Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Kehrli

User:Kehrli

 * Suspected sockpuppeteer


 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Report submission by

--Kkmurray (talk) 20:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Evidence

Summary: Accounts may have been used to circumvent an Arbitration Committee sanction.

September 2006: Requests for arbitration/Kehrli

December 2007:

February/March 2008:

User Kehrli has a history of POV pushing in mass spectrometry and related articles regarding symbols and units. User was subject to arbitration related to a content dispute and inappropriate behavior at Mass-to-charge ratio, Thomson (unit) and Mass spectrum. The arbritration was closed 17 September 2006 with the results 1) Kehrli was banned for one year from articles which relate to m/z. 2) Kehrli was prohibited for two years from changing the notation m/z, wherever found, to any other notation. A further 24 hour ban was imposed for editing Mass-to-charge ratio and M/z  on 24 September 2006. An anonymous sockpuppet reappeared in December of 2007 and admins were notified, but a warning was sufficient to stop the behavior. More recently Cernms has been making changes to symbols in the mass spectrometry article related to m/z that are inconsistent with a large number of existing articles. For example, Mass_spectrometry has been changed so that the notation is Q in contrast with the existing Lorentz force article that has a lower case q for the same quantity. The notation m/q that is used in some places instead of m/z in the mass spectrometry article is now m/Q. The argument given by Cernms is one that has been given by Kehrli previously, namely that ISO 31 standards trump Wikipedia consensus. This POV leads to notation is not the consensus of the wikipedia community as can be seen by inspection of electromagnetism and related articles. Further, a global notation change from q to Q should be argued in WikiProject Physics.

I am not Kehrli even though I know her and we are working in the same building. She has convinced me that she has been baned for wrong reasons from Wikipedia. While Kkmurray does a lot of good for the mass spec community here, unfortunately he also makes very grave mistakes. And the disapointing thing is: he even seems to be aware that he is making mistakes, but continues to make them with historical reasoning.
 * Reply

To the facts in dispute: Q is currently the accepted symbol for a charge quantity. q and e are historical symbols which should no longer be used in a encyclopedia even though they are both still used in publications. Proof:. You see clearly: IUPAC (the organization which Kkmurray is member of) is saying Q is the proper symbol. The same holds for the IUPAP red book and the ISO 31 standarts. This means: the three most relevant organization say Q. q and e are both things of the past. Also, q is in no way a Wikipedia consensus, as Kkmurray claims. It is quite the opposite: Wikipedia is using Q as the symbol of Electric_charge. Check yourself. Or look at the List_of_physical_quantities. Again, Q is in use. It seems to me that if anything it is Q that represents the consensus. Concerning the issue of a global notation: I also favor a global notation because this would make Wikipedia more consistent. This is why I changed it.

This issue, BTW, is a good example of the harm Kkmurry is doing to Wikipedia: he is changing modern and current notation and replaces it with old outdated notation which he finds in old papers and probably in his old textbooks from back in college. It is ok to mention the old notation in an article. But Wikipedia should be based in the current knowledge, and not in the past.

Cernms (talk) 14:11, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comments

I submitted Requests for checkuser/Case/Kehrli. -- Kkmurray (talk) 20:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The result of the checkuser was that it could not be performed due to the time that has expired since Kehrli last edited. However, the above admission of Cernms suggests that this is a case of meatpuppetry with the goal of evading the Arbitration Committee limitations on Kehrli's edits. Additional support for this are recent edits to mass-to-charge ratio:, Thomson (unit)‎:  , and electric charge:  where POV edits and nomenclature changes have been made with no discussion. --Kkmurray (talk) 20:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an admitted case of meatpuppeting, which is disruptive in that it's a clear attempt to circumvent an arb com ruling. However, Cernms makes a good point about the upper case Q may be more accepted. Therefore, I'm blocking Cernms for 48 hours for meatpuppeting and disruption but also STRONGLY recommending the parties use a TALK PAGE to settle this. If agreement can not be reached, user the WP:DR process. I'm also noting this in the arb case log.11:31, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Conclusions