Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppetry

Discussion on changing the logout text moved to MediaWiki talk:Logouttext and suggested changes implemented. Angela. 12:54, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

Dealing with abuse

the problem

There has been steady escalation in the abuse of sock puppets over the last six months. Examples include:

1. Banned user User:Michael's continuing creation of multiple socks for the purposes of vandalism.
2. Banned user User:Wik's bot-assisted creation of tens or possibly hundreds of socks for vandalism.
3. Creation of about a dozen socks by banned user User:24
4. User:Lir's presumed creation of about 15 socks.
5. User:Wik and User:Cantus creating several socks in pursuit of a revert war.
6. Creation of User:I am sexy by an unknown Wikipedian.
   • Was this a sock? I know there was another account involved in this that was a sock, but I wasn't aware of speculation that "I am sexy" was a sock...
7. Creation of User:Jesus is Lord! by an unknown Wikipedian.
8. Telgur the Trollslayer

The first two cases are similar. New accounts are created by banned users, utilized for between one and ten acts of vandalism, and abandoned. The user names of the new accounts are chosen so as to mock other users or Wikipedia in general. We could call these "vandal socks."

The remaining involve deliberate attempts to confuse the community, by making attribution for edits and revert wars unclear. We could call these "contributor socks."

The problem with vandal socks is threefold. First, they make blocking difficult because logged-in users' IP addresses are not readily accessible. Since vandal socks are abandoned shortly after their creation, there is no opportunity for the autoblocker to work. Second, they permit page move vandalism, which is difficult to revert. Third, they pollute the history summaries with an incitative user name.

Page moves from non-administrators are now disabled because of vandal socks. This loss is likely to become permanent unless another solution is found. A considerable amount of extra effort by administrators and developers is expended to counter ongoing vandalism from such accounts because of the impracticality of timely IP blocks.

Contributor socks create different problems. They lead to discussions, speculation, and research to ascertain actual authorship. Since it is rarely clear who is behind any given contributor sock except in hindsight, conflict among Wikipedians ensues. Perhaps most importantly, they lead to a climate of mistrust towards new users. Anyone who has made a genuine effort to make a new contributor welcome, and then later finds out the "new contributor" was a sock, feels like a chump and is unlikely to continue welcoming people. Finally, use of contributor socks make it easy to elude bans.

responses already in place

Community-based responses are already in place. These include the Wikipedia:Welcoming committee, and scrutiny on Recent Changes. Also, many users watch pages that are known to be favorites of repeat users of vandal socks.

possible solutions

Most answers to these problems beyond those listed above will require changes to both policy and software, and should be done with careful discussion, and with counsel from the developers.

The only social mechanism that comes to mind is a socially-enforced requirement for all users to list some basic identifying information on their user page, such as their city of residence.

Possible components of a software solution include:

1. Identification of new users and their edits.
   1. An automated new user log.
   2. Flagging edits on watchlists and recent changes that are made by newer users, say, the first 50 edits or so (Similar to sunglasses on eBay).
   3. Automated means of identifying the IP address used to create a new user. This could be deleted after, say, 10 days or after a certain number of edits to mitigate privacy concerns. Several other mitigation strategies come to mind as well.
2. Limits on actions until some well-defined milestone is reached (certain number of days or edits).
   1. Prohibit page moves
   2. Prohibit edits to other users' user: pages (usually vandalism)
3. Limits on account creation
   1. Cap the rate of account creation for any given IP address (to limit the rate of vandalism).
   2. Require confirmation of a valid email address.
   3. Require sponsorship by an existing user.
   4. Ask for a small donation. Allow users who do not wish to donate to create an account after following a more lengthy process.

UninvitedCompany 03:50, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

discussion

On "Identification of new users and their edits." They are all very nice. Now if the developers would just implement it.

On "Limits on actions until some milestone has been reached" Also nice.

On "Limits to account creation" -

The first two are nice.

• Require sponsorship by an existing user. -- Strongly oppose. Elitism will crush wikipedia one day, but there is no need to accelerate the aging process.

• Ask for a small donation. -- gives the impression that one might be expected. Chilling effect. Don't even hint at this. People get the impression that money is needed; there is no way to remain ignorant of this even now. They will donate if they can.

I want to say, annoyingly, that the situation is not bad for the moment. If trolls and fascist-government revisionists should one day threaten to overwhelm the personal guardianship that now protects Wikipedia, we may need drastic measures like requiring sponsorship. That day is not here.

--Yath 03:59, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sponsorship by an existing user is not particularly elitist. It is used by LiveJournal and by Gmail, and I'm sure many other projects. Martin 21:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(1) The issue of sock puppets is related to the more general issue of identity and anonymity of users, and the main page should link to some page that addresses that issue, if there is one. (2) To the social mechanisms one might add real-life meetings. The recent (June 2004) Wizards of OS conference in Berlin worked as one for the German Wikipedia community, which used this opportunity to form a registered membership association (Verein). Next time a sock puppet appears on the German Wikipedia, there are twenty-some "real" users who have met in real life to make a balance. (3) When Wikipedia was young, the recent changes and history lists showed the IP addresses also for logged in users, but so is no longer the case. This change has made it more difficult to identify users (sock puppets or not). What was the motivation for this change? Do admins or bureaucrats have the ability to see these IP addresses? --LA2

I believe the change was done to increase users' privacy. Only developers with shell access can see IPs, not admins or bureaucrats. Angela. 15:23, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

Here are some see-also links that I found intersting: Wikipedia:Accountability, Dissociative identity disorder, Wikipedia talk:Conflicts between users, Wikipedia talk:Problem users. Interesting technical tricks are to view the Webalizer stats (http://en.wikipedia.org/stats/) for the IP addresses of the most active users. If two user identities are suspected to be sock puppets of the same human, you can set the date format in your preferences to ISO standard (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS) and view the two users' contributions. Cut and paste these lists and sort them (the ISO date format sorts alright). If there are clear patterns with no or little overlap, it might be one and the same human switching between user identities. --LA2, July 27, 2004

Those people I know with "Dissociative identity disorder" or similar (on h2g2) were collectively happy to post under a single account, regardless of their alters, and to take collective responsibility for their actions. My current working hypothesis is that multiples are no more or less likely to make use of undeclared sock puppets than singles. Thus, this particular issue is likely to be a red herring. Martin 21:04, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Should legitimate new users vote?

This page seems to imply it's okay to accuse a new user of being a sock puppet just because they participate in a vote. If this is true, then there should be a warning on one of the new user introduction pages, saying that they are discouraged from voting. Or there should be a formal rule, saying that you need to make some number of edits or wait some number of days before you can vote.

Though those may seem discriminatory of new users, I'd say either one is much better than what we have now, where new users get excited about the inclusive nature of Wikipedia, participate in a vote, and get flamed into the ground. At that point, you've probably lost a user, and they will probably tell other people that Wikipedia is elitist.

Rob Speer 18:27, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

User:MyRedDice once compared the situation to that of new users being used as "human shields" by troublemakers. The climate of mistrust towards new users is one of the most compelling reasons to discourage the misuse of sock puppets by troublemakers. UninvitedCompany 18:32, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think your suggestion makes some sense, Rob. The alternative is to encourage people to be less suspicious solely based on participation in a vote. Not sure which is best - it may depend on what happens with the sock puppet situation. Martin 23:32, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think that a good formal solution would be to say that you can't vote on an issue if voting began before you had an account. This would prevent someone creating a sock-puppet account just to vote twice on an issue they're passionate about. (It would also prevent someone telling their friends to come to Wikipedia and vote on an issue; based on discussion in VfD, this would probably be seen as a good thing.)

The alternative - allowing new users to vote, and requiring additional evidence before accusing someone of sockpuppetry - would be nice, but would require a change to the Wikipedia culture. For this to work and not degenerate into flame wars, for example, it would have to be explicitly allowed to recruit one's friends to vote on an issue. There would, I assume, still be the requirement that a user should make a contribution before voting. The advantage to this is that Wikipedia gets new users; the disadvantage is that long-standing contributors would have to be content to lose a vote to a flood of newbies. I don't see this happening.

RSpeer 04:06, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

Some of us have been discussing creation of a new page, possibly Wikipedia:Run-in voters, to spell out that we don't necessarily believe that a new user is a sockpuppet solely because they only showed up after a vote began... but that from a practical perspective, they get treated much the same, because the VfD process tries to determine a consensus based on the judgements of experienced Wikipedians, and even if well-intentioned, a new user who shows up just because they heard a vote was going on (and were perhaps falsely told "You get a full vote just for showing up!") is not bringing that experience to the table. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:33, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sock puppets

Knowing full well that I am probably going to suggest something that has been suggested and debated a million times before, but not knowing at least where to look for such a debate, I would like to propose that anonymous users and registered users with fewer than 50 edits be blocked from editing such pages as VfD, CfD, and VfU. These discussions get senselessly bogged down by the flocks and armies of sockpuppets (though it is at times amusing), and often after a flurry of them has passed through, a legitimate new user may get "sockpuppet!" yelled at him simply because we can't tell the difference. Having a per se block on those articles would prevent the easy proliferation of sockpuppets, and guarantee that anyone who contributes to the more esoteric debates on wikipedia about keeping articles and categories will have actually been here for a little while. We tend to think that no one will wander to VfD unless they are somewhat familiar with wikipedia, but this would help guarantee that.

a) what does everyone think? and b) is there somewhere that I can see a preexisting discussion of this kind of proposal? I know I've seen similar suggestions arise in VfD comments from time to time... Oh, and c) how would we make something like this official policy and have it built into the system? Is it something that can be done? I initially thought we could do it by namespace, but then I realized that there are pages just for newbies set up within the wikipedia namespace (like the sandbox...duh). Postdlf 07:52, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't work. The kind of user who creates borderline articles that need to be discussed on XfD are generally new users. How can they defend themselves if you make it impossible to do so at a technical level? (And new users DO end up at VfD, as someone will have just slapped a link to it on the crappy new article. Anyhow, sock puppets can generally be spotted a mile off, and their votes weighted accordingly. Pcb21| Pete 08:30, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

A modification could work. Specially mark anonymous users and registered users with fewer than 50 edits on VfD, Cfd, and VfU. Such marking could be most easily done universally as part of the normal tilde-tilde-tilde-tilde display with some rather neutral phrase such as "Under 50 edits" or "Anon" for anonymous. Votes from "Under 50 edits" and "Anons" would simply not count on those queues and possibly in other circumstances (though those editors could still discuss). But making newness and anonymity very obvious along with such votes not being counted would make this kind of disruption less likely to occur. Jallan 14:36, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Full transparency is the answer, just as it may also be to campaign finance. While I still support limiting the degree of edits from anonymous users, I think the prescribed limitation by Postdif goes too far. -- Stevietheman 18:25, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Shades. Display them with a little sunglass icon, like eBay. eBay users who have been registered for less than a month have their usernames displayed with "shades" (a little pair of sun glasses) warning you that their identity might be shady. They don't tell you in so many words what they're warning you about, but what they're warning you about is that a new user might be a reincarnation of someone who's been kicked off for abuse (NARU-ed, in eBay-speak). It's very analogous to sockpuppets here. Don't restrict what new users can do, but I see no harm in making their status evident at a glance. Dpbsmith 16:38, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Anyone wanna make an icon of a dirty sock? 8-P --ssd 04:44, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Could even be a happy sprinkling "new" star -- looks nice to the true newbie, and annoying to the sock puppet. -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 16:30, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of tagging them as newbies—that would avoid the problems with blocking them while allowing us to identify who to disregard easily. Postdlf 04:51, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• More sockpuppet discrimination. I'll have you know that not all sockpuppets are bad. Woolysock 04:33, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sock puppet accusations discouraged

The text about "Sock puppet accusations discouraged" was removed by user:Isomorphic, with the justification "accusations of sock-puppetry are mostly considered uncool by sockpuppets and those who use them."

That makes no sense, and sounds rather McCarthyist. "If you think people shouldn't be accused wrongly of being a sock puppet, you must be one!" It also insinuates that user:259 is a sock puppet, which is very unlikely.

Clearly it's much worse to be accused of being a sock puppet when you are a new user who has done no wrong, than if the accusation is true. Also, I would think that helpful contributors to Wikipedia would mourn the loss of new users much more than those who are out to manipulate it using sock puppets.

The justification for reverting was an example of exactly the type of ad hominem attack that the text described. Since the reason for removing it was unfounded, I've put the text back.

RSpeer 02:57, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

Tagging identified sock puppets

Following text was copied and pasted from the Village Pump.

If a particular username is known to be a sock puppet and has been established as a sock puppet by Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, is it acceptable to put some sort of message on the sock puppet's user page that links to the usual name of the user so that people know that the username is a known sock puppet?

For example, suppose someone normally edits under the name "AAA". And for the purposes of a dispute, that user created the sock puppets "BBB" and "CCC". The dispute was taken to arbitration, where the committee concluded that "BBB" and "CCC" were indeed sock puppets of "AAA". In that case, can someone, say, on the arbitration committee, edit those user pages, putting a message on "User:BBB" and "User:CCC" along the lines of:

:''This user is a [[Wikipedia:Sock puppet|sock puppet]] of [[User:AAA]], as established by [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/AAA]].''

The reason I'm asking for this is that otherwise when combing through the page histories of certain pages, it can be unclear who had been involved in editing it. --Lowellian 00:35, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

It's definitely helpful. Otherwise, except for those involved with insane passion in pursuing that case, us "outsiders" will never figure it out. It may be obvious to the committee, but not to most other people who's whose puppet. --Menchi 00:54, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

It might be better to just redirect one user page to the other one, unless the user themself has written that notice on the page. 1Angela 00:56, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

What if they're innocent? Will the redirected user be effectively locked out of their account/talk page? Love the term sock puppet BTW ;o) --bodnotbod 01:27, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

No, they can simply edit the page to remove the redirect. Angela. 02:02, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Presumably, if the arbitration committee found the page to be a sock puppet, then it probably is and they're not innocent. --Lowellian 01:22, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Published-password accounts

The issue of people sharing their accounts publicly has surfaced again -- on Talk:Vandalism this time. If Wikipedia policy actually deals with this issue, I'd like to know where so that the nonsense can be soundly quashed. If it does not -- understandable, since it seems to be common sense to many people -- then perhaps it should.

(Why do I think it's common sense? The idea that an account password is secret follows directly from the idea that it's worth having passwords at all. The idea that an account is for one person follows directly from making a distinction between logged-in users and nameless users: if an an account's password is published, it is equivalent to a nameless user (such as, say, a proxy) because its contributions do not come from one person and thus cannot contribute to a coherent reputation.)

A draft:

In the past, a few editors have published the passwords to their accounts, usually to make a point about anonymity or to use Wikipedia as an experiment in anarchy. These are not what Wikipedia is here for.

Publishing or sharing the password to an account contravenes the reasons for that account's existence. Therefore, any account whose password is published may be locked by changing the password. Anyone may do this; however, it is encouraged to mention the action on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

This is not intended as a new idea, but rather to codify existing practice and dispel concerns that the locking of published-password accounts is a new idea every time it comes up.

Thoughts? --FOo 06:40, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this. I see few public accounts on here, but usually the admins and other people with power have changed the passwords to make the account non-accessable. Plus, IMHO, public accounts can easily used to sockpuppetry. Zscout370 (talk) 14:28, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Who can I turn to for a second opinion on sock puppets

I have been tracking two user names, but I am sure that one is sock puppet for the other. Their behaviors indicate to me that they are sock puppets and creator. Following my interaction with them, my user page has been vandalised. Interestingly, the vandal assumed a name simular to mine - in much the same way a recent Request for Comment was vandalised. I am fearful of retribution, but I believe that the truth is worth fighting for. And who can dispute facts, no? Answer me here if you can. Time For Honesty 00:08, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

• Hi user:Stude62, your new sockpuppet Time For Honesty has no contributions to articles. Time For Honesty only insulted Wikipedia users when I investigated his record. Several users in this section maintain that this smells like a sockpuppet. Your question smells like vindictive behavior. Who are you to judge 05:58, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Ahh, here is the retribution! Right on time like the train from Timişoara! I do not know who you are, but I suspect that you are the same Wikipedian who vandalised my user page, only under a different name that was also close to my name. I do not know why you insist on calling me user:Stude62, but I can assure you that I am growing quite weary of you. I suspect that you are one of the two users that I suspect are/use sock puppets to intimidate people. Again, using a name close to mine - such a child's game. And who are the several users in this forum who are concerned? They have elected you their leader? Ironic that in a forum about sock puppets, you pop up speaking for the group. But I only deal in facts; what do I have to fear? Come out. Show us who you are, do not hide. Never fear the truth. Time For Honesty 23:51, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Sock puppet responsibility

Wikipedia:Sock puppet/Proposal is proposed guideline to hold people responsible if they create a secondary account with the sole purpose of disruption or harrassment. Wording is agreed upon, are there any objections? If so please join the talk.

Radiant_* 12:20, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

• Now concluded, there haven't been any objections and many people think it's a good idea. I've referred the matter back to the main sockcheckers. Radiant_* 11:23, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

A proposal regarding the collective noun form

I propose that the proper collective noun form is a hamper of sock puppets. --Unfocused 21:47, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I like it. I also just wanted to commend the choices of photos and drawings depicting sock puppets. I realize it's a serious subject that shouldn't be taken too lightly, but at the same time I find the pictures extremely amusing. Thanks to whoever put them up - from a soon to be registered user.

LOL- I like it. --Barista | a/k/a マイケル | T/C 4 July 2005 22:18 (UTC)

Obviously, the collective noun should be DRAWER (as in a drawer full of socks)

Meatpuppets

I have moved the material on accounts that aren't actually sockpuppets into its own section, and expanded a bit. A sockpuppet is when one flesh-and-blood human has more than one Wikipedia identity. New, single-purpose accounts shouldn't be called sockpuppets. It's inaccurate and often taken as an insult by the subject. I'm not arguing that we should weight heavily the opinions of such accounts, just that we should be accurate and precise about how we treat them. Isomorphic 05:58, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

This section is really unnerving, Wikipedia users do not necessarily edit anything, they come here for information. If they want to keep information that is important to them and decide to vote they get termed a meatpuppet because they don't participate in other types of editing? This works against the concept of Wiki.--Milicz 22:12, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Guideline

Also, I changed the notice from "official policy" to "guideline". The way the policy template is worded, I think a page should be highly stable before we put that template on. This page doesn't qualify, as it has been edited heavily in the last several months. Isomorphic 06:00, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

• Changed back to policy; this is one of the few things that is actually regularly enforced on Wikipedia, and since socks have a tendency to quote WP:SOCK back at us in an attempt to evade enforcement or blocks, it is important that they realize that this is serious. Besides, every policy page I know of (such as WP:NPOV) has seen quite a lot of edits in the past month. Radiant_* 11:25, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

I think there's a good case for its being a guideline. It even kicks off with Jimbo's saying there's no policy against it. It's generally the behaviour that's deprecated (all covered in other policies) rather than the use of sockpuppets. Let's face it, Radiant, you're probably a sockpuppet by the strictest definition, and I know I am. But we're both working for the good, no? Grace Note 05:29, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

This policy as written does not prohibit sock puppets entirely, only abusive ones. It is official policy (or about as close as anything gets to official policy on Wikipedia) that abusive sock puppets are against Wikipedia rules. This page is policy. —Lowellian (talk) 03:00, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppet check via hashing

Cross-posted to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

How about revising the WikiMedia software so that along with each edit, a hashed version of the editor's IP address would be listed in the edit history? That way, it would be possible to determine if two users have the same IP address, without actually giving away their IP address. Joo-joo eyeball 15:23, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea in principle. However, it might be prone to abuse: someone looking to find a user's IP address could iterate through the space of all IP addresses finding those that match the hash. The IPv4 space isn't so prohibitively large as you might expect. My workstation (a 2GHz Xeon) can compute ten million MD5-Base64 hashes in 43 seconds in Perl, while still doing other things at the same time. At that rate, it would only take about 18500 seconds (5.1 hours) to test the entire 4 billion possible IP addresses. --FOo 15:57, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It gets worse: John the Ripper, suitably modified to compute simple MD5 instead of salted MD5, can do ten million per second on an Athlon XP2000+, covering the entire allocated IP address space (2,600,468,480 addresses) in about four and a half minutes. --Carnildo 17:22, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Counter-proposal

How about if each IP is assigned a randomly-generated code that is listed in the edit history. E.g., suppose I make an edit to Wikipedia for the first time. My IP address is randomly assigned code 562951413. From that point onward, 562951413 will appear in the edit history next to any edits made from any account logged in under that IP address. There is no way to figure out what the real IP address is, but sockpuppet checks are easy.

For privacy reasons, anon edits should also be assigned a randomly-generated code, as opposed to the actual IP being listed there. 24.54.208.177 01:30, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• See also Wikipedia:Sockpuppet/Proposal - most people seem to support checking for sockpuppet accounts of disruptive and blocked users, which is basically where the problem lies. Good faith multiple accounts need no checking. Radiant_>|< 08:09, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)
  • And FWIW, User:24.54.208.177 is thought to be a sockpuppet of User:205.217.105.2. --Viriditas | Talk 01:32, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What if it is something like an internet cafe, where two people might use the computer after each other, but the person using the sockpuppet can just go to another cafe over the road, and the second person on the original computer gets the blame? ~~~~ 23:31, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Patience

I have become concerned at the possibility of an editor planning sockpuppet usage months in advance. Namely, by establising himself or herself under various different usernames via unconnected edits, and then, when needed, for example in a VfD, all of them being resurrected to try to win an argument. Is there any way to avoid such a situation? ~~~~ 23:27, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• If this happens, the suggestion is to first collect evidence (and better make it good - people who agree with one another are generally not sockpuppets), and then bring it to people's attention, either on WP:AN/I or on WP:RFC. Radiant_>|< 14:11, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Sock support

While I agree that socks should not support one another in discussions, I can't see that we should say they must not in a policy document. This implies that it's something that should be punishable. I don't think it should be. If a sock supports itself in a discussion, one needs only note that in the discussion. The very being caught out doing it is sufficient to disqualify the sock's argument. There's no need for further punishment. It simply leads to endless bickering about the suitability of punishment.

As for tagging suspected socks' pages, this simply isn't a helpful behaviour. It only serves to harass bad users and to stir the pot. Where a sock has been identified in an arbcom proceeding and the notice is necessary to alert other users to this, it seems uncontroversial, but otherwise this is a licence to harass users who may or may not be doing anything wrong. Why not assume good faith and leave them be? If their behaviour is bad, they will soon meet censure on their new account. Grace Note 05:35, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is a policy page. Much of it has been confirmed in arbcom rulings and is enforced as policy by admins. One important part of the policy is the prohibition on using sockpuppets to give the impression of there being more support for an issue than would otherwise be the case. Removing the prohibition would be a major change, and as such it would have to be opened up to a wider discussion, and should probably be posted on WP:AN. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:37, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. There are others that live in my house that have Wikipedia accounts through this same computer connection. Does that make them sockpuppets??? If their position is the same as mine and they edit something and agree with me, is that a violation of policy and we'll all be banned, because the administration will assume it's the same person? This policy is very strange. RJII 17:46, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Suffrage

Related to sockpuppets is Wikipedia:Suffrage. This has been newly created to deal with some recent questions that came up - when should a user be eligible for voting? Or do we even need a strict limit? Please join the discussion. Radiant_>|< 14:11, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Acceptable uses of sock puppets / second accounts

Just thought I'd toss this into the mix: The Arbitration Committee has, in at least one case, ruled that "[c]reating a second account for a given class of edits does not itself constitute sockpuppet abuse."

This was in the case of User:Ciz's offensive conduct on the Zoophilia article: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ciz. In this case, an editor who wished not to associate his "main" username with a topic he found offensive created a second account for edits dealing with that topic. Unfortunately, his conduct in dealing with that issue was egregious, with edit wars and extensive personal attacks towards editors who disagreed with him. In the end, he (under both accounts) was banned indefinitely from editing articles on that topic.

Nonetheless, insofar as the Arbitration Committee or Wikipedia policy make use of precedent or stare decisis, it's worth noting this point of the decision: The Committee unanimously agreed that the action of using a second account to distance oneself from a topic was not itself abusive. The matter was discussed, and the fact that the Committee issued this ruling as a finding of fact is notable: they could have ruled otherwise, or simply not ruled on the issue of whether the second account was appropriate. Therefore, the ruling that second accounts are not inherently abusive is a substantive one, which should be reflected upon in describing policy.

(Disclosure: I was on the opposite side of the issue from Ciz, and voted to recommend the case to the Committee. I certainly don't mean to suggest here that his conduct was acceptable -- just that this is an interesting point of "case law", insofar as the term applies to Wikipedia policy decisions.) --FOo 17:36, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Anecdotal evidence would suggest that the use of socks by established Wikipedians for editing certain third-rail topics is more widespread than is generally believed. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:49, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Agree with FOo that the policy could use some clarification on second accounts. They're described, but little guidance is given on their level of acceptability. If second accounts for "legitimate" purposes are allowed (and I think they should be), this should be clearly stated, and of course the "acceptable" uses would need to be pretty carefully defined, too (though I'm sure this could turn into a can of worms). Also, it needs to be stated whether it's acceptable for second accounts to be anonymous, or whether there should be some publicly-visible link(s) between the related accounts. Steve Summit 16:31, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Choice of Term Sockpuppet

Does anyone know why the term sockpuppet was chosen to describe people with multiple accounts. I would have thought that the term 'ALIAS' would be more descriptive especially to newcomers. Any answers??Light current 06:49, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

The term sockpuppet is fairly widely used in bulletin boards, discussion groups, and the like. Many user names (such as mine) are aliases rather than real names. Sock puppertry creates the illusion that there are multiple people where there is acutally only one; aliases by themselves do not. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 20:07, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Remove the image that looks like a penis

Seriously, wikipedia should not be filled with suggestive images.

Remove the image that looks like a penis

Seriously, wikipedia should not be filled with suggestive images.

Suspected sockpuppets

Hello, I'm wondering, where do I go to if I suspect several people as sockpuppets? __earth 12:22, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Well the article suggests using the template in their user page, though I imagine making some comments or questions in their talk page first would be more diplomatic Robdurbar 12:31, 25 August 2005 (UTC)