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The last time Amalthea (bot) updated the SPI table was yesterday at 05:51 UTC. I left a message on Amalthea's Talk page yesterday, but there's no telling when he'll respond. I can't remember the last time we substituted DeltaQuad's updating mechanism (I don't even know what to call it). I also don't remember how to do it, although I think I did it once a long time ago. Does it still work? If so, could someone temporarily substitute it so the table updates? I'd ask Amanda directly, but she's around so seldom, I decided asking here and pinging her at the same time would be most efficient. Thanks.-- Bbb23 ( talk) 15:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
...and has been for at least several hours. As an
example, I get "500 - Internal Server Error".
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
15:59, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
What does UA stand for?Is their a list of abbreviations? Dlohcierekim ( talk) 16:27, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Although I am using the markblocked script by User:Burninthruthesky, I've noticed today that in the SPI case pages, usernames of blocked users are not stroke through any more (at least not for me). The "talk" and "contributions" links are stroke through, but the username itself is not. It was all OK last time I was clerking, but today there's the described issue. Can someone help? Vanjagenije (talk) 13:19, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
As much as I get nostalgic for percolators, I've asked at VPT. TonyBallioni ( talk) 20:05, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
1999Newbie is an obvious sock of Blake20 as you can tell by the fact that they've both left trollish messages on my talk page that are of absolutely no interest to me. And on top of that, they both have the same editing patterns, and the fact that they've both mentioned The Sims Wiki which is a Fandom wiki that I administrate. And that they've both brought up the subject of ILoveSims5 who was a former sockpuppeteer on that wiki back in 2014-2015. ― C.Syde ( talk | contribs) 12:51, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
So, I have an exhaustive list of accounts created since April/May which all behave the same way and I believe that they are all created by one or two editors whose main accounts have been blocked indefinitely for sock puppetry. However, I don't believe it's possible to arrange/separate these accounts, I'm not sure how I should open an investigation. Should I simply open one and make my sense as I add the exhaustive list? -- Ahmedo Semsurî ( talk) 09:07, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Please review Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/50.232.233.114.
Please comment on whether it is appropriate for random editors to nominate LTA subpages for deletion. It is my opinion that only qualified clerks should be doing this. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 08:01, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
@
Bbb23: We're causing
Misnested tag with different rendering in HTML5 and HTML4 high-priority
lint errors in every Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/...
article. At the end of every
*'''Tools''': <span class="plainlinks">[https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/editorinteract.py?users={{urlencode:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}} Editor interaction utility] • <span class="plainlinks">[https://tools.wmflabs.org/interaction-timeline?wiki=enwiki&user={{urlencode:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}} Interaction Timeline] • [https://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/UserCompare/{{urlencode:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}.html User compare report]</span> <small>''Auto-generated every hour.''</small>
we need to append </span>
. Can we please make this fix going forward. —
Anomalocaris (
talk)
18:57, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
<span>
, not to add the missing </span>
.)
Nardog (
talk)
21:20, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
<span class="plainlinks">
and leave the first, correct?
Ivanvector (
Talk/
Edits)
14:49, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Discussion has already been open long enough to have been relisted once, but this page should have been notified. Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 18:14, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
...and this one has been listed as well.
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
02:19, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee is accepting applications for appointments as CheckUser and Oversight team members. GorillaWarfare and KrakatoaKatie are the arbitrators overseeing this process. The names of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, who will be asked for assistance with vetting candidates.
For the Arbitration Committee,
Katie talk 17:14, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
After conferring with
JJMC89 and the functionaries, we are pleased to announce that he is now a SPI Clerk trainee and I will begin training him soon. Please welcome him and if I'm not around and he needs something, please help him out. Thank you,
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
23:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
What can I do if I suspect a user heavily involved in a canvassed AfD, with no other edits, of being a sock, but I have no evidence of their possible other account? I see someone has already opened a request for them and it was deleted as a G8 (no single-user requests). Vashti ( talk) 22:53, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Hello, I'm Minhngoc25a, an active user from the Vietnamese Wikipedia. Recently, the check users from our wiki found a wave of sockpuppets. Those accounts affected heavily the result of page deletion and high-class user group election votings in our community.
So, I'd like to ask, how are sockpuppets in your wiki handled? Could you please list the function of your bots used against these accounts?
Minhngoc25a ( talk) 15:15, 26 October 2019 (UTC).
I'm looking at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/BrookeCook, which has a list of many suspected socks. Is there some standard convention to mark a given suspect as, "Investigation completed on this one", so other investigators can quickly tell which ones still need work? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:04, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
{{
admin-note}}
template (looks like
{{
admin-note}}
if you wish. If you have any other questions, you can ask here, or, preferably, at the
SPI clerks' noticeboard, which more people watch and nobody uses for some reason. Cheers!
Reaper Eternal (
talk)
15:05, 28 October 2019 (UTC)See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hijiri88. — SmokeyJoe ( talk) 21:01, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
Is there ever justification for blocking a new account that is almost certainly intended as a sockpuppet? I realize the answer is either "never" or "only in exceptional circumstances; AGF assumes the user intends to mend their ways". But my reason: some articles, particularly Martin Short have been repeatedly hit by accounts with a particular name pattern, and two more accounts with the same pattern were created a few hours ago, within minutes of each other (so it's hard to AGF). There's a third created a few days ago. They haven't made edits yet. David Brooks ( talk) 15:05, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Hello a previous discussion here that I was involved in subsequently resulted in one of the editors I was in dispute with being blocked indefinitely. However a recent reply to Talk:List of Royal Navy admirals (1707–current) final section which I have noticed today leads me to suspect that Special:Contributions/12.144.5.2 could be the previous user that was blocked. Their comments are not neutral or impartial and specifically name myself and my involvement in this matter e.g. 'assiduous work that was abandoned when Navops47 showed up and demanded that the evolution of understanding of what the rank of admiral means be disregarded' any advice would be appreciated.-- Navops47 ( talk) 07:32, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
An IP editor used one just the other day. Looking at the talk page archives, I see this occassionally happens. The intro page states "If you are an anonymous (IP address) editor, and the case page is protected or does not exist, please click "show" to the right and use the box below". I can't say for sure what happens when that pathway is taken — so I just wanted to confirm that using that box does not, in some way unknown to me, turn-on {{
semi-protected edit request}}
in a manner such that any advice to IP editors not to use it would be wrong.
[a] A portion of the guidance I give to others is empirical (as is here) and if that template is being used in an official way that I don't know about, I'd go around thinking it's not supposed to be used when it is. Wanted to avoid that, so thanks in advance for any guidance! Warm regards,
Spintendo
06:05, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Notes
{{
semi-protected edit request}}
into a new SPI page, my guidance to IP editors not to use the template would be confusing, as they would have no idea what I was talking about.
Template:Checkuserbacklog has been
nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Here's another deletion discussion for an SPI-related page where the nominator (courtesy ping
Trialpears) did not notify the project.
Ivanvector (
Talk/
Edits)
23:25, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Template:Ssp has been
nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. ‑‑
Trialpears (
talk)
16:25, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
What tools/procedures do we have to prevent using SPI to conduct a Denial Of Service attack? Suppose there was some legitimate user that I wanted to attack. It would be easy for me to create an account and pretend to be their sock. If they had an edit reverted, I would restore it. I could follow them around to AfDs and support their positions. If I was smart, I would run them through any of a number of IP-hiding tools. Well, you get the idea. Eventually, somebody would notice, open an SPI, and both my throw-away sock and my intended target would get blocked. I can't be the first person to have thought of this. Have there been instances of this? Do we have any effective way to discover and counter this sort of attack? -- RoySmith (talk) 02:49, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I've semi-proposed this idea before but I'm finding that we're getting a mix of well-meaning and sock creations of LTA pages which serve as nothing more than a trophy for trolls. Rarely are these pages useful anymore and often they are for garden variety vandal-socks as opposed to actual long term abuse (how we define it is irrelevant at this point, though.) I think Wikipedia is mostly past the point of these pages being necessary but since I doubt we'll be making WP:LTA historic any time soon, I think it would be better if CUs and clerks were given the sole discretion of creation of new LTA pages (and possibly editing past but that's probably a different battle.) Praxidicae ( talk) 19:58, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
What do people think of this edit two hours ago at an LTA page? I reverted a similar post on the LTA talk two days ago: diff. My conclusion is that firm clerking is necessary. Johnuniq ( talk) 02:34, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
If there's any interest, I posted a proposal to improve the screen space usage of the case table at Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview#Suggested format change. —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 02:19, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Despite being fairly used to opening SPI cases by now, I have accidentally started an SPI at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AuthorWiki9, where I meant to open in at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AuthorWiki99. Can someone fix this? SamHolt6 ( talk) 04:53, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
I recently tried to report ContentEditman for SPI but the report was then edited with all text removed and replaced with the word "blank." Why is this, can someone advice if the report was done properly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.229.71.252 ( talk) 15:29, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8805:DC00:14D0:19B1:D5BB:25A4:6AA3 ( talk) 15:53, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure if something changed recently that is causing this error, but we seem to have some archive pages with many calls to {{ checkuser}} suddenly not rendering properly. LakesideMiners observed the issue on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Krajoyn/Archive/1 (scroll to about 22 March 2018 - after a point around there the page stops transcluding templates). It's only happening in archives (pages with more calls to {{ checkuser}}) so it's probably not something we need to be terribly concerned about, but do we need to do something to the template to stop this happening? Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 16:32, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
The Sockpuppet pages in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded are:
I extracted the above from this XML list showing pages in the Wikipedia namespace that are in the category. Johnuniq ( talk) 22:33, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
I've split all of the archives mentioned in this thread. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 23:22, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
I created this SPI with a new puppeteer, but looking into article histories some more, I think they all belong to this one. Should I leave it as is (I've left a note in the SPI I created) or add them to the older SPI? Thanks, and sorry for the confusion. Spike 'em ( talk) 11:57, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Bravo to the clerks for getting the ever-present backlog of cases under control, but I've noticed that cases with the "checked" status (case checked but further review required, green in the table) are still languishing, with the oldest now nearly two months old since filing (one month since results on that case). Do we need to clarify the intent of this status? Personally I use it for cases where I have reported results but suggested behavioural analysis or otherwise requested further input. How are the other checkusers using it, and how are the clerks seeing it? Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 13:20, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
TonyBallioni, Risker, in a discussion we've been having, Dreamy Jazz points out that Wikipedia:CheckUser#CheckUser blocks provides a level of irreversibility to CU blocks that isn't there for blocks placed by admins based on CU results. Shurely shome mishtake ?? Cabayi ( talk) 21:02, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Would a clerk please move
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Renamed user 49274c4c204245204241434b and the
respective archive to
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/CommotioCerebri and
WP:Sockpuppet investigations/CommotioCerebri/Archive? The courtesy vanishing has been reversed by the stewards. Thank you very much.
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
15:53, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
(Should we not/ Why don't we/ Have there been previous discussions on whether it would be helpful to) have a brief summary about the case on each casepage? It's usually blank most of the time anyway. I'm thinking something similar to the info pages about LTAs that it seems we do have but much briefer, perhaps, — a list of socks (or links to confirmed and suspected socks category pages), a list of affected articles, traits/area of focus (global or specific country, wikiprojects, AUTO or PAID, CIR, block evasion, etc.). I did search the archives with a few keywords I could think of but didn't find anything. Why I'm asking here. Thank you for reading! Usedtobecool TALK ✨ 17:50, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
What is the policy on non-admin SPI clerks making block requests? For example, this request by Cabayi. As far as I can tell from WP:SPI/C#Role and responsibilities of SPI Clerks, deciding cases is outside the remit of a clerk, so I'm unsure how I'm supposed to treat this request. Since the block would be logged in my name, I feel the obligation to investigate it to the same extent I would perform any other investigation. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:12, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
It can be very frustrating in SPI cases where a large amount of accounts are listed to have misidentified the oldest account in the bunch (sockmaster). No matter how careful you are, everyone's bound to have made this mistake at least once (especially in cases where 50+ users are involved), and it's a real pain to have to go back and retag all those socks and move the SPI. I was wondering if someonoe more technically inclined than me could create or modify an existing user script that clearly tells you which sock in the group is the oldest account and therefore true sockmaster? Sro23 ( talk) 08:11, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
"It says the registration date."- Great, but unless the oldest account is highlighted a different color or whatever, I still have to manually search for the oldest account. Sro23 ( talk) 05:52, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
mw.loader.load("/?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/cuStaleness.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); mw.loader.load("/?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/sockStaleness.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript");
maxUsersCUStaleness = 300;
An accusation was made by User:Esuka at an unrelated edit-warring complaint ( 1) accusing me of being an anonymous IP editor - 46.226.190.219 - in an article. When I asked them to apologize for the accusation, they essentially said there was "good reason" to believe I was guilty of such. Such accusations taint a user's edits forever unless discredited right away. Please do a comparison. I am not this other user, or any other IP user either. - Jack Sebastian ( talk) 04:58, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the place to ask but this users behavior has been problematic crosswiki wrt mass tagging socks and I was shocked to see so many tagged here by them that haven't even edited nor were they evaluated at SPI. For the record, I have no doubt about the accounts being socks but I fail to see how bringing attention to trolls is beneficial and I find mass tagging by non-clerks/cus to be a bit problematic so I was wondering if it would be appropriate to request deletion of said tags. Praxidicae ( talk) 20:15, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
I have noticed that many sockmasters who have had been confirmed to be socking by checkusers twice after the initial indefinite block are not marked as banned on their userpage. WP:THREESTRIKES is the policy on this and it has been around since the March 2018 RfC. How would this apply retrospectively to cases with less than two CU confirmed cases of socking after March 2018, but with more than two CU confirmed cases of socking if you also include before March 2018? Also should all sockmasters who meet WP:THREESTRIKES have their {{ sockpuppeteer}} template changed from blocked to banned (with checked=yes if it is not already there)? Is some kind of semi-automated tool / bot task to search / list eligible sockmasters to be banned per WP:THREESTRIKES wanted (a full bot seems too risky, so manually checking the sockmaster's case page seems best)? Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 16:30, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't bother because they're literally never going to get unblocked anyway. (I personally find the "three strikes" policy to be unnecessary bureaucracy.) Reaper Eternal ( talk) 18:25, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Just wanted to post a wee reminder to CUs that there is a checkuser queue at WP:UTRS that needs monitoring. Often it's requests for IPBE that just need a quick check. Thank you to 5 albert square for all of the work she performs in reviewing requests, but she can't do it all on her own! -- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 22:15, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Not since yesterday at 12:50. I contacted Amalthea yesterday. I tried to replace the usual table with DeltaQuad's table, but either I did it wrong or DQ's table is not working. Can anything be done?-- Bbb23 ( talk) 16:42, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
If you think an IP is ban-evading, is this the place to report? It's been so long since I filed a check-user request, I can't remember. Thanks! —Мандичка YO 😜 04:36, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi, for some reason I opened up this SPI and it never showed up on the main page. Any ideas? -- Mr. Vernon ( talk) 01:43, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Deletion review#Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/WhenDatHotlineBling. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 05:15, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Could a template similar to the "A long-term abuse case exists at..." be created for users who have persistently violated copyright? It would ideally say something along the lines of "The subject of this SPI has previously had issues with copyright (Link to CCI). Liberal reversion of their sock's edits is encouraged." It would be useful with dealing with users like Zawl, Superbrickbro, Billy Hathorn, Dante8, Chewygum, ARA SANTA FE, and Sayerslle, for a few examples, and would help prevent the backlog from getting any bigger at CCI. Money emoji💵 Talk💸 Help out at CCI! 12:45, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
A contributor copyright investigation exists at Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/(username). Edits by sockpuppets should should be reviewed for potential copyright violations.It depends on a CCI with the same username existing, but I imagine that if needed one could create a redirect. This would be added to the existing SPI archive notice, which already automagically links to the LTA page and would now automagically link to the CCI page as well. creffett ( talk) 00:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Will leave it for the two(?) editors at RM on Talk:Animation in South Korea to explain for now. But FYI In ictu oculi ( talk) 10:06, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
I can't tell why Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Akash199mishra is not showing a link to the case's archive. Anyone else seeing the same thing? Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 13:48, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Last night and this morning I went through a bunch of open and checked cases looking for ones that easily could be closed with no action or blocks so as to make the list less overwhelming for clerks and patrolling admins. I mentioned this to DeltaQuad off-wiki, but my one piece of feedback would be that I think clerks/patrolling admins should be a bit more comfortable closing cases with no action if a policy violation isn’t alleged or if the alleged abuse is too minor and stale to warrant action. These make up a significant portion of cases filed, and just letting them sit there for months makes them list more overwhelming to look at so people are less likely to investigate the cases that should be investigated.
That, and if you don’t explain to people the type of abuse or evidence we expect at SPI, they’re just going to keep reporting. There are also significant number of admins who don’t know they can block on their own if the evidence is strong enough, or who don’t think to block for regular ongoing disruption because they’re awaiting clerks or CUs at SPI. That’s no ones fault, but if we nudge them and let them know that SPI isn’t the only venue for dealing with repeat disruption, Wikipedia would likely be better :) TonyBallioni ( talk) 15:46, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
I have just open an investigation that has been placed by Twinkle into Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/XInolanIX#30 March 2020. This is a mistake as XInolanIX is not suspect to be a sockpuppet, and his only relation with the sock puppets it that one of the socks opened a fake investigation against him (and me).
The investigation should be named Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Elahadji, or, if the thread must be named after the oldest involved account, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brancojuan.
Could someone with more knowledge or more rights fix the mistake. D.Lazard ( talk) 11:07, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
FYI, I've requested a tweak to Twinkle's handling of SPI reports at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#SPI reports to check the master in the pagename matches the master in the {{ SPI archive notice}}. Cabayi ( talk) 12:09, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
Doctor Andrew Baldwin MD ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and his socks are none other than Nsmutte ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – the proof is here, where one of the socks brought up "Dr Sreehari Y". Nsmutte's serial socking started with Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Y._Srihari. There are other hallmarks as well but I don't want to waste more of my life writing about this person – since the users are all blocked, the only thing that needs doing is to merge Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Doctor Andrew Baldwin MD into Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nsmutte. -- bonadea contributions talk 17:54, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi there! Just wondering, but if these two users are the same person, should Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Atomic Meltdown/Archive be merged into the other one? BOZ ( talk) 18:30, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Spirit Place is a new name name for Southwest Place and Linde Place which are already blocked. Spirit Place is making the same kind of strange "contributions" to articles about the Stockholm Metro, changing its name to the home made "Stockholm Tunnel Rail". That is a nonsense name, never used by anybody. It is just a litteral translation of "Stockholms tunnelbana". He must be stopped, because it is a lot of work to revert all this. -- Andhanq ( talk) 22:56, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Would a clerk kindly rename Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/CGSFH to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Blue Barette Bam, along with any associated paperwork. User:Blue Barette Bam is in fact the oldest account. I'm aware this might look a bit like make-work, but trust me I am not big on bureaucracy. Given the disruption ongoing to this day, I think this might actually be useful. Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Hello, all,
This week I've come across two curious courtesy vanishing renames, both for editors who have been blocked for years. This made them stand out because all of the previous courtesy vanishing incidents I've come across were for editors in good standing who wanted to quit editing Wikipedia. I can't recall the name of the first editor but when I looked into the second editor who received a rename, it turns out that they were a long time sockpuppeteer. I've asked the renamer for an explanation but I would think that it would cause problems to basically erase all previous user pages for a sockpuppeteer. In fact, now, any new editor could assume the old names of this previously blocked editor.
So, I wanted to know whether this was a real problem for checkusers when you are keeping track of sockpuppeteers or is this not really a big issue at all. I hadn't expected to find such a mess with the second editor but the more that I looked, the more tangled past I found. Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 05:08, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
On a related note, I've seen a distinct uptick in these types of requests over the last couple of days. There's currently a request in the OS OTRS queue for courtesy vanishing and I just explained to this account that was blocked 6 years ago that deleting accounts is not possible. I'm starting to think there's an off-wiki discussion "out there" suggesting old blocked accounts request deletion/vanishing.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 17:54, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
A random newish user seeks deletion of a sockpuppet userpage. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Prinsipe Ybarro. — SmokeyJoe ( talk) 04:01, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
Hi, as you can see on the COI Noticeboard here, I discovered a very extensive, undisclosed WP:PAID editing campaign by a company. An administrator notified me the next steps would be to have the dozen or so named accounts involved banned (and potentially the IPs as well, not sure). Is this where I would initiate that request/investigation? The admin, DDG, characterized them as meatpuppets--they are not the same person, but almost certainly directed by the same company, so I'm not sure CheckUser would be particularly revealing. A link to my comprehensive investigation is also available on the COI noticeboard link above, and I sent additional "open source" evidence tying the accounts to specific employees at EG to paid-en-wp [at] wikipedia.org yesterday as well. WhinyTheYounger ( talk) 16:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
A new user filed 4 SPI reports against (mostly) blocked and stale users, offering no evidence, and requesting IP checks. I've blocked him for disruptive editing. Anybody have any complaints against deleting all 4? Cabayi ( talk) 11:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
I just archived Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Joveal George Joshua, but failed to notice that there were two cases on the page and one of them was still open. What's the best way to fix that? Should I just revert the edits to the active and archive pages? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:07, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/header#Template-protected edit request on 28 March 2020. — andrybak ( talk) 16:11, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
{{ SPIpriorcases}} seems to be inhibiting the display of headers at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bambifan101, so I commented it out. NinjaRobotPirate ( talk) 10:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Would some CU please grant IP block exempt to my alt Usernamekiran (AWB) per CU Ticket#2020070810007624? Courtesy ping to Risker —usernamekiran (talk) 15:16, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Seems like Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview has not updated since 08:10 today. There have been new CU requests and they haven't been listed. I've switched to the backup for now to keep things going. @ Amalthea: any idea of a cause and when the bot will restart updating the list? Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 11:11, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
Could someone with the power to edit Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser tweak the category? Category:Wikipedia sock puppetry has moved to Category:Wikipedia sockpuppetry but the bot that moved the category couldn't change that page. Le Deluge ( talk) 11:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
was recently blocked as a sock of Skoojal, and filed under that account. But there's also a page at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/FreeKnowledgeCreator. Should they be merged? —— Serial 06:43, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I am compiling a list at User:Usedtobecool/Tea intended to be used by regular hosts at the Teahouse for questions that are about to get archived unanswered (happens rarely but often enough). From memory, I reckon, once or twice a year, Teahouse gets an SPI-related question that is answered "I think... but I am not very experienced with SPIs". For those occasions only, I am seeking willing volunteers to be listed in the aforementioned list under "SPI procedures". Off the top of my head, I am thinking of asking @ Mz7, Ivanvector, and Vanjagenije: based on the frequency with which I encounter them handling cases, but I have also seen @ Drmies, TonyBallioni, MER-C, El C, Dreamy Jazz, and AmandaNP: investigating cases on occasion, and more recently, increasingly, @ RoySmith and GeneralNotability:. Any volunteers? I need at least a couple CUs. If I can't find a few volunteers from among the pinged or those who come across this post, I will need to reach out to more editors, so any suggestions? Also, other obvious choices that I've missed owing to my very limited watching of and working in SPI. Thank you in advance, and best regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:59, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
User:Kidhackr (
|
talk |
history |
links |
watch |
logs) seems to prefer socks whose names have "Kidhackr" or "Jaiden" in them (see
SPI for the latest incarnation,
Jaidenmala/
contribs). Is it practical to get a daily or several-times-a-day report of edits or account-creations made by new-ish - say, not yet autoconfirmed or not yet extended-autoconfirmed - whose names match known-favorite-name patters, such as Jaiden*
? Whether it's feasible or not, would it be as helpful as it seems at first glance?
davidwr/(
talk)/(
contribs)
19:13, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
Jaiden*
to
579 could make sense and it already exists for essentially a similar purpose. Thoughts?
N.J.A. |
talk
11:22, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv, KrakatoaKatie, and Xeno.
The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process.
This year's timeline is as follows:
For the Arbitration Committee, Katie talk 23:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv, KrakatoaKatie, and Xeno.
The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process.
This year's timeline is as follows:
For the Arbitration Committee, Katie talk 23:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
I found a proposal offering paid Wikipedia editing on Freelancer, and the proposal gave three examples of articles representing the editor's work: List of hot dog restaurants, hot dog stand, and Mall of Memphis. None of these have a creator in common.
Is there a tool that lets me feed in a list of articles and it outputs a list of editors who have edited all articles? ~ Anachronist ( talk) 18:06, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
I've been feeling troubled by the interaction between WP:DENY & SPI. While the intention to deny recognition to vandals is sensible, doing that by failing to tag socks impedes most editors in their vigilance against further socking. I'd suggest that, if we make the tag less of a trophy - no image, no box, no bold text - we can return to tagging all culprits without feeding their vanity.
I've drafted a version in {{ Sockpuppeteer/sandbox}}, Special:Permalink/978871298 by stripping all embellishment from the current live version. Testcases at {{ Sockpuppeteer/testcases}}. Cabayi ( talk) 12:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
Hey, just giving you guys a head's up. In a prior comment on their talk page FocoCasti threatened to create sockpuppets and generally evade a block if they were ever blocked. I ended up blocking them for hostile posts on REFUND combined with their general edit/action history, but I kind of expect them to try to evade a block. TBH, for some reason I kind of get the feeling that this account is probably not their first and that it's a sock of another, earlier account. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (。◕‿◕。) 04:45, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Praytvresmi had ducks quacking so loudly that I only put the diffs in because they were "required." All accounts - now blocked by the way - either had a history of bad behavior or they were new and had few if any bad edits outside their own user-space.
My question is, the next time I see something where it's sufficient to say "see contribution and log history for each" because those histories are 90%+ evidence of sock- or meat-puppetry, so you, the checkusers and SPI clerks, still need specific diffs as examples? davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 00:51, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
They asked me to review Shirish Devkota which I declined, a link to the diff showing them asking you would save a clerk some time looking that up.
Hello, I want to start a sockpuppet investigation but I'd like to know if there are tools I can use for comparing contributions of past sockpuppet accounts and a current sockpuppet account of which I am suspicious. In particular, I'd like to know if there are tools for searching contributions based on keywords instead of just a list of common Wikipedia articles, and see if there are similarities between the specific edits/contributions of the suspected account and those of the past confirmed sockpuppets. Thank you. Stricnina ( talk) 11:28, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Given the availability of Special:Investigate, I think it would be helpful to have a userscript which links to Special:Investigate with multiple accounts and IPs pre-selected. (Currently the {{ checkuser}} template only prefills one username, and that's the best the template can do.) Is it possible to have a script check all of the users listed in {{ checkuser}} templates in the current page and in the archive, provide the checkuser with a list of non-stale accounts (perhaps listing some basic info such as registration date, last edit, is it currently blocked, is it currently glocked), and allow the CU to use checkboxes to select which accounts to check? And then link to Special:Investigate with those accounts selected? ST47 ( talk) 23:47, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm concerned about how much information should be publicly provided in sockpuppet investigations, as I don't want to inform the puppeteer of how they can evade detection in the future, given they appear highly motivated. Is this a reasonable concern? I'm willing to make it easier for investigators and I'm sure this is something that has been discussed before. Should I wait until someone says I haven't provided enough? I'm referring to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/The_Little_Platoon. Thanks. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 21:12, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
It's been 24 hours and we still require some clarification on the information needed for this investigation. Thanks. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 04:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Could somebody more experienced than me take a look at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Wikinger. Due to some confusion about what was requested, I moved the entire case instead of just one section. I don't know the best way to unwind the problem. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
The last time Amalthea (bot) updated the SPI table was yesterday at 05:51 UTC. I left a message on Amalthea's Talk page yesterday, but there's no telling when he'll respond. I can't remember the last time we substituted DeltaQuad's updating mechanism (I don't even know what to call it). I also don't remember how to do it, although I think I did it once a long time ago. Does it still work? If so, could someone temporarily substitute it so the table updates? I'd ask Amanda directly, but she's around so seldom, I decided asking here and pinging her at the same time would be most efficient. Thanks.-- Bbb23 ( talk) 15:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
...and has been for at least several hours. As an
example, I get "500 - Internal Server Error".
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
15:59, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
What does UA stand for?Is their a list of abbreviations? Dlohcierekim ( talk) 16:27, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Although I am using the markblocked script by User:Burninthruthesky, I've noticed today that in the SPI case pages, usernames of blocked users are not stroke through any more (at least not for me). The "talk" and "contributions" links are stroke through, but the username itself is not. It was all OK last time I was clerking, but today there's the described issue. Can someone help? Vanjagenije (talk) 13:19, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
As much as I get nostalgic for percolators, I've asked at VPT. TonyBallioni ( talk) 20:05, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
1999Newbie is an obvious sock of Blake20 as you can tell by the fact that they've both left trollish messages on my talk page that are of absolutely no interest to me. And on top of that, they both have the same editing patterns, and the fact that they've both mentioned The Sims Wiki which is a Fandom wiki that I administrate. And that they've both brought up the subject of ILoveSims5 who was a former sockpuppeteer on that wiki back in 2014-2015. ― C.Syde ( talk | contribs) 12:51, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
So, I have an exhaustive list of accounts created since April/May which all behave the same way and I believe that they are all created by one or two editors whose main accounts have been blocked indefinitely for sock puppetry. However, I don't believe it's possible to arrange/separate these accounts, I'm not sure how I should open an investigation. Should I simply open one and make my sense as I add the exhaustive list? -- Ahmedo Semsurî ( talk) 09:07, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Please review Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/50.232.233.114.
Please comment on whether it is appropriate for random editors to nominate LTA subpages for deletion. It is my opinion that only qualified clerks should be doing this. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 08:01, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
@
Bbb23: We're causing
Misnested tag with different rendering in HTML5 and HTML4 high-priority
lint errors in every Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/...
article. At the end of every
*'''Tools''': <span class="plainlinks">[https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/editorinteract.py?users={{urlencode:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}} Editor interaction utility] • <span class="plainlinks">[https://tools.wmflabs.org/interaction-timeline?wiki=enwiki&user={{urlencode:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}} Interaction Timeline] • [https://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/UserCompare/{{urlencode:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}.html User compare report]</span> <small>''Auto-generated every hour.''</small>
we need to append </span>
. Can we please make this fix going forward. —
Anomalocaris (
talk)
18:57, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
<span>
, not to add the missing </span>
.)
Nardog (
talk)
21:20, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
<span class="plainlinks">
and leave the first, correct?
Ivanvector (
Talk/
Edits)
14:49, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Discussion has already been open long enough to have been relisted once, but this page should have been notified. Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 18:14, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
...and this one has been listed as well.
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
02:19, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee is accepting applications for appointments as CheckUser and Oversight team members. GorillaWarfare and KrakatoaKatie are the arbitrators overseeing this process. The names of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, who will be asked for assistance with vetting candidates.
For the Arbitration Committee,
Katie talk 17:14, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
After conferring with
JJMC89 and the functionaries, we are pleased to announce that he is now a SPI Clerk trainee and I will begin training him soon. Please welcome him and if I'm not around and he needs something, please help him out. Thank you,
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
23:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
What can I do if I suspect a user heavily involved in a canvassed AfD, with no other edits, of being a sock, but I have no evidence of their possible other account? I see someone has already opened a request for them and it was deleted as a G8 (no single-user requests). Vashti ( talk) 22:53, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Hello, I'm Minhngoc25a, an active user from the Vietnamese Wikipedia. Recently, the check users from our wiki found a wave of sockpuppets. Those accounts affected heavily the result of page deletion and high-class user group election votings in our community.
So, I'd like to ask, how are sockpuppets in your wiki handled? Could you please list the function of your bots used against these accounts?
Minhngoc25a ( talk) 15:15, 26 October 2019 (UTC).
I'm looking at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/BrookeCook, which has a list of many suspected socks. Is there some standard convention to mark a given suspect as, "Investigation completed on this one", so other investigators can quickly tell which ones still need work? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:04, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
{{
admin-note}}
template (looks like
{{
admin-note}}
if you wish. If you have any other questions, you can ask here, or, preferably, at the
SPI clerks' noticeboard, which more people watch and nobody uses for some reason. Cheers!
Reaper Eternal (
talk)
15:05, 28 October 2019 (UTC)See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hijiri88. — SmokeyJoe ( talk) 21:01, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
Is there ever justification for blocking a new account that is almost certainly intended as a sockpuppet? I realize the answer is either "never" or "only in exceptional circumstances; AGF assumes the user intends to mend their ways". But my reason: some articles, particularly Martin Short have been repeatedly hit by accounts with a particular name pattern, and two more accounts with the same pattern were created a few hours ago, within minutes of each other (so it's hard to AGF). There's a third created a few days ago. They haven't made edits yet. David Brooks ( talk) 15:05, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Hello a previous discussion here that I was involved in subsequently resulted in one of the editors I was in dispute with being blocked indefinitely. However a recent reply to Talk:List of Royal Navy admirals (1707–current) final section which I have noticed today leads me to suspect that Special:Contributions/12.144.5.2 could be the previous user that was blocked. Their comments are not neutral or impartial and specifically name myself and my involvement in this matter e.g. 'assiduous work that was abandoned when Navops47 showed up and demanded that the evolution of understanding of what the rank of admiral means be disregarded' any advice would be appreciated.-- Navops47 ( talk) 07:32, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
An IP editor used one just the other day. Looking at the talk page archives, I see this occassionally happens. The intro page states "If you are an anonymous (IP address) editor, and the case page is protected or does not exist, please click "show" to the right and use the box below". I can't say for sure what happens when that pathway is taken — so I just wanted to confirm that using that box does not, in some way unknown to me, turn-on {{
semi-protected edit request}}
in a manner such that any advice to IP editors not to use it would be wrong.
[a] A portion of the guidance I give to others is empirical (as is here) and if that template is being used in an official way that I don't know about, I'd go around thinking it's not supposed to be used when it is. Wanted to avoid that, so thanks in advance for any guidance! Warm regards,
Spintendo
06:05, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Notes
{{
semi-protected edit request}}
into a new SPI page, my guidance to IP editors not to use the template would be confusing, as they would have no idea what I was talking about.
Template:Checkuserbacklog has been
nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Here's another deletion discussion for an SPI-related page where the nominator (courtesy ping
Trialpears) did not notify the project.
Ivanvector (
Talk/
Edits)
23:25, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Template:Ssp has been
nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. ‑‑
Trialpears (
talk)
16:25, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
What tools/procedures do we have to prevent using SPI to conduct a Denial Of Service attack? Suppose there was some legitimate user that I wanted to attack. It would be easy for me to create an account and pretend to be their sock. If they had an edit reverted, I would restore it. I could follow them around to AfDs and support their positions. If I was smart, I would run them through any of a number of IP-hiding tools. Well, you get the idea. Eventually, somebody would notice, open an SPI, and both my throw-away sock and my intended target would get blocked. I can't be the first person to have thought of this. Have there been instances of this? Do we have any effective way to discover and counter this sort of attack? -- RoySmith (talk) 02:49, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I've semi-proposed this idea before but I'm finding that we're getting a mix of well-meaning and sock creations of LTA pages which serve as nothing more than a trophy for trolls. Rarely are these pages useful anymore and often they are for garden variety vandal-socks as opposed to actual long term abuse (how we define it is irrelevant at this point, though.) I think Wikipedia is mostly past the point of these pages being necessary but since I doubt we'll be making WP:LTA historic any time soon, I think it would be better if CUs and clerks were given the sole discretion of creation of new LTA pages (and possibly editing past but that's probably a different battle.) Praxidicae ( talk) 19:58, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
What do people think of this edit two hours ago at an LTA page? I reverted a similar post on the LTA talk two days ago: diff. My conclusion is that firm clerking is necessary. Johnuniq ( talk) 02:34, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
If there's any interest, I posted a proposal to improve the screen space usage of the case table at Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview#Suggested format change. —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 02:19, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Despite being fairly used to opening SPI cases by now, I have accidentally started an SPI at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AuthorWiki9, where I meant to open in at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AuthorWiki99. Can someone fix this? SamHolt6 ( talk) 04:53, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
I recently tried to report ContentEditman for SPI but the report was then edited with all text removed and replaced with the word "blank." Why is this, can someone advice if the report was done properly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.229.71.252 ( talk) 15:29, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8805:DC00:14D0:19B1:D5BB:25A4:6AA3 ( talk) 15:53, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure if something changed recently that is causing this error, but we seem to have some archive pages with many calls to {{ checkuser}} suddenly not rendering properly. LakesideMiners observed the issue on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Krajoyn/Archive/1 (scroll to about 22 March 2018 - after a point around there the page stops transcluding templates). It's only happening in archives (pages with more calls to {{ checkuser}}) so it's probably not something we need to be terribly concerned about, but do we need to do something to the template to stop this happening? Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 16:32, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
The Sockpuppet pages in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded are:
I extracted the above from this XML list showing pages in the Wikipedia namespace that are in the category. Johnuniq ( talk) 22:33, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
I've split all of the archives mentioned in this thread. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 23:22, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
I created this SPI with a new puppeteer, but looking into article histories some more, I think they all belong to this one. Should I leave it as is (I've left a note in the SPI I created) or add them to the older SPI? Thanks, and sorry for the confusion. Spike 'em ( talk) 11:57, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Bravo to the clerks for getting the ever-present backlog of cases under control, but I've noticed that cases with the "checked" status (case checked but further review required, green in the table) are still languishing, with the oldest now nearly two months old since filing (one month since results on that case). Do we need to clarify the intent of this status? Personally I use it for cases where I have reported results but suggested behavioural analysis or otherwise requested further input. How are the other checkusers using it, and how are the clerks seeing it? Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 13:20, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
TonyBallioni, Risker, in a discussion we've been having, Dreamy Jazz points out that Wikipedia:CheckUser#CheckUser blocks provides a level of irreversibility to CU blocks that isn't there for blocks placed by admins based on CU results. Shurely shome mishtake ?? Cabayi ( talk) 21:02, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Would a clerk please move
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Renamed user 49274c4c204245204241434b and the
respective archive to
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/CommotioCerebri and
WP:Sockpuppet investigations/CommotioCerebri/Archive? The courtesy vanishing has been reversed by the stewards. Thank you very much.
—
Berean Hunter
(talk)
15:53, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
(Should we not/ Why don't we/ Have there been previous discussions on whether it would be helpful to) have a brief summary about the case on each casepage? It's usually blank most of the time anyway. I'm thinking something similar to the info pages about LTAs that it seems we do have but much briefer, perhaps, — a list of socks (or links to confirmed and suspected socks category pages), a list of affected articles, traits/area of focus (global or specific country, wikiprojects, AUTO or PAID, CIR, block evasion, etc.). I did search the archives with a few keywords I could think of but didn't find anything. Why I'm asking here. Thank you for reading! Usedtobecool TALK ✨ 17:50, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
What is the policy on non-admin SPI clerks making block requests? For example, this request by Cabayi. As far as I can tell from WP:SPI/C#Role and responsibilities of SPI Clerks, deciding cases is outside the remit of a clerk, so I'm unsure how I'm supposed to treat this request. Since the block would be logged in my name, I feel the obligation to investigate it to the same extent I would perform any other investigation. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:12, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
It can be very frustrating in SPI cases where a large amount of accounts are listed to have misidentified the oldest account in the bunch (sockmaster). No matter how careful you are, everyone's bound to have made this mistake at least once (especially in cases where 50+ users are involved), and it's a real pain to have to go back and retag all those socks and move the SPI. I was wondering if someonoe more technically inclined than me could create or modify an existing user script that clearly tells you which sock in the group is the oldest account and therefore true sockmaster? Sro23 ( talk) 08:11, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
"It says the registration date."- Great, but unless the oldest account is highlighted a different color or whatever, I still have to manually search for the oldest account. Sro23 ( talk) 05:52, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
mw.loader.load("/?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/cuStaleness.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); mw.loader.load("/?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/sockStaleness.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript");
maxUsersCUStaleness = 300;
An accusation was made by User:Esuka at an unrelated edit-warring complaint ( 1) accusing me of being an anonymous IP editor - 46.226.190.219 - in an article. When I asked them to apologize for the accusation, they essentially said there was "good reason" to believe I was guilty of such. Such accusations taint a user's edits forever unless discredited right away. Please do a comparison. I am not this other user, or any other IP user either. - Jack Sebastian ( talk) 04:58, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the place to ask but this users behavior has been problematic crosswiki wrt mass tagging socks and I was shocked to see so many tagged here by them that haven't even edited nor were they evaluated at SPI. For the record, I have no doubt about the accounts being socks but I fail to see how bringing attention to trolls is beneficial and I find mass tagging by non-clerks/cus to be a bit problematic so I was wondering if it would be appropriate to request deletion of said tags. Praxidicae ( talk) 20:15, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
I have noticed that many sockmasters who have had been confirmed to be socking by checkusers twice after the initial indefinite block are not marked as banned on their userpage. WP:THREESTRIKES is the policy on this and it has been around since the March 2018 RfC. How would this apply retrospectively to cases with less than two CU confirmed cases of socking after March 2018, but with more than two CU confirmed cases of socking if you also include before March 2018? Also should all sockmasters who meet WP:THREESTRIKES have their {{ sockpuppeteer}} template changed from blocked to banned (with checked=yes if it is not already there)? Is some kind of semi-automated tool / bot task to search / list eligible sockmasters to be banned per WP:THREESTRIKES wanted (a full bot seems too risky, so manually checking the sockmaster's case page seems best)? Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 16:30, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't bother because they're literally never going to get unblocked anyway. (I personally find the "three strikes" policy to be unnecessary bureaucracy.) Reaper Eternal ( talk) 18:25, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Just wanted to post a wee reminder to CUs that there is a checkuser queue at WP:UTRS that needs monitoring. Often it's requests for IPBE that just need a quick check. Thank you to 5 albert square for all of the work she performs in reviewing requests, but she can't do it all on her own! -- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 22:15, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Not since yesterday at 12:50. I contacted Amalthea yesterday. I tried to replace the usual table with DeltaQuad's table, but either I did it wrong or DQ's table is not working. Can anything be done?-- Bbb23 ( talk) 16:42, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
If you think an IP is ban-evading, is this the place to report? It's been so long since I filed a check-user request, I can't remember. Thanks! —Мандичка YO 😜 04:36, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi, for some reason I opened up this SPI and it never showed up on the main page. Any ideas? -- Mr. Vernon ( talk) 01:43, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Deletion review#Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/WhenDatHotlineBling. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 05:15, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Could a template similar to the "A long-term abuse case exists at..." be created for users who have persistently violated copyright? It would ideally say something along the lines of "The subject of this SPI has previously had issues with copyright (Link to CCI). Liberal reversion of their sock's edits is encouraged." It would be useful with dealing with users like Zawl, Superbrickbro, Billy Hathorn, Dante8, Chewygum, ARA SANTA FE, and Sayerslle, for a few examples, and would help prevent the backlog from getting any bigger at CCI. Money emoji💵 Talk💸 Help out at CCI! 12:45, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
A contributor copyright investigation exists at Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/(username). Edits by sockpuppets should should be reviewed for potential copyright violations.It depends on a CCI with the same username existing, but I imagine that if needed one could create a redirect. This would be added to the existing SPI archive notice, which already automagically links to the LTA page and would now automagically link to the CCI page as well. creffett ( talk) 00:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Will leave it for the two(?) editors at RM on Talk:Animation in South Korea to explain for now. But FYI In ictu oculi ( talk) 10:06, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
I can't tell why Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Akash199mishra is not showing a link to the case's archive. Anyone else seeing the same thing? Ivanvector ( Talk/ Edits) 13:48, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Last night and this morning I went through a bunch of open and checked cases looking for ones that easily could be closed with no action or blocks so as to make the list less overwhelming for clerks and patrolling admins. I mentioned this to DeltaQuad off-wiki, but my one piece of feedback would be that I think clerks/patrolling admins should be a bit more comfortable closing cases with no action if a policy violation isn’t alleged or if the alleged abuse is too minor and stale to warrant action. These make up a significant portion of cases filed, and just letting them sit there for months makes them list more overwhelming to look at so people are less likely to investigate the cases that should be investigated.
That, and if you don’t explain to people the type of abuse or evidence we expect at SPI, they’re just going to keep reporting. There are also significant number of admins who don’t know they can block on their own if the evidence is strong enough, or who don’t think to block for regular ongoing disruption because they’re awaiting clerks or CUs at SPI. That’s no ones fault, but if we nudge them and let them know that SPI isn’t the only venue for dealing with repeat disruption, Wikipedia would likely be better :) TonyBallioni ( talk) 15:46, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
I have just open an investigation that has been placed by Twinkle into Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/XInolanIX#30 March 2020. This is a mistake as XInolanIX is not suspect to be a sockpuppet, and his only relation with the sock puppets it that one of the socks opened a fake investigation against him (and me).
The investigation should be named Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Elahadji, or, if the thread must be named after the oldest involved account, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brancojuan.
Could someone with more knowledge or more rights fix the mistake. D.Lazard ( talk) 11:07, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
FYI, I've requested a tweak to Twinkle's handling of SPI reports at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#SPI reports to check the master in the pagename matches the master in the {{ SPI archive notice}}. Cabayi ( talk) 12:09, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
Doctor Andrew Baldwin MD ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and his socks are none other than Nsmutte ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – the proof is here, where one of the socks brought up "Dr Sreehari Y". Nsmutte's serial socking started with Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Y._Srihari. There are other hallmarks as well but I don't want to waste more of my life writing about this person – since the users are all blocked, the only thing that needs doing is to merge Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Doctor Andrew Baldwin MD into Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nsmutte. -- bonadea contributions talk 17:54, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi there! Just wondering, but if these two users are the same person, should Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Atomic Meltdown/Archive be merged into the other one? BOZ ( talk) 18:30, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Spirit Place is a new name name for Southwest Place and Linde Place which are already blocked. Spirit Place is making the same kind of strange "contributions" to articles about the Stockholm Metro, changing its name to the home made "Stockholm Tunnel Rail". That is a nonsense name, never used by anybody. It is just a litteral translation of "Stockholms tunnelbana". He must be stopped, because it is a lot of work to revert all this. -- Andhanq ( talk) 22:56, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Would a clerk kindly rename Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/CGSFH to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Blue Barette Bam, along with any associated paperwork. User:Blue Barette Bam is in fact the oldest account. I'm aware this might look a bit like make-work, but trust me I am not big on bureaucracy. Given the disruption ongoing to this day, I think this might actually be useful. Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Hello, all,
This week I've come across two curious courtesy vanishing renames, both for editors who have been blocked for years. This made them stand out because all of the previous courtesy vanishing incidents I've come across were for editors in good standing who wanted to quit editing Wikipedia. I can't recall the name of the first editor but when I looked into the second editor who received a rename, it turns out that they were a long time sockpuppeteer. I've asked the renamer for an explanation but I would think that it would cause problems to basically erase all previous user pages for a sockpuppeteer. In fact, now, any new editor could assume the old names of this previously blocked editor.
So, I wanted to know whether this was a real problem for checkusers when you are keeping track of sockpuppeteers or is this not really a big issue at all. I hadn't expected to find such a mess with the second editor but the more that I looked, the more tangled past I found. Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 05:08, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
On a related note, I've seen a distinct uptick in these types of requests over the last couple of days. There's currently a request in the OS OTRS queue for courtesy vanishing and I just explained to this account that was blocked 6 years ago that deleting accounts is not possible. I'm starting to think there's an off-wiki discussion "out there" suggesting old blocked accounts request deletion/vanishing.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 17:54, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
A random newish user seeks deletion of a sockpuppet userpage. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Prinsipe Ybarro. — SmokeyJoe ( talk) 04:01, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
Hi, as you can see on the COI Noticeboard here, I discovered a very extensive, undisclosed WP:PAID editing campaign by a company. An administrator notified me the next steps would be to have the dozen or so named accounts involved banned (and potentially the IPs as well, not sure). Is this where I would initiate that request/investigation? The admin, DDG, characterized them as meatpuppets--they are not the same person, but almost certainly directed by the same company, so I'm not sure CheckUser would be particularly revealing. A link to my comprehensive investigation is also available on the COI noticeboard link above, and I sent additional "open source" evidence tying the accounts to specific employees at EG to paid-en-wp [at] wikipedia.org yesterday as well. WhinyTheYounger ( talk) 16:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
A new user filed 4 SPI reports against (mostly) blocked and stale users, offering no evidence, and requesting IP checks. I've blocked him for disruptive editing. Anybody have any complaints against deleting all 4? Cabayi ( talk) 11:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
I just archived Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Joveal George Joshua, but failed to notice that there were two cases on the page and one of them was still open. What's the best way to fix that? Should I just revert the edits to the active and archive pages? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:07, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/header#Template-protected edit request on 28 March 2020. — andrybak ( talk) 16:11, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
{{ SPIpriorcases}} seems to be inhibiting the display of headers at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bambifan101, so I commented it out. NinjaRobotPirate ( talk) 10:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Would some CU please grant IP block exempt to my alt Usernamekiran (AWB) per CU Ticket#2020070810007624? Courtesy ping to Risker —usernamekiran (talk) 15:16, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Seems like Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview has not updated since 08:10 today. There have been new CU requests and they haven't been listed. I've switched to the backup for now to keep things going. @ Amalthea: any idea of a cause and when the bot will restart updating the list? Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 11:11, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
Could someone with the power to edit Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser tweak the category? Category:Wikipedia sock puppetry has moved to Category:Wikipedia sockpuppetry but the bot that moved the category couldn't change that page. Le Deluge ( talk) 11:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
was recently blocked as a sock of Skoojal, and filed under that account. But there's also a page at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/FreeKnowledgeCreator. Should they be merged? —— Serial 06:43, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I am compiling a list at User:Usedtobecool/Tea intended to be used by regular hosts at the Teahouse for questions that are about to get archived unanswered (happens rarely but often enough). From memory, I reckon, once or twice a year, Teahouse gets an SPI-related question that is answered "I think... but I am not very experienced with SPIs". For those occasions only, I am seeking willing volunteers to be listed in the aforementioned list under "SPI procedures". Off the top of my head, I am thinking of asking @ Mz7, Ivanvector, and Vanjagenije: based on the frequency with which I encounter them handling cases, but I have also seen @ Drmies, TonyBallioni, MER-C, El C, Dreamy Jazz, and AmandaNP: investigating cases on occasion, and more recently, increasingly, @ RoySmith and GeneralNotability:. Any volunteers? I need at least a couple CUs. If I can't find a few volunteers from among the pinged or those who come across this post, I will need to reach out to more editors, so any suggestions? Also, other obvious choices that I've missed owing to my very limited watching of and working in SPI. Thank you in advance, and best regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:59, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
User:Kidhackr (
|
talk |
history |
links |
watch |
logs) seems to prefer socks whose names have "Kidhackr" or "Jaiden" in them (see
SPI for the latest incarnation,
Jaidenmala/
contribs). Is it practical to get a daily or several-times-a-day report of edits or account-creations made by new-ish - say, not yet autoconfirmed or not yet extended-autoconfirmed - whose names match known-favorite-name patters, such as Jaiden*
? Whether it's feasible or not, would it be as helpful as it seems at first glance?
davidwr/(
talk)/(
contribs)
19:13, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
Jaiden*
to
579 could make sense and it already exists for essentially a similar purpose. Thoughts?
N.J.A. |
talk
11:22, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv, KrakatoaKatie, and Xeno.
The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process.
This year's timeline is as follows:
For the Arbitration Committee, Katie talk 23:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv, KrakatoaKatie, and Xeno.
The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process.
This year's timeline is as follows:
For the Arbitration Committee, Katie talk 23:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
I found a proposal offering paid Wikipedia editing on Freelancer, and the proposal gave three examples of articles representing the editor's work: List of hot dog restaurants, hot dog stand, and Mall of Memphis. None of these have a creator in common.
Is there a tool that lets me feed in a list of articles and it outputs a list of editors who have edited all articles? ~ Anachronist ( talk) 18:06, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
I've been feeling troubled by the interaction between WP:DENY & SPI. While the intention to deny recognition to vandals is sensible, doing that by failing to tag socks impedes most editors in their vigilance against further socking. I'd suggest that, if we make the tag less of a trophy - no image, no box, no bold text - we can return to tagging all culprits without feeding their vanity.
I've drafted a version in {{ Sockpuppeteer/sandbox}}, Special:Permalink/978871298 by stripping all embellishment from the current live version. Testcases at {{ Sockpuppeteer/testcases}}. Cabayi ( talk) 12:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
Hey, just giving you guys a head's up. In a prior comment on their talk page FocoCasti threatened to create sockpuppets and generally evade a block if they were ever blocked. I ended up blocking them for hostile posts on REFUND combined with their general edit/action history, but I kind of expect them to try to evade a block. TBH, for some reason I kind of get the feeling that this account is probably not their first and that it's a sock of another, earlier account. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (。◕‿◕。) 04:45, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Praytvresmi had ducks quacking so loudly that I only put the diffs in because they were "required." All accounts - now blocked by the way - either had a history of bad behavior or they were new and had few if any bad edits outside their own user-space.
My question is, the next time I see something where it's sufficient to say "see contribution and log history for each" because those histories are 90%+ evidence of sock- or meat-puppetry, so you, the checkusers and SPI clerks, still need specific diffs as examples? davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 00:51, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
They asked me to review Shirish Devkota which I declined, a link to the diff showing them asking you would save a clerk some time looking that up.
Hello, I want to start a sockpuppet investigation but I'd like to know if there are tools I can use for comparing contributions of past sockpuppet accounts and a current sockpuppet account of which I am suspicious. In particular, I'd like to know if there are tools for searching contributions based on keywords instead of just a list of common Wikipedia articles, and see if there are similarities between the specific edits/contributions of the suspected account and those of the past confirmed sockpuppets. Thank you. Stricnina ( talk) 11:28, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Given the availability of Special:Investigate, I think it would be helpful to have a userscript which links to Special:Investigate with multiple accounts and IPs pre-selected. (Currently the {{ checkuser}} template only prefills one username, and that's the best the template can do.) Is it possible to have a script check all of the users listed in {{ checkuser}} templates in the current page and in the archive, provide the checkuser with a list of non-stale accounts (perhaps listing some basic info such as registration date, last edit, is it currently blocked, is it currently glocked), and allow the CU to use checkboxes to select which accounts to check? And then link to Special:Investigate with those accounts selected? ST47 ( talk) 23:47, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm concerned about how much information should be publicly provided in sockpuppet investigations, as I don't want to inform the puppeteer of how they can evade detection in the future, given they appear highly motivated. Is this a reasonable concern? I'm willing to make it easier for investigators and I'm sure this is something that has been discussed before. Should I wait until someone says I haven't provided enough? I'm referring to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/The_Little_Platoon. Thanks. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 21:12, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
It's been 24 hours and we still require some clarification on the information needed for this investigation. Thanks. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 04:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Could somebody more experienced than me take a look at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Wikinger. Due to some confusion about what was requested, I moved the entire case instead of just one section. I don't know the best way to unwind the problem. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)