Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ActuallyRationalThinker/Archive

14 January 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

''Please list evidence below this line. Remember to sign at the end of your section with 4 tilde characters " ~ "''

User opens a new account today that seems to be awfully familiar with policy and is already on ANI defending a blocked user (above). Similar style to above user (who, btw, strikes me as a sock as well). Egg Centric admits to working from above IP in the past. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)


 * hahahahahahahahahahaha "admit" to it? As if it was some secret? I welcome a checkuser or whatever. Egg Centric (talk) 23:31, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no malice to you, Egg Centric, and apologies for any undeserved problems. I just want to be thorough. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I appreciate that, but in my view if you want to be thorough like this you should talk to people in private. Not a huge issue to me but I promise you it would feel worse to most people. Much more of an issue is that that user was quite obviously not anti-semitic in his comment.
 * (Some irony though that his *actual* crime seems to have been accusing people of sock puppetry just for disagreeing with him) Egg Centric (talk) 23:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Based on these edits, the editor openly admitted to registering after editing as an IP. That's not forbidden, and there isn't any real overlap between the IP and the account. Now as to a connection to ActuallyRationalThinker: I'm not really seeing it. They don't have any pages in common. Egg Centric's knowledge of policy is probably based on having edited as the IP. Could you maybe cite some more evidence? —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 04:40, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, you can cancel the request. Magog the Ogre (talk) 07:09, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll mark for close then. TN X Man  15:07, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

02 February 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

''Please list evidence below this line. Remember to sign at the end of your section with 4 tilde characters " ~ "''

I'm not really 100% on this one, but these two seem fairly suspicious. Drealgin has been blocked for edit waring circumcision related pages, as has ActuallyRationalThinker. Both seem to have a tendency for revert Jakew. Looking at the timeline of Drealgrin's edits, the editors seemed to become active at similar dates. Not sure if this is enough to justify a CU. NickCT (talk) 16:50, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * @The Cavalry - An odd result.... Mfwitten and ActuallyRationalThinker don't really look behaviorally similar.... May I ask, are your conclusions based on the geographic location the IPs are tracking to?
 * Thanks, NickCT (talk) 19:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. I've notified Mfwitten. NickCT (talk) 20:03, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Forgive me for possibly being stupid here, but does "technically indistingushable" mean "same IP" (I'm not sure if it's against the rules to reveal that kind of info)? Also, can you say whether Dreal and Actual's IP track to the same geographic location (again, forgive me asking if this info is considered private)?  NickCT (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * As a sidenote, none of editors mentioned here are responding to the SPI notifications. Not that silence is guilt..... but it's certainly suspicious. NickCT (talk) 20:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

So, I logged in recently and was surprised to find that I had received new messages on my talk page, one of which was a notification of this "SPI" thing. After perusing a number of pages on the topic in order to get my bearings on what is going on, I couldn't help but notice a couple of issues with what's happened here: Anyway, it's bad enough that I've spent so much time addressing this bureacratic, puerile drivel, but it's worse that I've been associated with it. I really think it's only fair that my block log be cleared; if that's not technically possible, then I'll ask for an apology as per the block log policy: "Very brief blocks may be used in order to record, for example, an apology or acknowledgment of mistake in the block log in the event of a wrongful or accidental block". Mfwitten (talk) 10:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Firstly (and most importantly to me), the original "CheckUser request" was meant to find a correlation between Drealgrin and ActuallyRationalThinker; how did I get pulled into the mix? Well, it would appear that The Cavalry used CheckUser not only to report that there is no correlation between Drealgrin and ActuallyRationalThinker, but also to introduce my username as being "technically" (but not "behaviorally"!) correlated. From my understanding, this is a misuse of the CheckUser tool, and it would seem prudent on my part to lodge a complaint with the Ombudsman commission.
 * 2) Magog the Ogre abused my block log after applying completely irrelevant policy:
 * 3) * According to the Blocking Policy: "Blocks should not be used solely for the purpose of recording warnings or other negative events in a user's block log. The practice, typically involving very short blocks, is often seen as punitive and humiliating."
 * 4) * The policy Magog applied is a hack meant for transferring block log history from an old username to a new username after a user invokes the "right to vanish"; yet, as Tnxman307 correctly notes, I have not made such a username change (and if I have, Magog still did not satisfy the policy because Magog erroneously included a direct reference to the other username, which defeats the purpose of the right to vanish). Moreover, it would appear that only a CheckUser is supposed to make such block log additions, a fact that Magog both knew and ignored.
 * 5) As NickCT put it: "Mfwitten and ActuallyRationalThinker don't really look behaviorally similar." The Cavalry agreed. Magog only seemed convinced of sockpuppetry when The Cavalry answered that there are also "time of day" correlations, but I wonder what "time of day" means and whether Magog and The Cavalry are talking about the same thing. For instance, it doesn't seem implausible that, say, 2 people sharing the same Internet setup would access Wikipedia at similar waking hours (as opposed to, say, one at night and one during the morning). In any case, a technical correlation alone is no basis for sockpuppetry and it certainly doesn't warrant the public action taken here. Even if sockpuppetry were the case, there's still no basis:
 * 6) * Magog seems content with a conviction of "good-hand bad-hand sockpuppetry". However, a suspicion of such sockpuppetry is listed as an example of when it is not appropriate to request CheckUser, which somewhat invalidates the results of this investigation. After all, if there is a bad hand, then block the bad hand. More specifically, though, I'm not even sure you can even call ActuallyRationalThinker a bad hand according to the definition
 * 7) * There are officially legitimate uses for sockpuppetry; given this topic of circumcision, it would seem that the "Privacy" usage seems relevant, and if such legitimate sockpuppetry were the case then it would seem that The Cavalry breached this Privacy most egregiously.
 * 8) NickCT's original CheckUser request was based on being "not really 100% &#91;sure&#93; on this one... Not sure if this enough to justify a CU." and then listing the fact that both Drealgrin and ActuallyRationalThinker have edit warred with a Jakew on the matter of circumcision; well, I looked up Jakew, and he lists the fact that he has "adopted" the articles Balanitis xerotica obliterans, Circumcision, Bioethics of neonatal circumcision, Medical analysis of circumcision, "etc." and then spends a couple of paragraphs explaining how he battles the "deceptive activities of many activist groups opposed to neonatal circumcision" and now considers himself "something of an expert on the subject." Furthermore, the history statistics for the Circumcision article indicate that Jakew is the top contributor at 1233 edits, which is more than twice the number of edits of the second most contributing editor (Avraham at 556). Doesn't it seem obvious that it's probably impossible not to get into an edit war with this guardian of the castle? Are CheckUser requests really being thrown around because a number of people get into content disputes with a self-described expert?
 * 9) Worse than NickCT's CheckUser "fishing" is HelloAnnyong's administrative endorsement: "You're right about the anti-Jakew actions, so let's see if they're the same." Why would an administrator ever consider it appropriate to endorse a CheckUser request based on the notion that 2 editors seem to dislike the same activist editor?
 * Ok... well couple comments -
 * 1) I sorta resent the "CheckUser fishing" allegation. Fact was, there were two relatively infrequently used accounts edit warring similar pages at similar times.  That would seem to represent probable cause.
 * 2) I still having a tough time seeing behavioral similarities between Mfwitten and ActuallyRationalThinker. The only real link seems to be ActuallyRationalThinker editing an article relating to binary logic (i.e. Self-balancing binary search tree), and Mfwitten's long history of logic/binary/computer related edits.  Mfwitten's edit summaries don't seem quite as aggressive as ActuallyRationalThinker, but both editors do have an unusual habit of surrounding words in asterisks (i.e. *word*, see here and here)
 * Well, I guess I'll leave this in the hands of the more experienced CUs. NickCT (talk) 23:40, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've let ArbCom know, The Cavalry (Message me) 12:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Arbcom have had a preliminary discussion. Mfwitten, you're right about the block log hack - it is only used for renamed users. If you were a sockmaster/puppet, the correct response would be to tag your user and talk pages. However, it seems that you got caught up because the IP is dynamic and you got the next rotation after the alleged sockmaster. You don't seem to have ever edited any article on the subject of male genitalia, which is a main characteristic of this chap. It is not possible to remove the entry in the block log, but I will put a modifying entry in, if that will be acceptable (and have a word with Magog about what he should have done instead). I will also indicate below that on further review there is no behavioural evidence linking you, and given the dynamic IP, the overall verdict should be that you are an unlikely sock. This does not preclude you from pursuing the matter with the Audit Subcommittee if you still feel aggrieved, but I hope it is sufficient to settle the matter.Elen of the Roads (talk) 00:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This is acceptable, and I won't bother pursuing any further administrative procedures. However, please note that while Magog's actions have had the most obvious and lasting effects, both HelloAnnyong and especially The Cavalry displayed an unbecoming flippancy with regard to their administrative powers and weight.
 * On more technical grounds, perhaps the CheckUser tool itself should be normally limited to researching only those suspects who have been directly named, with the exception that evidence of more extensive sockpuppetry may be researched more generally only after the publicly recorded endorsement of all CheckUser administrators (the tool should be able to recognize this); that is, this SPI was between Drealgrin and ActuallyRationalThinker, and it should have remained that way by technical design. Mfwitten (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - You're right about the anti-Jakew actions, so let's see if they're the same. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 02:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * is, but is  a sock of ActuallyRationalThinker with the few edits that aren't stale. The Cavalry (Message me) 19:48, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Likely based on purely technical reasons, or also on behaviorial/time of day edits? Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:55, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Technical and time of day. Behavioural, as you can see, is way off. The two accounts are technically indistingushable, though. The Cavalry (Message me) 20:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Let's leave this open for another, more experienced CU to endorse. The Cavalry (Message me) 20:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I concur with the assessment of the two accounts.  TN X Man  21:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've blocked the main account. If this is the case, according to Block, administrators are supposed to ask the checkuser to perform a notation in the block history of the user (rather than perform the operation themselves... I do not understand the extra layer of process, but hey it's the rule). Could I have a checkuser do so please on Mfwitten, notating the possible good-hand bad-hand sockpuppetry? Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand your request. As far as I can tell, none of the accounts have had a username change or requested to vanish. TN X Man  21:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Alright, I've just done it then:. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Further to comments above addressed to Mfwitten:-
 * On further examination, it seems that  is connected with ActuallyRationalThinker, as the technical evidence is equivocal and there is no similarity in editing.Elen of the Roads (talk) 00:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)