33: 03:12:28 <-> 19:24:16 (11)
 * Rafaelsfingers: 19:28:37 <-> 20:07:55 (3)
 * Giovanni33: 21:59:19 <-> 22:53:12 (7)
 * DrGabriela: 23:09:48 <-> 00:05:15 (4)
 * Giovanni33: 00:26:50 (next day) <-> 01:28:59 (10)

2008-04-24
 * Giovanni33: 23:03:12 (prev day) <-> 01:01:26 (25) (also single edit at 02:47:02)
 * DrGabriela: 01:25:08 <-> 02:32:16 (15)
 * Giovanni33: 08:46:08 <-> 18:31:50 (11)
 * DrGabriela: 22:15:31 <-> 00:21:34 (20)

Pre-response:

Now I'm sure Giovanni is going to respond by attempting to prove he's a sockpuppet of. That won't work because if one compares the timing of a heavy editor undisputably not G33, like Ultramarine, to the above contributions, one sees a much more random overlap of time periods - which is what one would expect. For example, here is how Ultra's edits compare on a selection of days taken from above:

2008-04-19 Misses G33, but overlaps Rafaelsfingers by one or two hours on either end
 * Ultramarine: 04:08:22 <-> 06:03:37 (24)
 * Ultramarine: 15:26:49 <-> 22:35:07 (51)

2008-04-21 Overlaps DrGabriela by 1:30 and G33 by 0:30.
 * Ultramarine: 01:12:45 <-> 03:41:18 (32)

2008-04-24 Matches G33 end time in the morning, but in the evening their times are shifted by 2 hours relative to each other.
 * Ultramarine: pretty much all day the 23rd to 01:04:21 on the 24th, then 06:17:21 <-> 16:50:26

In contrast, the G33 accounts don't do this. Periods of intense editing activity by these accounts usually abut each other very closely, but never overlap - except for two outliers in which they overlay very closely (said arse-covering).

Linguistic evidence supports charge of puppetry
Giovanni33's writing style is unique, and evident in all of these accounts. He is usually quite polite, and when ruffled gets huffily indignant; at worst, he's like a schoolmarm lecturing her charges on "NPOV" and "consensus". He is loquacious, and his grammar is slightly off-key, sometimes falling into pseudo-chiastic redundancies (see diffs 1, 5, 7, 10, 12). He frequently misspells words, and will usually spell "it's" as "its" and "let's" as "lets". He connects clauses with two dashes and no spaces, but often does not hyphenate compound words that need them (see section below).

Grammar/writing examples, huffy lecturing, use of "its", "lets"
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "But its a good start, at starting fresh with that section."
 * 2) Giovanni33:  - "Disagree take it to the SYN board and get informed. Every editor telling you over and over here seems to have no impact."
 * 3) Giovanni33:  - "It has no consensus to add, its not a relaible source, and is a personal attack on Chomsky, not his specific claims."
 * 4) 76.126.64.74:  - "If someone can show me how its about this, please do."
 * 5) 76.102.72.153:  - "Its as if he did not bother to read the many sources that disagree with him... It should be restored and changes should be discussed before making major changes like this."
 * 6) 76.102.72.153:  - "Of course these views also are part of those who argue against the bombings on other grounds and do not make this argument, but it certainly is part of the argument for why they are thought to be state terrorism. So I say keep." - (Indeed.)
 * 7) Supergreenred:  - "I see it as helpful to have some definitions here of Terrorism and the problem of an accepted definition for State Terrorism."
 * 8) Supergreenred:  - "This is wholey inadquate. Again, what is the rush? Regarding admin powers, its not proper for admins to use their powers to protect the article and then edit it: it gives them a content change advantage."
 * 9) Supergreenred:  - "Lets talk about what part needs to be moved to daughter articles and then agree before taking the action."
 * 10) Rafaelsfingers:  - "Its a lot of words but those are a lot of good sources. It shows that there is quite a lot of good sources that support the material for this article."
 * 11) Rafaelsfingers:  - "Aren't there guidelines about accusing people on guidelines on a seperate individuals talkpage?"
 * 12) DrGabriela:  - "The statement you quote above can be sourced to the book I have given you as the answer of where it comes from."
 * 13) DrGabriela:  - "That is why States will deny doing it. Its violates acceptable moral norms becaues it targets innocents. This is true even if the goal is to save lives or does so in fact."

Connecting clauses with two dashes, no spaces
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "...claims with valid sources--for they are false claims... top experts in their field--we do give them a full..."
 * 2) Giovanni33:  - "...the paramilitary death squads--in 1967 Mario Sandoval..."
 * 3) Supergreenred:  - "...esp. when I have not even violated 3RR--yet he blocked me... ...started editing it to his own views--against consensus..."
 * 4) DrGabriela:  - "...the broader construct of State-Terrorism--and indeed are so by these analysis--would be hard pressed to..."

Spontaneous (ab)use of the exclamation point
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "But we have to be careful not to bloat it (easily done!)."
 * 2) Giovanni33:  - "It looks very good! Thank you. Finally the article is reading like an actual readable article on of all things, its actual subject matter! How apropos!"
 * 3) Giovanni33:  - "Untrue. Take a look. It is sourced!"
 * 4) DrGabriela:  - "I can not believe this same debate is happening here too! How many places is this same debate going on? Its crazy!"
 * 5) DrGabriela:  - "I looked and a lot looks very good!"
 * 6) Supergreenred:  - "Not, not sufficent time for discussion or consensus. Not even a day!"
 * 7) Olawe:  - "you are a bad man!" (edit summary)
 * 8) Olawe:  "I looked and everything was sourced, tho. ??!"
 * 9)  (an old G33 sock):  - "Now I am banned? Wow. This is a new worthy story! ... But as of now im rather flabergasted!"

Accounts agreeing with each other
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "I looked over the changes and like the other editor, the version by Dr.Gabriela is better."
 * 2) Giovanni33:  - "Completely agree." (in response to Supergreenred)
 * 3) Giovanni33:  - "I'm reverting too to Dr.Garbriela (except keeping corrections)." (edit summary)
 * 4) 76.102.72.153:  - "True but I think most opinions here echo Giovanni33's observations."
 * 5) 76.102.72.153:  - "restoring sourced information added by Giovanni33." (edit summary)
 * 6) DrGabriela:  - "I have to agree with user Giovanni33 on these points."
 * 7) DrGabriela:  - "I must concure with these thoughts but it would appear that we have reached an impasse with Ultramarine at this stage." (in response to Giovanni33)
 * 8) DrGabriela:  - "I believe Giovanni33 has articulated well the differences Ultramarine."

Accounts agreeing with each other - old school
 * And now for a blast from the past (all the below are former confirmed G33 socks).
 * 1) Professor33:  - "Str177, your reply to Giovanni33 is not impressive."
 * 2) Professor33:  - "Well said, Giovanni."
 * : - "the edit summaries make sense to me, and Gio's arguments on the talk page are convincing." (edit summary)
 * 1) BelindaGong:  - "Contributions by Giovanni are relevant and intersting in this article."
 * : - "...the answer to your questions about the evidence has already been given many times, including recently above by Giovanni, and others."
 * 1) And a half-dozen more I left out...

Specific phrases
For each phrase below, I report the results of a Google search of Wikipedia, to establish a baseline. If you wish to duplicate the search, remember to surround the phrase with quotes.

"for ALL the deaths?"
 * Out of many variations of this phrase in the surrounding discussion, only these two accounts use this particular variation, capitalizing "all" and tacking on a question mark.
 * 1) Giovanni33: 2008-04-23T19:22:20 - "...This op ed piece is not accurate, creates a straw man (who ever claims that the US is to be blamed for ALL the deaths?). Nonsense! ..."
 * 2) DrGabriela: 2008-04-21T01:47:08 - "Can you show me where it says the US is responsible for ALL the deaths? Perhaps I missed it."

"looks very good!"
 * Google shows that this phrase - with the exclamation point - is very rare.
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "It looks very good! Thank you."
 * 2) DrGabriela:  - "One thing for sure, a lot of information was taken out of the article very quickly. I looked and a lot looks very good!"
 * 3) Supergreenred (slighty different):  - "Yes, I'm happy with the new sources added to support the Sister Ortiz section. They look good."

"lets assume good faith"
 * Note the lack of apostrophe. Also, note the frequent use of "also" before or after this phrase. Only a handful of Google hits.
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "Lets assume good faith and focus on article content..."
 * 2) Giovanni33:  - "...but lets keep the principal of Occams Razor in mind and lets assume good faith, also."
 * 3) 67.188.208.203:  - "These accusations do not belong on the talk page. Also, lets assume good faith."
 * 4) Professor33 (an old G33 sock):  - "Lets assume good faith first before I make much ado about what may be nothing."

"many editors working together"
 * Five Google hits total.
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "...such as blanking entire sections that were carefully put together by many editors working together..."
 * 2) 76.102.72.153:  - "The section was balanced and the product of many editors working together."

"on principal"
 * Many Google hits, but only a half-dozen that confuse "principle" with "principal".
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "I have always been willing to compromise, but not on principals."
 * 2) Supergreenred:  - "Therefore, will restore the massive deletions on principal."

(lower case "ok") "either way"
 * Specifically on the subject of including Jeremiah Wright's views in "Allegations..." and related articles:
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "...he might be ok for inclusion. I'm ok either way."
 * 2) Olawe (weeks later, on a different talk page):  - "I'm ok with using Jeremiah Writght. Either way is ok with me."

Specific phrases (lack of hyphenation)
Giovanni33 has a peculiar allergy to hyphenating compound words that should be hyphenated. His alternate accounts share his affliction. To wit:

"well referenced section"
 * Google shows only a half-dozen hits without the hyphen.
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "You make your claim to justify your blanking a well referenced section against consensus..."
 * 2) 76.102.72.153:  - "There is no basis to remove this well referenced section."

"counter point"
 * Google says this is rarer than "counter-point", which itself is ten times rarer than "counterpoint".
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "...but you can't deny its a central counter point to the dominant western pov..."
 * 2) DrGabriela:  - "Why not find a better source that makes a more intelligent counter point?"

"off topic material"
 * Out of pages of Google hits for this phrase, all appear to use the hyphen.
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "I removed the off topic material, per talk." (edit summary)
 * 2) 67.180.59.86:  - "this is off topic material. See talk on opposing view section." (edit summary)
 * 3) 76.102.72.153: (no "material")  - "I agree with the other editors here that this is SYN, and off topic."

"long standing"
 * Google shows that the large majority of uses are hyphenated.
 * 1) Giovanni33:  - "...(the long standing version too)..."
 * 2) Supergreenred:  - "These are long standing additoins that were added through the consensus process with compromise."

"paint a POV picture"
 * These are the only instances on Wikipedia of this unique phrase.
 * 1) Rafaelsfingers:  - "There's an unprincipled undercurrent of lumping all idealogical opponents together to paint a POV picture."
 * 2) Supergreenred:  - "rv. you are cherry picking only selective facts to paint a POV picture. BLP applies here." - (edit summary)

"over stating"
 * Google says this is rarer than "over-stating", which itself is ten times rarer than "overstating".
 * 1) Supergreenred:  - "over stating controversial. Covered in section of definitions." (edit summary)

Covering edits by DrGabriela
DrGabriela has made a bunch of edits to medical-related articles. At least one editor has suggested they could mean that this account is not G33, because G33 does not edit such articles. After a bit of investigation, I found that these edits are obvious smokescreens. They are either simple additions of wikilinks (as in here, here, and here), or unsourced copyvios copied out of online medical sources. For example:

Blocking antibody
 * 1) DrGabriela - : "It also refers to an immunoglobulin that combines specifically with an atopic allergen but does not elicit an allergic reaction."
 * 2) Compact American Medical Dictionary - : "An immunoglobulin that combines specifically with an atopic allergen but does not elicit an allergic reaction."

Haematopoiesis
 * 1) DrGabriela - : "Umbilical cord blood from a newborn baby that can be collected from its placenta and umbilical cord after the cord has been clamped is rich in hematopoietic stem cells, and is utilized as a source of stem cells for transplantation."
 * 2) Herald&Review.com Health Blog (February 2007) - : "The baby’s umbilical cord blood is rich in hematopoietic stem cells and can be utilized as a source of stem cells for transplantation."

Nothing to indicate any real medical experience whatsoever. The facts are perfectly consistent with the theory that this is an editor with no specialist knowledge and a willingness to spend five minutes on Google to generate a couple of plausible-looking edits to some randomly chosen medical articles.

Faked evidence
I will first point out that the evidence presented in "Tables turned?" is quite blatantly manufactured. Note that all three of G33's examples come from a single Supergreenred post made to Ultra's talk page after this case opened:. In fact, at the time I almost responded to SGR there, pointing out the obviously stolen edit summary (which is just a couple pages into my edit history), but assumed that G33/SGR couldn't have been so naive to think that this sort of windup would fly as ArbCom evidence purported to disprove the utility of linguistic analysis. G33 perhaps could have played this as a joke had made that post with the G33 account, but by doing it with SGR and presenting it as evidence with G33, he can't even say that.

Linguistic analysis
I stand by my linguistic analysis 100%. It's hard to take credence in G33's evidence when he makes amateur mistakes such as Google searching for phrases without the quotes, and not on Wikipedia to boot. I also note that most of his attempted refutations do not discuss the phrases I presented, but shorter forms. Bottom line is, it's extremely unlikely that five+ different editors, all but one of whom have very short edit histories, would share so many similarly idiosyncratic constructions, in the face of far more frequently used alternatives (to the tune of usually 2-6 hits vs hundreds). He also has no response to the tone/style examples (indistinguishable), and the POV and SPA evidence (new accounts with negligible edit history on non-G33 articles, all in agreement with him; i.e. meatpuppetry even if, by some miracle, they aren't the same person).


 * RedPen's evidence deserves a response: it's much harder easier to control the length of one's post than one's style. It is not wise to present detailed arguments with both the sock and the main on the same pages, because that makes it more obvious. G33 figured this out also - note the vast decrease in talk page posts by SGR, DrG, etc. after the case opened (and the noted reluctance of Olawe to talk), yet they continued to revert. Anyways, even if one post is 10 sentences, and another is 50, the fact that individual sentences share a common, peculiar awkwardness makes for a correlation. For example, it's hard to see the oddball repetition in these phrases (under "Grammar/writing examples" specifically) as anything but the same editor.


 * Corrected my typo above; I quite obviously meant to say "easier", not "harder". - Merzbow (talk) 03:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Technical points
And as for the technical points, RFCU confirms that RafaelFingers was on a wireless connection. G33 surely is aware that an edit from a Blackberry, iPhone, or other wireless device can, in fact, be made away from one's own computer. (And who edits from a cell phone anyways on their main account?) And yes, if one "Remote Desktop"s into another computer and browses, the IP is from the target computer. I'd like to see him present evidence he was at a play when one of the Comcast IPs was posting. - Merzbow (talk) 18:34, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

G33's mysteriously time-shifted play
G33 is claiming in his evidence and on RF's talk page that he attended a play at the same time RF edited from 2008-05-05T02:25:44 UTC to 2008-05-05T02:44:46 UTC. Now since we all know that G33 and RF are in the same time zone - that being PST - we know that those time stamps actually correspond to 7:25 PM to 7:44 PM on the 4th (subtract 7 hours). However, on RF's talk page G33 claims that RF edited from "2:25 to 2:45". Note how G33 flubs his math by forgetting to convert from UTC to PST (and apparently confusing 12 and 24 hour time). Since G33 helpfully tells us in his evidence which play he supposedly attended - "Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class (http://www.act-sf.org/cursestarvingclass/SF) from 2 pm to 4:30 pm" - so we can verify that the play indeed goes from 2 PM to 4:30 PM on Sundays (and 5/4 was a Sunday). But again, we know from the timestamps that RF edited only from 7:25 PM to 7:44 PM that day.

And it should be noted that a normal editor who edited from 7:25 PM to 7:44 PM local time would probably have responded to the claim of "Just so everyone is clear, these edits here... from 2:25 to 2:45 were made from your home connection" with a clarification, not "that is correct", which is what RF said. Bottom line is that the "play evidence" does not exonerate G33, and RF's response is what one would expect from a sock, not a normal editor.

Corrections to G33
"The fact is that many more editors prefer the longer version, not the stubbed one, or greatly shortened one" - I will point out the simple fact that if "many more" actually did prefer the longer version, somebody wouldn't have had to bring in upwards of a half-dozen sock/meatpuppets to war to keep it in. Even I Write Stuff said he "readded shorter version that reached consensus on the talk page". More generally, G33's claim that "there are two main sides to this content dispute: essentially those who want to delete the material and those who want to keep it" is indicative of his mindset of this article being a battleground, and a good motive for puppetry. The fact is there is a continuum, and editors at many different points.

Lastly, on the very front page of "starnetinc.com" one sees a big link to "Megapop Dial - Dial Up Access". And on "popsite.net", one sees "Popsite.net is the reverse DNS for our dial-up equipment accross the country", and Domain Tools shows that popsite.net is owned by starnetinc.com. Olawe, of course, popped up after this case had swung into motion; it is expensive to dial long-distance, and thus a puppeteer would not do that unless one was already under suspicion of puppeting - yet another SF Bay Area puppet would not have passed the laugh test, I'm afraid. (Note that the recently reblocked Mantanmoreland was just caught doing exactly this - dialing up 500-1000 miles away to sock). The identical ISP to SGR is the link that ties the new puppets to the old (aside from the copious behavioral evidence). Somebody is clearly controlling them - look at the frog-jumping below as one picks up after the previous is blocked/runs out of reverts. That somebody is not living in Taiwan, he's living in the Bay Area.

G33-supporting SPAs continue to tag-team revert with him
5/09-5/11
 * On "Allegations...", a new IP editor reverts three times past intermediate revisions to G33's preferred version:, , and . (Also note two identical reverts by DrGabriela during the same time period: and ). All of the dynamic IPs are on popsite.net/starnetinc.com, an obscure dial-up ISP, dialing in from an Honolulu access number. Note that this is the same ISP that SuperGreenRed uses from a San Jose access number. The IP then registered an account, , which made some statements on talk on 5/11.

5/20
 * The article was then protected until 5/20. While protected, Olawe disappeared from Wikipedia.

5/21
 * After the protection wore off, G33 added a new section on Chile, and restored the longer Japan section, both of which were reverted. Olawe immediately re-appeared, reverted to to G33's preferred version, and supported G33 on talk. Olawe reverts two more times this day before being blocked for 24 hours. It is relevant to note G33 and the SPAs' obsession with re-adding the longer version of the Japan section, a stance currently held only by one other editor, BernardL, as far as I can tell; everyone else appears to support the mid-length version at most.


 * The San Francisco IP, much covered in Ultra's sections and my sections above, also showed up this day, and just like Olawe, reverts multiple times to G33's preferred longer version of the Japan section: , . Note the blatantly deceptive edit summaries: "moving down Japan closer to Philippines section", "reason for revert, please?" - the IP is actually restoring the longer version, but claims to be simply, innocently, moving the section (deceiving an uninvolved editor in the process as well). This IP has not edited an article since 4/14, an article talk page since 4/30, and anything else since 5/14. The article is then semi-protected, putting an end to the IP's escapades.

5/22
 * DrGabriela now picks up where 76.102.72.153 (who can no longer edit due to semi-protection) and Olawe (blocked for 24h) have left off, performing exactly the same revert, no less than seven times, and is blocked for breaking 3RR.

5/23 5/24-5/25
 * After DrGabriela is blocked 24h for 3RR, Olawe comes off his 24-hour block, and the race is back on! So far we've got one revert, and another. But can he make it to the finish line? Nope, the article is full-protected until June 13th. And thus concludes a few days in the life of "Allegations..."
 * Somebody unwisely convinces the protecting admin to unprotect the page. Bad move. Olawe reverts twice the description of the Japan section, and then moves his attention from the Japan section to re-adding long-since deleted material on Nicaragua: . Out of reverts, now who should show up but Supergreenred, with three more in the holster: (, . ). Even Giovianni33 himself gets into the act: (with a quick self-revert here since he broke his 1RR: ). With everyone else tapped out, DrGabriela makes an encore appearance:.

6/14
 * G33 wanders into Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to revert, is reverted in turn, and predictably, Olawe and DrGabriela show up immediately to revert-war back to his version: . G33 had last edited the article in 2007, and none of the socks had ever edited it before. Prior to 6/14, neither of the socks had edited since 5/25. Ladies and gents: either G33 has an arch-enemy determined to make things look as bad as humanly possible for him, or he's socking.

Running count of G33 SPA sock/meat blanket reverts since 5/09: 30+
 * I've given up counting...
 * : 2
 * : 10
 * : 3
 * 1)  (plus his admitted IPs): 11
 * : 2

The SPTS theory makes no sense (response to BTP)
I still don't find BTP's theory that these socks/meats are connected to SPTS plausible; earlier we discussed this at length on my talk page here. I will discuss the reasons why SPTS is unlikely to be the sockmaster here, in order of greatest to least importance, and in reference to BTP's evidence.

SPTS has no Bay Area connection
The biggest stumbling block is, of course, that SPTS has always edited from Taiwan, as far as we've been told by CheckUser. The suspected accounts, and G33, edit all from a 30-mile radius in Northern California. Now it is one thing to suspect that somebody in the US is dialing long-distance to sock; in fact, I think it likely G33 is dialing into Honolulu to play Olawe, because Olawe and SGR are on the same dialup ISP, with access points across the country. However, it is impossible to believe SPTS is socking these accounts from a Taiwan location - we know that some of these accounts are on cable/wireless connections - one cannot "dial-in" to these.

So that leaves us with two possibilities: he is, in fact, now physically present in the Bay Area, or he is controlling meats. There is no evidence of any kind to suggest he is or has ever been in the Bay Area, and this makes the second theory - that a very angry guy like SPTS has suddenly developed multiple Bay Area friends to meat for him - quite implausible. Whereas, in fact, we know G33 lives here, is well-connected (as he's said), and is a social guy. Even if you assume the suspected accounts are meats, it is inconceivable that they would more likely be SPTS's than G33's.

SPTS sounds nothing like the socks
BTP doesn't mention any linguistic evidence; the fact is it points to G33 and away from SPTS. My evidence section above already lays out the copious similarities between the socks and G33. SPTS is prone to nasty personal attacks, something I have never seen from G33 the socks. SPTS has a tendency to forget to capitalize many words that need it, especially the pronoun "i", again something not common with G33 or the socks. SPTS also never seems to confuse "its/it's", "let's/lets", a key characteristic of the other accounts. I find his grammar in general to be more precise, and his writing more to the point. Re-iterating the personal attacks point, SPTS is basically a grouch who likes to lash out. G33 and the socks, at their worst, sounds like a peeved schoolmarm, and at their best, are prone to severe over-enthusiasm (e.g. the shared "looks very good!" phrase between G33 and DG, in reference to material about terrorism).

The socks are not interested in SPTS's disputes
The only article that the socks and SPTS ever edited together was "Allegations..." Aside from that, BTP lists a couple of tenuous connections via a couple edits on articles of a shared subject matter, and a few cases of reverting Ultra, but that's it. The one other article aside from "Allegations..." on which SPTS and Ultramarine had major disagreements on was Sandinista National Liberation Front - and none of the socks edited there. In contrast, the suspected accounts, as a whole, have edited in support of G33 on almost every (maybe every) article G33 has been in conflict with Ultramarine at in the past few months. This includes "Allegations...", along with William Blum, Guatemalan Civil War, State terrorism, Terrorism, 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, and Church Committee. Again, SPTPS has never edited these articles (aside from "Allegations..."), but G33 has been in conflict with Ultramarine on every one. The socks' contributions to any other articles are of a very minor nature, never involving conflict.

Timing evidence does not correlate with SPTS
The centerpiece of BTP's timing argument revolves around events on April 13th on "Allegations...", to wit: "G33 was editing the article at the same time as well , but could not have brought the socks into action due to his being blocked for 3RR because the 3RR report was filed after SGR and RF had already started editing." I don't see a point here. RF edited the day before, SG during that day. I see no need for there to necessarily be a relationship to a block of G33. There are plenty of other articles in which G33 and the socks reverted back and forth to each other when G33 wasn't blocked. The point is the accounts back each other up consistently more than any other combination of accounts, and edit almost nowhere else except to back up G33.

Also, BTP says that "It's far more telling that these accounts happened to leap into action within hours of SPTS coming back from a week off...", which is not correct. The suspected accounts were leaping into action quite happily during the time period SPTS took off editing then - 4/5-4/13. RF had edits on 4/09 and lots on 4/12, and one of the IPs (76.102.72.153) edited heavily on 4/08 and 4/09. Also, SPTS's contribs history is full of weeks off. I see no patterns here vis-a-vis the socks.

GABRIELA connection has other explanations
As for the GABRIELA article connection, this clearly reveals where DrGabriela's name comes from, but the connection to SPTS is slim; one edit to a linked article and the adding of one Philippines section to another, along with edits to an article on a Philippine communist leader. A Filipina identity for a sock/meat is not implausible given coverage of the Philippines in the article, and add a human-rights interest - again not an implausible thing for a sock identity on this article - you have a neat backstory for a sock. So let's Google "woman human rights philippines" - and the very first link is an article about a slain Gabriela activist. One tenuous connection for another, no? (Also note G33 previously used a sock account with an Asian female name - ; he claims it was run by his wife, but true or not the point stands.)

New positive RFCU evidence
See. We have "Likely that Giovanni33 = from the CU evidence. Different ISPs, but they appear to be very close in location. Some other technical evidence also suggests strongly that they are the same user." We also have "Confirmed that Ratatoui is and  Likely based on topic selection and behavior (and taking logged out edits into account as well) that this is Giovanni33." - Merzbow (talk) 16:20, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Giovanni33
Lets summarize the evidence being used against me:


 * 1. My block log is presented as relevant for consideration. I disagree. If anything my block log shows how much I’ve proven my ability to reform. Most of it, though, is wheel-warring, over issues not related to socket-puppets.


 * 2. My past puppets are displayed in this case. It is true that I engaged in this behavior a long time ago. I regret that. I apologize for it. And, I have never done it again. I would not let down the trust given to me by Musical Linguist, whom I now greatly respect for her kindness and empathy. I wish she were still with us. I regret many unkind things I did and said at that time. Flo will remember that. But instead of creating a new un-tattered account that many advised that I do, I stuck with my original because I was told I’d be given a “tabula rasa”, a clean slate to start over. I ask that the slate indeed be wiped clean as much as possible in keeping with this; that these past puppetry violations from years ago accorded weight today.


 * 3. It is mentioned that I’m currently under an Arbitration Remedy restriction of 1R/week, which I have violated. Its true I’ve slipped a couple of times by accident. But I edit a lot, and my overall record is one of compliance to these restrictions, without complaint.


 * 4. It is alleged that there is much linguistic evidence below that I have again resorted to using socket-puppets out of frustration with the 1RR parole. This is a serious charge, and it should not be made lightly. I hope to show that a critical examination of the evidence against me does not satisfy conditions necessary for the conclusions that are reached. Indeed, I hope to show that it’s deeply flawed by confirmation bias. When one looks for exculpatory evidence, the case against me blows away lots of smoke and reveals no fire.

I will focus my evidence to address parts that are most relevant. There is much that has been presented by Ultramarine that less relevance. However, if there are serious and relevant elements that I’ve skipped over but need to be addressed, I’d be more than happy to respond to them as well. I may add to this as time permits.

Ultra's assertions
Ultramarine cite in his evidence that Supergreenred revealed his IP address to be in San Jose: address. This appear to be true.

He then cites one of my old indefinitely blocked puppets, User:MikaM, as having also edited from San Jose. Yet, the IP check on this does not show San Jose. As previously pointed out diff’s Ultramarine provides don’t always support his claims accurately, or don’t support it at all.

Ultramarine conclude that this shows that “Giovanni33 previously have moved away from San Francisco to avoid detection.” He repeats the same point: “San Jose instead of San Francisco showing the considerable efforts Giovanni33 makes to hide his sock puppetry.”

That would be a considerable effort, if true (not to mention expensive, gas is over $4/gal here). The evidence by Merzbow is more relevant, focused, and interesting, and makes th heart of he case, which I’ll examine in detail.

Edit timelines does not support charge of puppetry
Merzbow presents time-line evidence that alleges to show “neatly disjointed” editing activity. This would make sense if I had to drive an hour to San Jose back and forth. They would all have to be disjointed. However, it turns out that Merzbow admits that they aren’t really disjointed, because as he says, “they overlap by a few minutes.” Even so, that would be suspicious. But then we find he also lists exceptions that don’t match up to this theory at all, and are off by hours. However, other than these very significant facts, he concludes, “in general, they slot neatly and usually tightly between each other.” He explains the overlapping incidents as me trying to cover my tracks on purpose.

Being an intelligent fellow, Merzbow correctly anticipates a logical reply. Namely that it would be easy for me to use same method to “prove” that Ultramarine is my puppet, in a reductio ad absurdum. But he says that if “one compares the timing of a heavy editor undisputably not G33, like Ultramarine, to the above contributions” its not the same: “Periods of intense editing activity by these accounts usually abut each other very closely, but never overlap - except for two outliers in which they overlay very closely (said arse-covering).” His analysis of Ultramarine confesses some very similar findings only that there are more outliers. The problem with this is that one can simply turn up the “exception” allowance, fine-tunning adjustment for greater, “arse-covering,” no? The problem is that it doesn’t match neatly. There is an arbitrary selection and explanation of evidence to make it fit a preconceived conclusion, which could equally be stretched to fit any other heavy editor plus or minus how much “adjustments” we allow that don’t fit the theory. Of course, its always could be true that two events occurring at the same time that have no simple relationship to each other besides the fact that they are occurring roughly around the same time.

The technical explanation
Merzbow provides a technical explanation that is at odds Ultramarines theory. He says, “The below pattern can be explained by one person at one location, using different browsers or a second computer to edit. And one can easily have a desktop on a Comcast cable connection and a laptop on a DSL connection; or Remote Desktop into a work computer. With what I personally have, I could roleplay accounts from three different ISPs: one from my iPhone, one from cable, one from connecting through my work machine. But they would all be noted as coming from the same geographic area, as all these accounts do.”

I grant this may be technically possible, although I have some doubts about it. Perhaps an IT person can comment about it. It’s my understanding that a Remote Desktop into the office would not hide one’s home IP as that is still uses the home internet IP to connect to the remote work machine. I have a cable connection, so I don’t need a DSL as well. I don’ t have an i-Phone, either. I’m sure that the user-check information will show these characteristics. I edit only from my home and at work using the same account. I welcome an admin into my home for an inspection of my technical set up. All are welcome.

I will examine the evidence below, but I want to point out that on a few occasions I had an edit conflict while leaving a message on the talk page of an article at the same time one of my alleged socket-puppets was doing so. I’ll have to dig up that diff.

Also, I noticed that RafaelFingers left a message earlier on this evidence page at the time I happened to be attending this a performance of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class (http://www.act-sf.org/cursestarvingclass/SF) from 2pm to 4:30 pm. Since Rafaelfingers appears to have edited during this same time, Merzbow's theory that I'm editing from multiple ISP's, can be disproved. I know Arbcom has does not typically accept the kind of evidence that real courts would, but it’s an idea. I have my ticket still. It also occurred to me that since these other editors apparently are all from the bay area, a special wiki-meet could be proposed, and actually happen, in theory. Since I am innocent here I am willing to work with the committee through a neutral admin to prove my innocence. Perhaps though a Skype conference? I’ve met admins here on wiki-meets, and they might be willing to look into this first hand, if all parties are amiable. My point is that I have nothing to hide and I believe with enough investigation the truth will come out, and it does us no harm to look at possibilities for uncovering the truth. I’m willing to put in the effort and do the leg-work.

Linguistic evidence does not supports charge of puppetry
The evidence is based on, for example, that I “frequently misspells words, and will usually spell "it's" as "its" and "let's" as "lets", that I do not hyphenate compound words that need them, and particular phrases, etc. All of this evidence, I will show is very weak when one tries to find evidence that disproves the claims. I was surprised myself how easy it was. It turns out that the rarity of these examples are greatly exaggerated.

There is on exception, though: “to Paint a POV Picture.” Unlike the rest, this is a strong piece of evidence of a unique fingerprint. So either they are the same person, or one copied the other. I would like RafaelFingers to explain that since SuperGreenRed said it first, followed by Rafealfingers. My personal view of these accounts are that SuperGreenRed is an impersonator (more on that later) and the other two accounts are legitimate users.

But the rest of the evidence is interesting for what was left out as much as what was included. When I looked into it, I found this to be a strong case of confirmation bias. A case of the cherry picking fallacy. When controls are applied, this becomes clear. I’ll look at each one of these with a more scientific approach, using blinds.

Specific phrases (lack of hyphenation)
It’s claimed that, “Giovanni33 has a peculiar allergy to hyphenating compound words that should be hyphenated.” What stands out is not a comprehensive sample that shows frequency of this particular use, but rather just two example to match one account with the other. Well that is very easy to do. I can look for any editor and find a match under the same criteria.

Examples used:

"well referenced section"

This is said to be very rare. Merzbow states: “* Google shows only a half-dozen hits without the hyphen.” Then then gives one example where I use it in this fashion, along with one example from an IP user. Although Merzbow says they should be hyphenated, making it appear that it's actually a rare grammatical mistake, actually there is no agreed-upon guideline regarding the use of compound words in English; there is quite a variance among the closed form, hyphenated form, and open form of compound words. This is reflected among editor use, though out WP.

In fact, even our own WP:CITE policy page uses it without a hyphen: - “In this respect well referenced articles can unfortunately suffer disproportionately in comparison to those not so well sourced.”

It's commonly used in this form by thousands of editors on wikipedia as my simple search revealed. In fact, even Merzbow used it in this way himself (to be shown below).

A less biased method
But, in order to avoid the same kind of cherry picking confirmation bias, I choose one aprops AfD page where the term would be used by many editors to see how its frequency is actually used. This is intended as a type of randomized controlled trial by looking at one page to avoid the same traps of the observer-expectancy effect that plague my Ultras and Merzbow's methods.

The page in question:

The results of this experiment show that most editors use it the way I use, in its open form, without hyphens. This fact renders its use as evidence against me rather impotent. Yes, I have used it in this form---along with Merzbow, and most other editors. So to pick out an example where I share this trait with another does nothing to established a basis of connecting me to that person. It's insufficient.

'''From this one page we find 15 instances of the open form vs 7 hyphenated forms:"

“…Seems to be well sourced and is a legitimate topic…Clarityfiend 07:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * 1. Clarityfiend:

2. Liftarn: “…Notable subject and well referenced article…”

3. JForget: “…very notable and well referenced (probably the most referenced Afd nominated article I've seen so far)-JForget 00:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

4. Sfacets: Keep - well referenced. If there are valid references naming the US as a state terrorist, what else is there to say? To negate what these sources say, however, would be OR and POV-pushing. Sfacets 05:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

5. SixOfDiamonds : “…The article is well documented…”--SixOfDiamonds 17:28, 25 June 2007

6.Badagnani: Article is well sourced, notable, and of good quality. Six nominations for deletion is ridiculous and this sort of disruptive behavior on behalf of the current nominator should not be permitted. Badagnani 22:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

7.Reaper X: … well referenced and a notable topic…The nominator appears to be big on deleting articles that conspire and accuse the USA of wrong-doing, although I won't go as far as accusing them of violationg WP:POINT…-- Reaper X 07:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

8.JungleCat Shiny!/Oohhh!”: “…The reason why it is well sourced, it combines other articles to do it. Can we write Alleged State terrorism by France as I have shown JungleCat Shiny!/Oohhh! 22:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)” 9.EliminatorJR Talk: “…It's well sourced in that it has no less than 93 external references…EliminatorJR Talk 23:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)”

10.Mandsford: “…Well sourced, survived six deletion attempts so far, and another one will happen again soon, I'm sure... Mandsford 00:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

11.≈ jossi ≈ (talk): “… well researched material…” ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:30, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

12.Henrik “…Article is well referenced, verifiable by reliable sources and fundamentally encyclopaedic…Henrik 10:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

13.Badagnani: “…This article is clearly well sourced…”Badagnani 22:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

14.Watchdogb: Strong keep Well sourced article…Watchdogb 22:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

15.#Wayne: Strong Keep - Well cited article. In fact it is better cited and more NPOV than many of the more controversial articles. From what I've read of the discussions in Talk I feel it comes down to whether WP wants to be an American Encyclopedia or a World Encyclopedia…Wayne 18:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

There are more but you get the point. Conclusion? More editors used the non-hyphened (open) form of this compound word. Now, how many were using the ‘proper” hyphened form? Only 7, less than half.

This is the result we get when we don’t cherry pick. I selected one page dealing with the same issue where the term is phrase is likely to be used. The form of compound word it's used is mostly open. The page, again is here: Why is it that something that is so common was chosen as the best evidence against me? Not for want of looking. Basically anything that confirmed the bias was selected and anything that didn't match up was ignored. A classic case of Morton's demon, where one can end up believing that the earth is flat and only a few thousand years old.

Now, its true Merzbow prefers to use the hyphened form most of the times. He seems to be a stickler for proper grammar. But guess what if I cherry pick? You guessed it. I can find that rare example. See: - "Good article, well referenced, Support. " Or almost anyone else I want to link: - “…A well referenced article about a broadly known phenomenon. Jayjg (talk) 06:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Merzbow:
 * Jayig:

Likewise, if I cherry pick I can find many instances where I do use the hyphen for compound words, even though I’m alleged to be allergic to such use, to prove the opposite: 

In summation this method is flawed, an example of Morton's demon guarding against what is seen and not seen. A more scientific survey shows that this evidence has no weight to it, and when the smoke is cleared, it turns out to be only dry-ice creating it. The same is true for these other too common phrases found by many editors alike:

"counter point"

My illustration above is particularly true when only one example of my using this phrase is matched up with only one example by another editor and a connection is purported to be established as a result. That's very weak, but again, without a systematic survey and larger pool, it's almost meaningless (unless it's really rare or unique--a linguistic fingerprint).

Some examples of others using this phrase: - It is a matter of point and counter point. Many notable historians (and other professions) disagree with one another. Look to religious beliefs for an easy example. This is nothing new but in what I see there is no point and counter point -- it is a one-sided viewpoint."
 * 1.Maury:

 “No counter point?”Kuru talk 21:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2.Kuru:

- “…Thus where is the counter point to this Trend following article? Bfisk (talk • contribs) 05:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)”
 * 3.Bfisk:

- “.. quickly descend into bickering anarchy; with points, counter points and counter-counter points.”
 * 4.RoyBoy:

- “I'm gonna try to find counter point sources, if not I'll at least try to provide counter point…”
 * 5.Wildnox:

Cites grammar/writing examples, of "its", "lets" as evidence Merzbow shows many examples of these accounts using “lets” and “its” without the apostrophe. But when I looked for counter examples, not only did I find them, but I found these errors to be very common. I will list them out here as I did the others above, if asked to, although I think it’s a waste of time and space. This was equally true with these phrases that follow the same patterns and thus suffer from the same flaw, which I provide a few examples of each to match what was presented as evidence against me.

"looks very good!" - “looks very good…” Over 200k hits on google:
 * 1) Shabranigdo

"lets assume good faith" Again, this is very common within Wikipedia, including without the apostrophe.

 "Just for the sake of argument, lets assume that the US ordered the rape. This would still not justify a graphic rape scen, it adds no information.Ultramarine 18:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Ultramarine (says it twice):

- “Lets assume good faith”
 * 1) SatuSuro:

To avoid cherry-picking bias, lets only look at one page, again:

Here we find no less than 11 matches of “lets” in the one page.

And, again 16 matches of “lets” on another page:

"off topic material" Off Topic vs. Off-Topic seem to be equally common: 

In fact our own WP entry on the subject uses it in its open form (no hyphens): - “The term "off topic" is sometimes used to indicate a discussion venue where anything other than matters specifically addressed by the website in question are addressed.”

The pattern is the same for the rest of these:

"many editors working together" "on principal" "well referenced section" "over stating" "long standing"

The only one that is not common is this phrase and thus is good evidence is this one:

"paint a POV picture"

But in this case, I am not alleged to have ever used it so its hardly evidence against me.

The theories employed by both Ulra and Merzbow while at odds with each other share similar methodological flaws, and logical fallacies. Stringing together selected material in such a small sample pool (in many cases a single example of each) of some rather common expressions, and then deriving a causal connection, interpreting a meaning from it, will yield any results that one wants to look for, and look impressive on the surface, a type of Texas sharpshooter fallacy. In contrast, the truth of the matter may even strain common sense, as does the birthday paradox.

Tables Turned?
For fun, here is an alternate theory, using the existing evidence I can put together based on cherry picking things I can also raise eye brows. I only do this to illustrate the flawed method being employed. It's an example of how tricky this matter is, and I think it adds to reasonable doubt of this case against me.

Consider these facts.

Merzbow’s IP was revealed and a search shows it to be in the same Geographical Location as these alleged socket-puppets, but in particular SuperGreenRed:  I looked it up here: 

Contained within Ultra’s evidence above, SuperGreenRed is in San Jose. This is closer to Merzbow than to myself (Sunnyvale and San Jose are right next to each other). Merzbow already said he is able to play many roles with the technical means he has at his disposal.

Linguistic Evidence supporting Puppetry:

A rather uncommon phrase, much more uncommon than those used against me:

- “muhahahaa now you know my IP”
 * 1) Supergreenred:

- “muhahaha now everyone knows my IP”
 * 1) Merzbow:

To continue this cherry picking method, I did some more searching.

- “Sheesh, both sides are off-track here.”
 * 1) Merbow:

- “Sheesh. This is a big waste of time. Wikipedia is seriously getting off-track…”
 * 1) Supergreenred:

- “At least until there are new FACTS.”
 * 1) Supergreenred:

-“…should be allowed to quote FACTS about what Also, take a look at this regarding Merzbow's point of raising the question of the use of “its” vs. “It’s” interacting with SuperGreenRed about this issue; it is a convenient catch, but odd: Again, I am not making any accusations based on such a specious methodology. These are surely coincidences, but they illustrate the flawed nature of using it to create appearances, and it may allow Merzbow to see how it feels. I certainly don't like this.
 * 1) Merbow:

I also point out the flaw of doing a google search and using site Wikipedia.org, as it will not net all the results on Wikipedia. To gauge a common typo, a search on talk pages only is required as article content would be vetted for typos. Of course, the typos presented are extremely common as I've proven above -- just as common as the correct usage is.

Lastly, when we look at my edits vs these alleged puppets edits, we see while they share a similar POV on many articles, they also edit on their own areas of interest which I do not share. Likewise, I edit in areas they do not share. So even their editing behavior does not mirror mine. The exception if SuperGreenRed, which I would agree is does seem to be an impersonator, and under policy can be assumed to be connected to me by behavior—even if I have no control over it. I presented this evidence in my opening statement before. Ultra and Merz have repeated things here, but it's a waste of space. But I may add it here later, if it would help me.

In conclusion, despite appearance, the truth is the truth and I hope it does set me free. I am willing to produce further evidence and do what it takes to have truth prevail. The doubts I raised do provide a reasonable application of the assumption of good faith, a cherished WP core policy that we all embrace, which should allow me to continue to be a member in good standing. The unblocking admin himself said he had too many doubts. He said that several admins talked to him who were familiar with my editing style, who did not believe I was socking again. I think those admins should be consulted with for their insight. Since I’m innocent I have nothing to fear and I want to fully cooperate as is deemed necessary to clear my name of these suspicions.

Thanks you.

Positive Refutation of Evidence
This is not complete but I believe I can refute the evidence above. I note that all the evidence against me above only makes sense under the theory that I am and these other accounts are one and the same. Hence, the time-line information, and linguistic analysis, alleging this. I also note that both technical theories also are logically geared to prove the same: Ultra's theory that I'm driving super fast from one city to another, and Merzbow's theory that I'm using a wireless device, and multiple ISP's, remote desktop, etc. from multiple computers at the same place.

Therefore, when I noted that Rafelfingers actually posted his first respond to this page at the same time I was attending a play, Merzbow logically responded, "I'd like to see him present evidence he was at a play when one of the Comcast IPs was posting. - Merzbow (talk) 18:34, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, providing such evidence undermines the entire case against me. This may involve some real world investiation, which I'm currently working on, but Rafaelfingers has confirmed he did indeed edit from his home computer - not a wireless device - at the same time I was attending this play: A simple user check will confirm this, and I have my play ticket, which I will take a picture of and link to here. A user check and verify that the IP address is identical and consistent with all his other editors from home.

Moreover, Rafaelfingers has also stated willingness to disclose real world information that will prove he is a real, separate, person. If and when he does, the evidence above must be discarded. Instead a theory of meat-puppetry is the only thing that is left, but this can not be assumed given quite different editing and behaviors among us. Simply sharing a similar interest in US foreign policy, not just with me but many other editors is perfectly legitimate and reasonable finding for the SF Bay Area.

The fact that I believe the evidence above can and will be sufficiently refuted, points to the accuracy of my analysis regarding its inherent weakness given the extremely common typos, "its vs it's, lets vs let's, etc.

Response to Biosphy
I notice he only makes a proclamation that it's clear I have socket-puppets, and lists the very old but real accounts where I was guilty of engaging in such behavior, but he lumps in the new ones, as well, as if they are all qualitatively the same. This is sloppy and false, and adds nothing new.

I have already admitted and apologized regarding the past. I have also reformed. It occurred years ago, so while he is technically correct since I've given up that behavior long ago, it's not relevant now. As its not relevant it stands as a logical fallacy; The relevant allegations pertain only to the evidence today regarding the new accounts. I stand innocent of repeating any such misbehaviors.

Response to Merzbow
Merzbow and I both agree with each other it seems. Regarding the cherry-picking I was able to find from a few edits doing a search, (not to accuse anyone but to show the weakness of the method), he says that SuperGreenRed must be an impersonator. Bravo! We agree. That Supergreenred has impersonated me is a claim I have made. Now Merzbow says he has impersonated him. Well then we can agree that the account mimics others, apparently.

However, the problem with Merzobow interpretation is that he wants it both ways: its only impersonating him, but can not be doing so to me. It has to be a reflection of the account really being me. Why the double standard? He alleges that this negative evidence of making it look like him was done after he filed his evidence. I can remedy that by simply looking at older edits. Easily done. However, I don't even need to do that. I can test out the theory by looking at this: Notice it takes place after Merzbow list's his evidence, supporting one of his major claim: that I frequently mistakenly use its vs it's. Yet, afterwards we see Supergreenred make exactly this error in an obvious way on an article that Merzbow frequents, and it just so happens that Merzbow make the very next edit to demonstrate the point he was making. But, wait, this was after Merzbow presented this evidence. Again, he can't have it both ways.

The irony here in that Merzbow is claiming that the account is being used to fake evidence to make it look like him, and not me. Ok, then what about this example? Faked evidence? Indeed! We have further agreement--even though the evidence being faked, in this case, supports his evidence (however cherry picked they are), instead of the other way around, making it look like he is faking the other way. By his own logic, since this edit was made after Merzbow presented his its vs it's point, its makes no sense for SRG to then make this obvious edit where Merzbow jumps in right away to trumpet his point and further the accusation--if SGR was out to create evidence against him, and make me look innocent. Which one? If anything looks faked, it's this. But Merzbow wants it both ways, even though both sets of circumstances are almost identical.

Response to DHewyard
I resent his attributing negative motivation to my edits, including even "vandalism fighting to drive up his count and article diversity." I did it because I wanted to help the project and was following advice by an admin (BigTimePeace confirms this below), who suggested I try it. So, I did. With DHewyard, no good deed goes unpunished. The fact is I had no conscious desire to try to artificially affect any statistical measurements. Such measurements have no meaning to me. If they should then I will listen and broaden my field of editing -- if that is something I should be doing. If anything the fact I listened to BTP and started doing vandal fighting shows I'm quite open to suggestions from helpful admins. I'm open for guidance and want to continue to contribute and help the project.

I have a very wide range of interests but like to stick to working on a problem until its substantially fixed/improved. For example, this can be seen with other controversial article topic ranges such as Christianity articles, the Hitler/Fascist/articles, and the Mao/Chinese history related articles. I've done work on philosophy (theory of everything), history (President Wilson), Marx, and many others that were non-controversial.

One thing I find very disturbing about editing here is that we have editors treating WP as a political battlefield, who wage battles even at the cost of article content, and at the cost of core WP values, such as WP:AGF. Why is it, I wonder, that only the editors who oppose my arguments about article content, are the ones advocating for me being banned? They all want the US Terrorism article deleted or turned into a stub. They all share a personal political POV on the issue that rejects the conceptual framework the articles discusses. WP editors should be above such petty power games. This is what disturbs me the most. Again, this could all be coincidence so I make no accusations but the appearance alone is enough to turn my stomach. It is antithetical to a very basic WP ethos, and I regard it as the biggest possible violation of what the project is about.

Further response to DHewyard "new" evidence
The only problem is it's not new, but very old. I'll save everyone the trouble: That account is indeed my socket-puppet. He is a little behind in the times as this is from 2006, and I've long ago admitted to this, and have done so several times since. I've apologized and have reformed. I have not returned to any such behaviors since. I can see that he wants to see me retried for transgressions dating from when I first joined WP in 2006 that have already been resolved some two years ago, but I don't think this is the basis of this arbcom case. It does say something about this case, indirectly, though. Namely that except this ancient stuff of 2 years ago where I already admitted to wrong doings, but which the community has forgiven so it should be moot and irrelevant, there is not much substance to the new allegations. Indeed the new allegations are largely prejudice from this past, and that is, I think, quite unfair.

Nothing mysterious about an honest mistake, Merzbow
But I do want to thank Merzbow for noticing the time shifts, which I honestly did not realize. What happened was that I came back from the play that night and saw his edits. I looked at the time and saw they corresponded to the time I was in the play. I'm sorry that you feel the need to assume a nefarious conspiratorial plot. Since its a trivial oversight that would have been easily noticed, it's a bit silly to think that I would have planned it. :) Sometimes the simpler explanation is true. It might not be as interesting, but such is what happened. At least you saved me time scanning my ticket, uploading it to a site, and linking it here because as BTP says, now it's moot.

Rafaelsfinger's response seems normal to me, btw. His talk page response is not in any way suspicious, and I feel you are mis-characterizing it here. I said, "Just so everyone is clear, these edits here:[9]Or from 2:25 to 2:45 were made from your home connection and not your a wireless device. Is that correct?" Notice that the question is not about the time of the edits but rather about where the edits were made from. Rafaelsfingers replies "welcome, Giovanni. that is correct. that statement was made on my home computer." He is only answering where the edits were made from and says nothing about the time. Since he is not my sock, of course, he has no idea I attended a play at that time. He seemed to focus on the fact that he was not editing with his wireless device then. In any case, this is moot, but it does illustrate something I've tried to show: your evidence is predicated on stretching selective facts in a very convoluted, conspiratorial manner, to make anything fit your preconceived theories. Instead, there is aways a good-faith alternative explanation which I've tried to show, and which happens to be the truth.

My plan now is co-ordinate some real-life activities with these other editors that will suffice as solid proof of the same thing, though. I'm thinking a video-conference with all welcome to join in and ask away. They can turn on their cams to their computer and see them typing, showing their IP in real-time, showing them logging-in, etc. I want the proof to be solid and convincing and am hoping to have their cooperation. Merzbow, I know it's basic human psychology to become attached to ones pet theory, but it will be proved to have been in error in this case. I hope you will be able to admit making an honest mistake yourself when this is all over.

I do see you have now softened some of your proclamations, here, so thanks for that. I hope that you can see how jumping to this conclusion: "But of course a sock wouldn't have noticed the obvious error, since both are, in fact, the same person. So once again, a ham-fisted attempt by G33 to manufacture evidence using one of his sock accounts has backfired" is indicative of the kind of accusations that are really unfounded and completely inappropriate. An Admin BigtimePeace, has reminded me on my talk page that I in fact replied to an e-mail that day right after attending the play in question, mentioning it. This will be evidence added to counter your very negative speculations that are not based in reality.

Further Response to Merzbow
Merzbow makes much of new accounts appearing to support "my version." This is misleading when we consider its not just "my version" but the version of the majority of editors, if not at least half. If it was something that only I wanted, then it would certainly be convincing, but this is not the case. There are two main sides to this content dispute: essentially those who want to delete the material and those who want to keep it. However, Merzbow distorts this fact, and makes a false claim in regards to this point. He says, "It is relevant to note G33 and the SPAs' obsession with re-adding the longer version of the Japan section, a stance currently held only by one other editor, BernardL, as far as I can tell; everyone else appears to support the mid-length version at most." This is not true, and for someone who is quite able to look at details, it's not credible that he misses this, with the qualification of "as far as I can tell." What can't he look to make sure to support his claim before he makes it? This is just more evidence of Morton's demon at work here. The fact is that many more editors prefer the longer version, not the stubbed one, or greatly shortened one (this is prior to having the section being moving to its own article and expanded there).

I will also note that during this latest activities of these alleged puppets on the article, he leaves out the fact that I was editing another article at exactly the same time (about Chile). In fact when I saw what was going on over at the Allegations page, I went over there and had an edit conflict with Dr.Gabriela on the talk page. Why are all facts that counter his theory left out? Are we not supposed to try to present all the facts to that the truth can be discerned?

A technology question for Merzbow:

You also seem to know a lot about IP's, and make some claims about the ISP and the accounts that I question. You state that the IP users are all using a dynamic on popsite.net/starnetinc.com, which you describe as "an obscure dial-up ISP." I looked up popsite.net for information and I don't see anything related to "starnetinc.com" nor it being only a dial-up provider. Lastly, it does not appear to be "obscure' at all. From their site: "We currently have over 2,600+ access locations throughout North America...a customer base of approx. If the company were really so obscure as you claim, why do we have an article on it in wikipedia? See PAETEC_Holding_Corp.

Related to this information is your claim that these accounts are from my geographical area. In fact you make a big deal about that. However, you contradict yourself when you talk about the Hawaiian editor, saying that I must be dialing in long-distance. Well then why would I not dial in long distance for the other accounts? If I had such an easily ability to just dial in from anywhere, why do you place such a great significance to the "30 miles" geographical distance from me (or for that matter from yourself, since you are also in the SF Bay Area)? It seems you want to have it both ways. Strangely, you discount that it could be any other editors also dialing in long distance. Because then the question of geography becomes moot, no? Why is that not possible for someone to do that, even internationally? Again, you seem to know more about these technical aspects than I do, but I have problems with unsupported claims that seem not to be true, and one-sided reasoning.


 * I note that Merzbow's response ignores the "obscurity" point. I take that as an admission that it is not obscure after all?
 * I also note that Merbow appears to also concede that it is possible, despite his earlier implication that it wasn't, for a user to "dial-out" from anywhere to anywhere. The only incentive not to do so is one of it "being expensive." Actually long distance is not expensive and if all one has to do is log in in order to post an edit one has already composed off line, then its only a matter of being online for a minute or two. That is not expensive. :) The fact that you say you know this been done before with others (not just a theoretical possibility) greatly undermines your whole "geographical area" argument. If I were the puppet master, and I knew I could create a puppet from ANYWHERE, why would I create several only 30 miles from my area, and only then create one far away? "Because it's expensive" is not convincing at all. Ultramarine's theory that I'm driving to different locations in the Bay Area is a more logically consistent argument for why they are all near me, if we are to use geographical evidence as an important link to my account. But then, of course, the problem is that I've edited at the same time as they have, so that can't work. No, the true reason is that these are other people, or at least one other person, and its NOT me. That is the most logical explanation for the facts. I use RCN Cable to connect to the internet, and the only other computer I use is this one, at work. I do not believe that my ISP has any dial-out abilities that I can use, and if they did, its not with Paetec.

Response to Evil Spartan
Besides the cherry picking (excluding the many differences, and different articles) my response is best summed up by this other editor. I'm sure arbcom has much higher standards of "evidence" than that!Giovanni33 (talk) 07:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Puppetry
Ultramarine and Mezbrow have provided detailed and convincing evidence that Giovanni33 has continued to use sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry or indeed both to bypass his editing restrictions. Although I will not repeat most of what they have indicated, it is strange that so many editors are appearing from the same area as Giovanni. It may have many people living there, but the topics that Giovanni edits are rather much niche ones. One must consider how many people are likely to be aware of these topics and have an interest in them so much like his own that they would be editing on Wikipedia and revert to versions he endorses. I do not consider it likely that many people in the geographical area in question would fit this sort of behaviour.

In regards to specific users, it should be noted that DrGabriela displays classic sleeper behaviour. The account was created on 20th July 2007 and then made a number of edits on that day. Apart from one on 23rd July, there were no more edits until pushing on for a year later the account came back on 18th April 2008 to help out Giovanni on a number of articles. To launch into conflicts on a number of articles such as State terrorism, Terrorism and Allegations of state terrorism by the United States on the same day as returning to the project indicates that the account's controller already had knowledge of the situation on those pages - a matter of minutes passed between the first two edits on articles the account had prevously edited (07:56 and 07:58 on New People's Army) and edits on new articles that Giovanni has shown an interest in (Terrorism at 08:11, State terrorism at 08:17, etc).

Rafaelsfingers and Supergreenred are quite clearly single-purpose accounts registered for editing articles Giovanni has had trouble with. They have shown little interest in articles he is not concerned with or are related to those he edits. Rafaelsfingers jumped in to the disputes on the Allegations of state terrorism by the United States page with his first edit. His interest in the project is relatively small since he was warned to keep away from that page.

Supergreenred has claimed that he was on holiday so could not contest the block then. Yet he continued editing right up until he was blocked - he was blocked a few hours after his last edit on 15th April. So we are to believe that he was edit-warring right before going on vacation? Supergreenred also appears to be a sleeper, making a 3RR report and then disappearing for a month before launching into the afore-mentioned conflicts. His removal of my comments from his talk page, which were merely friendly warnings or statements of confusion at his hostility, demonstrates that he is a returning user. He claims that he is a long-time IP editor, yet he has not indicated what caused him to have such hostility towards me. I rarely get involved with IP editors, unless they are vandalising pages. So it is clear he had a set identity, as those are the people that I normally engage with. I have asked him to explain his attitude, yet he responded even more bitterly, claiming that I was harrassing him. Clearly there is something very serious between us, especially since he did not remove a single comment from William M. Connolley even though that admin blocked him for a reason that Supergreenred heavily disputed. I have only had such poor relations with Giovanni33, who often removes comments that I leave on his talk page.

Update
After being unblocked on the strict restriction that he not engage in edit-warring and tag-teaming, Supergreenred started doing just this on the Allegations article on 26th May. This further indicates puppetry, as he made few edits in between being unblocked and the recent edit-war on the Allegations article. Furthermore, a good-faith user would have been glad of being unblocked and complied with the restrictions put in place.

Supergreenred was reblocked by R. Baley on 27th May for violating the terms of his unblock. Justification for this was left on Supergreenred's talk page.

I do not find BigTimePeace's suggestions that the puppetmaster may be Stoneputtosky credible. Stone was a very amateur puppetmaster who was directly linked to his puppet accounts. If he knew how to edit Wikipedia and fool it into thinking he was thousands of miles away, he would have done that before he got blocked. The alleged puppets in this case do not correspond to the IP of any editors we know of - much more advanced sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry is thus involved. Thus I believe another user is behind the puppets, and Giovanni's knowledge of the checkuser process (having been involved with it many times in the past) would suggest he more than anyone would take pains not be directly traced back to his main editing IP.

Edit-warring
Giovanni33 continues to edit-war, despite his 1RR a week parole. He has been blocked twice, but broken it many other times - he has been let off either because he self-reverted (normally only after being reported) or pleaded for leniency. His parole was designed to get him to seek consensus for his editing, rather than revert. Giovanni knows that he will definitely be permanently blocked if he repeatedly violates his parole, so he tries to keep within it visibly - either by not reverting more than once a week or hiding reversions by pretending they are more general edits.

This attitude is worrying, as it suggests that he is merely doing his best to keep within the letter of Wikipedia regulations. Before his arbitration restriction he was notorious for dancing on the lines (as can be seen by the evidence from the last arbitration case on him), repeatedly reverting 3 times within 24 hours as if it was a right. Since the arbitration case he has frequently reverted once a week on a number of articles, then once the next week and so on. If he is allowed to continue in this way, he will almost certainly go back to edit-warring much more regularly when his parole expires.

Other behaviour
Giovanni33 also made implicit threats while he was blocked, saying that he had "good contacts in the media". It is obvious that he was threatening to try to kick up a media storm about his blocking if he did not get his way - otherwise why mention it? An honest editor would have faith in the system to sort out a misunderstanding. Someone who wants to bring in the media because they are banned from an online project like Wikipedia is not good for the community. That demonstrates the combative, hostile attiude of someone that has an agenda, rather than merely wants to help out as they can.

Once again, as demonstrated in the last case on him, Giovanni33 has wikistalked an editor and involved himself in an edit-war simply to agitate that individal.

Comment to I Write Stuff
You have alleged one suspected puppet is actually linked to another user. Yet I do not see any comment on Giovanni's edit-warring or the other suspected puppets. Does this mean you concede the points made, or that you cannot find any other circumstantial evidence to link them to others/cannot excuse his behaviour?

Statement by DrGabriela
For the record, I only know Giovanni33 from his edits on some of the terrorism articles and that I generally agree with him. I hope that clears the matter up for the record. I'm not sure how this "clear ups" the doubts as I understand we live in the same area? I live in Hayward. I wish to say that I do resent the charge. I'm no expert on WP policies about sock puppets but I don't give it too much thought as it appears to be a partisan-based allegation that has spear-headed this effort against Giovanni33. I would be quite astonished to find out that there is a Wikipedia policy that stipulates an x number of accounts within a geographical area. Wikipedia is a very popular venue. My understanding is that its open to contributions from everyone.DrGabriela (talk) 22:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Evidence by Dr.Gabriela
I am almost ammused by the evidence I read here that stikes me as quite desperate. I am sorry if I did properly provide a reference some of my edits on some medical articles I looked up for pleasure. I looked at many articles and I was overall impressed with the quality I found. I do have a medical dictionary and I probably did look up something to make sure I was right. I do no remember copying anything. But I always am looking up something in a medical reference and you will find that many put the issue in a very similar way. We almost have it memorized. I will let you in on a secret: we doctors feel naked without our medical reference books. We all use our fat PDF's as our memory is just like anyone else's. It's no different than a lawyer looking up a law. I happen use an electronic device that is popular with many of collegues.

About myself, yes I am a Dr., with a medical degree. Even though this is from the Phillipines, where I am from, I dare say it's far beyond high-school biology. I am also an activist and founded a charitable human rights organzation for poor children. My real name is not Gabriela but like the others I am open to providing "real world" evidence of this provided some assurances of confidentiality. Those who falsely accuse innocent people should be stopped. So, to whom should I fax my medical diploma? I would like to put these games to an end.

I will repeat my statement above in my own language:

Si Giovanni33 ay kakilala ko dahil sa mga artikulo niya tungkol sa terorista at sa mga artikulo na ito ako ay sumasang ayon sa kanya.Umaasa ako na ang lahat ng ito ay magbibigay linaw,di ako sigurado kung paano maliliwanagan ang lahat subalit sa aking pag kakaalam kami ay nakatira sa parehong lugar?Ako ay nakatira sa Hayward,kung kaya masama ang aking kalooban sa mga akusasyon.Hindi ako eksperto sa patakaran ng WP tungkol sa sock puppets subalit hindi ko iniisip na ito ay magbibigay ng hindi magandang alegasyon o pagdududa laban kay Giovanni33,ako ay nabigla ng aking malaman na mayroon palang patakaran ang WP na mgabigay ng kundisyon sa bilang ng talaan ng WP sa parehong lugar.Ang WP ay sikat o popular na lugar para sa pagbibigay ng kontribusyon o ng bagong kaalaman at sa aking pagkakaalam ito ay bukas para sa lahat.

Evidence presented by I Write Stuff
After examining Merzbow and Supergreenred's editing history, it appears that Supergreenred is more likely a sockpuppet of Merzbow, then Giovanni. Though the two users are extremely close in proximity, they have no shared edit period, which as Merzbow points out, a lack of shared editing time is extremely suspect. While Merzbow claims Giovanni managed to edit at the exact moment of other users through complicated PC networking, Merzbow not only shows he has the knowledge to sockpuppet and evade RFCU, he further has no shared editing times with Supergreenred:
 * April 13th
 * Merzbow
 * 5:35 -> 6:04 (6)
 * Supergreenred
 * 08:05 -> 9:21 (6)
 * Merzbow
 * 18:05 (1)
 * Supergreenred
 * 21:07 -> 22:01 (15)
 * April 14th
 * Supergreenred
 * 00:04 -> 00:17 (7)
 * Merzbow
 * 00:29 -> 00:47 (6)
 * 08:04 (1)
 * Supergreenred
 * 09:44 -> 11:22 (14)
 * Merzbow
 * 18:09 -> 23:54 (5)
 * April 15th
 * Merzbow:
 * 1:15 -> 1:28
 * Supergreenred
 * 4:56 -> 11:31
 * Merzbow
 * 17:39 -> 22:51
 * April 29th
 * Merzbow
 * 3:15 -> 3:19 (3)
 * Supergreenred
 * 5:56 -> 6:02 (2)
 * Merzbow
 * 7:51 -> 22:16 (16)
 * April 30th
 * Merzbow
 * 00:01 -> 3:13 (12)
 * Supergreenred
 * 7:00 -> 8:00 (7)
 * Merzbow
 * 18:09 -> 23:47 (17)
 * Note - this was posted by a banned user. The Evil Spartan (talk) 07:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by William M. Connolley
Not much more to add to the above. But nicely demonstrates how impossible G33 is to work with and why the project would be better off without him William M. Connolley (talk) 20:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It should be noted somewhere that User:I Write Stuff has been indef'd as a sock of User:NuclearUmpf William M. Connolley (talk) 19:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC). Predicatably enough, G33 can't accept this reality even though IWS has admitted it himself William M. Connolley (talk) 22:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

If anyone was in any doubt that G33 considers this important enough to indulge in multiple socks and expensive dial-up, then should convince them William M. Connolley (talk) 20:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Good to see a bit of voting finally happening. Meanwhile, G33 is almost comically making the case for the prosecution over at his most recent block: this for the full story to date. G asserts I've discussed all my changes; when asked for a diff fails to provide one. He then skips to No one opposes that change and then has no answer to the blindingly obvious 'why is it that you keep having to revert? other than the hilarious That is a good question for them, not me''. This is not an editor that anyone can work with: this is a serial liar and evader William M. Connolley (talk) 07:40, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by San Francisco IP user
For whatever it's worth, I thought I should make my statement. As hard as it is for some people (apparently) to  believe let me say it very clear: I  am really a separate, thinking, human being from San Francisco and I identify myself as a leftist, an anarchist specifically (anarcho-communist). I don't agree with Giovanni just because it is Giovanni either. I don't know the guy. I agree with many other editors who also agree with each other. There are at least ten other editors, only one who is Giovanni. I find it crazy that Giovanni is being singled out and just because I also happen to live in the San Francisco area that other left editors interested in the same articles as him? That makes sense. This is San Francisco/Berkeley we are talking about. What is the big surprise? Also, there are lots of editors who together edit in the same article subjects and are part of the same arguments -- not only Giovanni. So big deal. I do feel sorry if my editing from different IP's about these issues got Giovanni in trouble. That is why I'm saying my peace here. Out.76.102.72.153 (talk) 05:48, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Giovanni33 is a SPA
's sole purpose at Wikipedia is to push his particular POV into a small number of article. Here we see a rather interesting breakdown of Giovanni33's edits. He has over 9000 edits to 800 unique pages including 2300 mainspace edits and 4200 talk page edits. At first glance, this may seem rather diverse but the detailed stats paint a much different picture. First, the average edits per page is 11.42. This is very high compared to most diverse users that have a large number of edits. 800 unique pages also seem rather low compared to other editors. 4 articles and their talk pages account for 3500 edits. Of those 3500 edits, 2800 are article talk page edits and 700 are article edits. Of these 4 articles, 80% of his edits are discussions. That ratio is not maintained in the other articles he edits nor is the average edits per page anywhere close. Giovanni's association is with only a few articles, some random edits to related articles and then supported with vandalism fighting to that drive up his count and article diversity. All of his non-vandalism edits are to support his POV crusade. --DHeyward (talk) 07:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

To that anon SF IP/Giovanni Meat/Sock Puppet
Your on a comcast IP that has a certain range. Let's look at the contributions to Wikpedia over that range of addresses. They are all in SF area and you can see local interests in their edits. Yet it was only your IP and only in the last 2 months did anyone in that range edit the Giovanni33 articles. No need to ban them all as you seem to be the only puppet in this range.

Response to Bigtimepeace
Your characterization of my analysis as being in bad faith is insulting and I request that you refactor it. There was no assumption of bad faith, only an analysis of his contributions. Your allegation is an ad hominem attack of the evidence I provided. Giovanni does vandal fighting and his contributions are still very limited to a core set of articles. Half of his contributions are to 4 articles. That's not bad faith, it's an easily verifiable fact. I don't characterize your support of Giovanni33 as enabling sockpuppet trolls so please don't characterize my edits as being in bad faith or not assuming good faith or in any manner that is ad hominem. Giovanni33's single purpose is to push his POV into a small set of articles. That is the exact definition of a SPA if it is to have any meaning. I suspect that edits with other accounts to push his POV into other small sets of articles. --DHeyward (talk) 05:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The same pleas were made before
Here is a plea by "Professor33", claiming innocence, defending Giovanni33's past transgressions because htey were more than 6 months old, offering to prove his identity, and hoping he doesn't have to resort to more drastic action. The similarities are frightening considering this was written two years ago. Some selected quotes: "I am writing because I have been falsely accused"

Like DrGabriela, "I have a lot more to contribute to a number of scientific articles in particular"

Giovanni33 will prove it. "I am willing to prove my identity if that is necessary."

Asking for a requirement to prove "Let me know what can be done, if anything, to correct this injustice"

Defending his other sockpuppet, NPOV77 "many other good editors have been banned, some clearly unjustly, after only making a few edits. NPOV77 is one such user"

Obscuring his sockpuppet SPA nature "Of course, I edited things more to my own interest, such as climate change, global warming issues. I will note that the editor I’m accused of being (Giovanni33) has not shown any interest in these issues."

Complaining that it's unfair to bring up his "past" "(MusicalLinguist) brings up (Giovanni's) alleged past mistakes constantly, however these are over 6 months old when this editor first joined."

Gio will sockpuppet again "I do not wish to sneak back in with another IP address and account."

And the threat of media "As a professor with contacts in the media I am tempted to bring media attention to the problem, publishing my case. However, I’d like to first exhaust all possible venues within the Wikipedia system, assuming an honest mistake has been made, despite the best worst intentions of some of its members."

Giovanni33 is not an SPA
This is in direct response to evidence presented by DHeyward, which I cannot in good conscience let go unanswered. That user's reading of Giovanni33's contribution history via wannabe kate takes assumptions of bad faith to new heights. DHeyward's contention that Giovanni had only edited "800 unique pages" would be amusing were it not for the relative seriousness of an ArbCom. 800 pages is a lot, especially considering that no one, last time I checked, is required to edit a certain number of pages in order to be a Wikipedian. Most editors who have much higher unique page counts (including myself) engage in some kind of vandal fighting or other repetitive activity the likes of which Giovanni does only rarely. Apparently he did some anti-vandal work awhile ago, but there's a good chance he did that because I suggested it to him in an e-mail&mdash;not as part of some nefarious plot "to drive up his count and article diversity" (the bad faith in that assumption is rather staggering), but rather because he had recently been unblocked by Jehochman and I told him it would be a good idea to cool off, move away from the controversial article for awhile, and do some non-controversial stuff like reverting vandalism.

Giovanni clearly likes to edit on controversial topics, but there is nothing wrong with that (I do that myself). He is obviously very interested in religion and has edited several articles on that topic heavily. He also seems interested in Nazi Germany, as well as 20th century China (DHeyward and others might not know this, but he, John Smith's and I worked together - with some difficulty! - to improve an article on a contemporary China book, even though John and Gio were facing off in an ArbCom at the time). He also edits articles which are critical of US foreign policy, which seems to have been his primary interest for awhile now. I run across excellent Wikipedians all the time who only edit articles about movies, or about roads, or about heavy metal bands, or about hurricanes. That does not make them single purpose accounts if that term is to have any useful meaning. People edit what they are interested in, and there's nothing wrong with that. No one would even dream of calling Giovanni an SPA but for the fact that he edits in controversial areas that arouse the ire of others (and, without question, makes serious mistakes of his own while doing so).

Giovanni33 likes to discuss things
Of his 9,200 some edits, over 4,200 of those are to article talk pages (nearly twice the number of edits to articles themselves). I think that's rather significant. In a case where basically only bad things are being said about Giovanni33&mdash;someone who clearly loves this project and has put a lot of time into it, whatever detractors might think of his efforts&mdash;it's worthwhile to point out something good. While editing on these controversial pages, he clearly places a premium on discussion&mdash;an aspect of editing upon which many Wikipedians could improve. I don't always agree with what Giovanni says or how he says it, but I certainly appreciate his willingness to engage with other editors including those with whom he disagrees. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 04:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

E-mail from Giovanni
This is partially in response to Merzbow's evidence section "G33's mysteriously time-shifted play" and also relates to Giovanni's response "Nothing mysterious about an honest mistake, Merzbow." The following is an excerpt of an e-mail sent to me by Giovanni on the evening of May 4th (California time). I've included the time and date stamp but not the e-mail addresses (obviously) and have only included the relevant portions of the e-mail which are unedited (if ArbCom wants to verify the veracity of this I can pass the full original along to a member of the committee, but I assure you this is accurate).

Giovanni was replying to an e-mail I sent him (likewise I can verify that with the committee if need be) giving him some advice on the newly opened ArbCom case (basically my advice was keep your comments short and don't attack other editors). His reply below came hours after he says he went to a play, and mentions that he noticed that Rafaelsfingers edited while he was at the play (which was not in fact correct, Giovanni says he was not translating UTC time to Pacific time and thus got the time - and actually date - wrong, Rafaelsfingers had actually probably edited shortly before Giovanni e-mailed me) and that this might be a way to prove they are not the same person.

Obviously one could argue that Giovanni is lying in this e-mail and merely paving the way for some later shenanigans. But remember he was replying to an e-mail I sent him, not e-mailing me out of the blue with this story. Personally I find it unlikely that Giovanni would have misled me like this (it's worth noting that he never mentioned this e-mail later, which would have been the smart thing to do if it was part of an elaborate set up), though I'm not naive to the point of thinking it's impossible. If one takes this e-mail (which I had forgotten about until Merzbow brought his evidence) as being truthful, then it would suggest that Giovanni and Rafaelsfingers are not the same person. At the least it might give one pause.

Folks can draw their own conclusions, but I felt it was relevant to bring this in and let the chips fall where they may. Giovanni has given permission to post this here.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * From: giovanni33
 * To: bigtimepeace
 * Subject: RE: ArbCom case
 * Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 22:57:16 -0700


 * I noticed that RafaelFingers left a message earlier today on the evidence page, and this gave me an idea. I happened to be attending this a performance of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class (http://www.act-sf.org/cursestarvingclass/SF) from 2pm to 4:30 pm. Since Rafael appears to have edited during this same time, Merzbow's theory that I'm editing from multiple ISP's, can be disproved. I know Arbcom has does not typically accept the kind of evidence that real courts would, but its an idea. It also occurred to me that since these other editors apparently are all from the bay area, a special wiki-meet could be proposed, and actually happen, in theory. I suppose, then the theory would simply be changed to one of meat puppets.

Overview
During this case it has become apparent that there is a very strong likelihood that User:Supergreenred (hereafter SGR), User:Rafaelsfingers (RF), and User:DrGabriela (DG) are operating as single-purpose accounts which are controlled as meat or sockpuppets. Because of the IP addresses (Northern California) it has been assumed that these accounts were controlled by Giovanni33 (G33) and linguistic and edit-pattern evidence has been presented which suggests that that scenario is plausible if not likely (User:Olawe has also recently come in to the fray, but has not been linked to G33).

This edit by the DG account led me down an alternative avenue of explanation which I think is equally if not more plausible: some or all of these accounts are connected not to G33, but to the already banned User:Stone put to sky (SPTS).

Just over a month ago a Checkuser was run on these accounts and SPTS. It came back unrelated, and this ended consideration of SPTS as the puppetmaster, though that was the initial thought. My argument here is that one or more of these accounts are either meat puppets of SPTS, or that user somehow evaded Checkuser by traveling at a certain time or by some technical means (I have no idea if this is possible or not). I don't have an explanation at this point for why the SGR, RF, and DG accounts happen to be in Northern California not far from G33 other than "coincidence." That is, however, the weakest part of the evidence I will present and of course there are any number of plausible explanations for that coincidence. With that I'll discuss the SPTS account and then the other three accounts in relation to that one.

User:Stone put to sky
Far more than G33, this user has been devoted to battling it out at Allegations of state terrorism by the United States ("Allegations") as more than half their total edits come from the article or its talk page. SPTS and G33 were generally in agreement on the article, and to say that G33's position was almost always SPTS's position is no stretch.

SPTS is indefinitely blocked because of engaging in sockpuppetry on multiple occasions, specifically on the "Allegations" article (note that it has never been established that G33 sockpuppeted on this article). First SPTS was found to be socking with a couple of accounts, and. Note that both of these accounts were parodies of User:Ultramarine, for whom SPTS had great antipathy. It is also important that User:Dance With The Devil filed the request that led to these two accounts being tied to SPTS (also this talk page thread, and particularly the comment "Put up or shut up Stone put to sky," is additional evidence of why SPTS might have some animosity toward Dance With The Devil, and Ultramarine for that matter). User:Jehochman later indef blocked SPTS for further sockpuppetry as estabished at Suspected sock puppets/Rafaelsfingers.

So SPTS is a known sockpuppeteer who has used those socks on the "Allegations" article. There are some important points to make about SPTS's editing interests but those will be made with respect to the three accounts to be discussed below which is where the evidence becomes particularly telling.

It is worth noting at the outset though that all three of the accounts below were created during lengthy (and relatively rare) periods of inactivity on the SPTS account. SGR was created on 3/16/2008, RF on 3/28/08 in the midst of a three week gap in SPTS's contributions. DG was created on 7/20/2007 in the midst of a two and half week gap in SPTS contributions (G33 was still editing heavily during these times). Rather odd coincidences but it gets far more odd below.

User:Supergreenred
General points

SGR is (now was, given this) obviously an experienced user. Their first non-user space contribution to Wikipedia was to report Dance With the Devil, the user who first got SPTS in trouble, for 3RR. There is something else which is quite critical about this 3RR report&mdash;G33 weighed in and said he did not think that Dance with the Devil should be blocked (full thread). Specifically, G33 said: "I think a cool down period is a good idea. Now having said that, I think Dance with the Devil is generally a good editor so maybe just a warning would be best. Blocks are not meant to be punitive. He seems to acknowledge that he needed to cool down, and that is good enough for me.:)" If this were a newly minted G33 sock, why would he immediately disagree with its effort to get a user blocked for 3RR? It could have been a set up to later absolve him of socking, but if that were the case, why on earth would he not would have mentioned it by now? (I stumbled across this completely on my own and apparently no one else noticed it.) The user from the "Allegations" article most likely to have antipathy toward Dance With The Devil is SPTS.

SGR first arrived at the "Allegations" article on April 13th (as did RF, see below). After a week's break SPTS began editing that article on the 13th as well (check contribs for all three). Now some might rush and say, but what about G33, he was blocked on the 13th for 72 hours? He was, but not until 19:54 UTC. SGR, RF, and SPTS started editing the "Allegations" article at 08:05, 00:00, and 07:50 UTC respectively. G33 was editing the article at the same time as well, but could not have brought the socks into action due to his being blocked for 3RR because the 3RR report was filed after SGR and RF had already started editing. It's far more telling that these accounts happened to leap into action within hours of SPTS coming back from a week off than it is that they started editing the same day G33 was blocked (much later in the day).

I'll now consider SGR's "areas of interest." I am intentionally excluding the edits on the "Allegations" article (for now at least, I might take a look later) for this user and the other two below and I'll explain why. The edit warring there is generally between two competing versions of a certain section: thus what is "Giovanni's version" is often the version of several people on the same side, and would essentially always have been SPTS's version if that user was still editing.

Previous evidence has assumed that these accounts are helping Giovanni, and to an extent that is true, though they would also be helping SPTS just as much since that user agreed with G33. But particularly with SGR, they are also revert warring with Ultramarine, SPTS's primary nemesis. G33 does not care for Ultramarine's editing either, but has never really taunted him as SPTS and these accounts do.

Areas of interest

William Blum


 * (original Ultramarine edit) (SGR contra Ultramarine, snarkily uses same edit summary, mocking as SPTS did with his faux Ultra socks)
 * (partially reverts Dance With The Devil)
 * (reverts Ultramarine)

All of the reversions on this article are of Ultramarine or, in one case, DWTD, excepting one minor edit.

Giovanni has edited this article only three times. Only on the second edit did another account, Supergreenred, show up to revert, and that was four days after the fact with a number of intermediate edits&mdash;hardly convincing evidence of a connection between the two.

Ultramarine had edited the Blum article 17 times by my count.

Operation Northwoods


 * (reverts Ultramarine)

State Terrorism


 * and (follows Ultramarine to the article)

Except for three minor edits (including this to an obvious area of interest to Merzbow) and excluding the “Allegations” article, this is the sum total of Supergreenred’s article space edits. This user has been interested solely in the "Allegations" article and its related topics, but was specifically interested in following/reverting Ultramarine.

User:Rafaelsfingers
General points

This account has been less of a revert warrior and has a weaker connection to SPTS than the other two. It was, however, created during a gap in SPTS's contributions, shares very similar interests with that editor, and has followed/reverted Ultramarine. Like the SGR account, RF sprang into full activity at the "Allegations" article on April 13th.

Areas of interest

Guatemalan Civil War


 * (reverts Ultramarine, again mimics him “see talk”)
 * (then contradicts Ultramarine on that article talk page)

José Santos Zelaya


 * RF edited José Santos Zelaya‎ 23 times, the only article the user has put any real work into besides “Allegations”. SPTS edited the article Sandinista National Liberation Front 38 times and its talk page 112 times, his fourth and second highest totals respectively.  For those unfamiliar with the broad outlines of Nicaraguan history, Zelaya was a notably anti-imperialist/anti-US president and leader of Nicaragua’s “Liberal” faction (modern meanings should not be applied to that term).  Augusto Sandino, inspiration for the Sandinistas, came to notice a couple of decades after Zelaya lost power by defending the claim of a Liberal politician, Juan Bautista Sacasa, to the presidency.  But Sandino is of course primarily known for his rebellion against US forces in Nicaragua and, like Zelaya, his generally anti-imperialist stance.  I’m not positive, but I don’t believe G33 has edited much or at all on Nicaragua.  The connection between RF and SPTS here is obvious.

Aside from fairly small edits to Russell Pearce, Sinéad O'Connor. and the contributions to “Allegations” RF has made no other article space edits. The interest in Nicaragua and snarky remark to Ultramarine suggests more of a connection to SPTS than G33.

While the evidence is a bit weaker here, there is one critical point one must remember from Merzbow's evidence. Far and away the strongest linguistic connection is between Supergreenred and Rafaelsfingers (see above, "paint a POV picture"). That shared phrase makes it extremely likely that SGR and RF are connected, so if one is not connected to G33 it is likely the other is not either.

User:DrGabriela
General points

Of these three accounts this one, the most professional sounding from the user name, has been the most active over a range of articles. Unlike with the other accounts, I will not review every substantive article space edit aside from those on "Allegations." Merzbow has already discussed the medical article edits above and I agree with that analysis, thus it's not really worth it to discuss them.

The account was created during a gap in SPTS's contributions, but went quite for nine months. It resumed editing on April 18th, 3 days after SPTS was indef blocked.

The editor claims to be of Filipino heritage/nationality and even posted a comment in Filipino (I have no way to verify that that is actually a native speaker writing Filipino). Stone put to Sky has exhibited a strong interest in the Philippines and that region of the world generally. That user lives and teaches in Taiwan and I believe past Checkusers have verified that. SPTS actually started a lengthy section on the Philippines in the "Allegations" article. More on this connection below.

A few edits worth considering before looking at some areas of interest:


 * (snarky parody of an opponent’s edit summary, just like SGR and RF, all three have now done this, which is more in line with SPTS's tendency to personalize edit summaries against Ultramrine, )
 * Various anti-Ultramarine edits in line with the pattern from the other two accounts: (enters this article for the first time and then continues making changes, Ultra had edited three edits before);   (removes material Ultra had added in both diffs);    (all three arguing with Ultramarine)

Again, not so much pro-G33 as anti-Ultramarine.

Areas of interest


 * Aside from the allegations of terrorism nexus, the most edited article is José María Sison, a communist leader in the Philippines. This combines SPTS's interest in Southeast Asia and leftist movements.
 * Other Philippines related edits by DG include the following:
 * Smoking gun. I stumbled across this but it makes it impossible for me to believe that SPTS and DG are not connected in some fashion. SPTS edited BAYAN (a large coalition of leftist groups in the Philippines) twice and . It's been edited less than 100 times total. According to the article "BAYAN is associated with political parties Anakpawis, Bayan Muna, and GABRIELA." Now, it's technically possible to believe that this DrGabriela account happens to edit the article in which SPTS was primarily interested, happens to share SPTS's antipathy to Ultramarine, happens to be interested in leftist Filipino movements, and happens to have a name that is identical to a group which is/was part of a large, leftist coalition in the Philippines whose Wiki article has been edited by SPTS&mdash;possible but I don't buy it. This account is either someone SPTS knows or that user somehow evaded Checkuser. I didn't look for more evidence beyond this but certainly could.

Conclusions
One of the weaknesses in this case has been to consider the above accounts and various IP edits as a whole, looking for any edit which would suggest that the accounts are connected to G33. This approach can be problematic, whereas as considering each account separate from (but also in relation to) one another is a bit more revealing. The evidence suggests that it is extremely likely that DrGabriela is connected to Stone put to Sky and fairly if not very likely that Supergreenred and Rafaelsfingers are. I don't know the nature of the connections if they in fact exist, and I don't know why all of these IP's are in Northern California, however there is some material here that cannot be ignored. At the very least it should create some serious doubt among those who believe G33 is controlling all of these accounts. It is equally if not more likely that they are connected to Stone put to sky, a blocked user who has socked on the article in question before.

For what it's worth, I e-mailed SPTS directly before writing this up and asked about it. That editor denied it, said that the accounts were probably controlled by me (an outlandish explanation which I cheerfully welcome anyone to investigate), said that they were extremely angry at Wikipedia and me (I don't know why exactly in the case of the latter), and then cursed me with words I will not post before this august panel.

All alleged puppets of Giovanni33 are SPAs
It is abundantly clear from the evidence provided by Merzbow and Ultramarine that all alleged Giovanni33 puppets are SPAs: User:DrGabriela User:BelindaGong, User:Professor33, User:NeoOne, User:Freethinker99, User:CleanSocks, User:FionaS, User:HK30, User:Kecik, User:Mercury2001, User:MikaM, User:NPOV77, User:RTS, User:Rafaelsfingers, and User:Supergreenred.

As clear from their very short edit histories, they have only one purpose in WP: to support Giovanni33 by all available means including edit warring. This is in addition to being probable puppets. They all should be indefinitely blocked.Biophys (talk) 19:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Evidence by The Evil Spartan

 * I must say this is one of the most obvious cases of sockpuppetry I have ever seen come before Arbcom. All of the users show a shocking propensity to know policy and engage in wikilawyering, edit similar pages dealing almost exclusively with left-wing activism, edit pages and back each other up, use similar language and editing patterns (as outlined above). In view of this, and Giovanni's self-acknowledged sockpuppetry in the past, will Arbcom still believe the argument that they all are from Northern California because "it's a hotbed of left-wing activism?" The Evil Spartan (talk) 00:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Shalom
I assume ArbCom's slow response time on this case stems from an uncertainty regarding the allegations of sockpuppetry. I have compiled data for user contributions of about a dozen suspected and confirmed sockpuppets of Giovanni33 to assay an offdays analysis. Offdays analysis is well-equipped to offer insight into suspected sockpuppetry by two or more users who edit frequently and simultaneously.

I am reporting only results from January 1, 2008 and later. Most of the suspected sockpuppets edited exclusively this year. Giovanni33 and some older sockpuppets go back to 2006.

From January 1 through June 11, a span of 164 days, Giovanni33 edited from his main account on 140 days. His frequency was 0.853, approximately six days per week. For other users:
 * DrGabriela edited on 9 days
 * Rafaelsfingers, 16 days
 * Supergreenred, 9
 * 76.102.72.153, 11
 * Olawe, 7
 * Other users, not more than 2.

Of Giovanni33's 24 offdays, the suspected sockpuppets edited on four: May 23, May 11, May 10 and March 30. There is a notable stretch of 3 offdays from April 6 through April 8, in which none of the accounts edited. Some of the sockpuppets were active in the days shortly before and after this interval. None of the sockpuppets edited from January 1 to March 5.

There are consecutive days on which at least two of the suspected sockpuppets edit on all of those days.
 * May 26, 3 users edit (Giovanni33, DrGabriela, Supergreenred)
 * May 25, 2 users edit (Giovanni33, Olawe)
 * May 24, 2 users (ditto)
 * May 23, 2
 * May 22, 3 (G33, Olawe, and 76.102.72.153)
 * May 21, 2


 * May 17, 2 (G33, Rafaelsfingers)
 * May 16, 2 (ditto)
 * May 15, 2 (G33, 76.102.72.153)
 * May 14, 2 (G33, Rafaelsfingers)
 * May 11, 2 (DrGabriela, Olawe)
 * May 5, 3 (G33, RF, Supergreenred)
 * May 1, 2
 * April 30, 2
 * April 29, 2
 * April 28, 2
 * April 26, 2
 * April 25, 2
 * April 24, 2
 * April 22, 3
 * April 21, 2
 * April 20, 3
 * April 19, 2
 * April 18, 3
 * April 17, 3
 * April 16, 2
 * April 15, 4
 * April 14, 3
 * April 13, 3
 * April 10, 3
 * April 9, 3


 * April 6–8, 0


 * April 3, 2
 * April 1, 2
 * March 29, 2
 * March 28, 2

The pattern of consecutive days on which sockpuppets edit, followed by consecutive days without sockpuppet edits and in some cases without any edits, seems to be consistent with a single user who plays the sockpuppet game on some days and decides to edit on his main account or not to edit at all on other days. This does not rule out the possibility that any particular account might be unrelated, but it broadly confirms the suspicion of sockpuppetry and shows the method by which Giovanni33 selectively turned on and off his habit of using secondary accounts.

On days when at least two accounts edited, further proof of identity may be derived by comparing the times of day at which they edit the same articles. Edits to the same article or talk page at approximately the same time are likely to be from the same user. (Edits to unrelated articles or talk pages at approximately the same time, especially if there are interleaving edits, are likely to be from unrelated users.) An incomplete analysis of editing times shows some instances of near overlap. To save time I will not cite the diffs. You will need to check the contribution logs to confirm the data. "No overlap" means the edits were disjoint by more than one hour.
 * May 26
 * Supergreenred at 03:04, 02:52, 02:24
 * Giovanni33 at 02:58, 02:59, 03:04, 03:07
 * DrGabriela at 03:13, 03:16
 * All edits were to Allegations of state terrorism by the United States and its talk page.
 * May 25
 * Olawe at 20:56, 21:17, 21:59, 22:11, 22:24 to "allegations" article
 * Giovanni33 at 21:18, 21:20, 21:21, 22:03, 22:37, etc. to US-Chile articles and WP:AE
 * May 24 (no overlap)
 * May 23 (no overlap)
 * May 22
 * Olawe at 06:43, 07:19, 07:36, 07:40, requesting unblock
 * Giovanni33 at 08:00, 08:07, 08:18, 08:26, supporting Olawe's request for unblock
 * This evidence seems especially strong.
 * May 21 (no overlap)
 * May 17 (no overlap)
 * May 16 (no overlap)
 * May 15 (no overlap)
 * May 14 (no overlap)
 * May 11
 * Olawe at 20:44, 20:55 and 21:10 to Talk:Allegations.
 * DrGabriela at 21:30, 21:33, 21:37, 21:39 etc. until 22:57. At first he edits unrelated fatty acid but then turns to Talk:Allegations.
 * May 5
 * Rafaelsfingers at 02:25, 02:36, 02:39, 02:43, 02:44 to this Evidence page
 * Giovanni33 at 02:46, 02:47 to Talk:Allegations.

This is as far as I want to go right now. If it will substantively help the Committee, I can continue the analysis for April. Overall, the overlaps in editing times are consistent with sockpuppetry. It is possible that there's a meatpuppet or two somewhere in the mix, but based on established precedent, ArbCom should not be reluctant to block anyone in this group whose actions are substantially similar to Giovanni33's because the statistical evidence supports the checkuser and behavioral evidence showing that Giovanni33 has indeed used sockpuppets. Yechiel (Shalom) 04:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

None of the accused sockpuppets shares G33's most notable linguistic/editing characteristic
None of the evidence presented and nothing from my recollection shows that any of the suspected sock puppets shares G33's most identifying linguistic/editing characteristic - the propensity to post lengthy multi-paragraph talk posts to almost every response with multiple return edits to the same posting make additions and clarifications and inclusion of additional sentances and paragraphs to provide the spin that he wishes in the final response. None of the sockpuppets has been labeled with the same epitaph that WMC has been so frequently tossing at G33 - "likes to chatter". -- The Red Pen of Doom  12:18, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Reply to Merzbow

 * " it's much harder to control the length of one's post than one's style." Agreed and that is why I feel that a couple of random instnaces of its> it's has much less value in "proof" of sockpuppetry than the fact that none of the accused sock puppets show any evidence at all of G33's signature lenghty re-edited posting style support a finding of "not sock puppets". -- The Red Pen of Doom  07:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)