User talk:Sean.hoyland

Khirbet 'Ein Karzaliyah (Arabic: خربة عين كرزلية), Jordan Valley: December 2013 - January 2014

Id'eis (Arabic: ادعيس), Jordan Valley: May 2014

Historic cu data

Hi - I've come here because that particular SPI probably isn't the best place to discuss general stuff about cu data - better to keep the archive uncluttered.

The short answer is that there is no way for non CUs to tell how much historic data is available, if any. Even administrators and SPI clerks can't see it - you need the CU flag in order to have any access to the places where it's visible. I won't go into too much detail about the types of info that are available, but in broad terms there is almost always some information available about accounts which have been checked in the past.

If you have suspicions about an account, I'd urge you not to factor whether the old accounts are likely to be stale into your decision about whether or not to report - if you have behavioural evidence, report it. We would need that evidence anyway to justify a check if the data is available, and if it's not, behavioural evidence can be strong enough to block an account without the need for a cu hit. Hope that's helpful. Girth Summit _(blether) 13:48, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, that's very helpful. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:27, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Can we make Sean an admin just so he can better explore CU stuff? BilledMammal (talk) 14:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: - Sean can request adminship in the usual way (or I guess I should say one of the usual ways, now that we're in the era of admin elections), if he's interested, of course. As I said though, admins can't see any of this stuff either unless they have the CU bit. The fastest way for anyone to get that just now would probably be to get elected onto Arbcom, the candidates list is rather short at the moment...

@Sean.hoyland: - as an afterthought, I'd like to add that the possibility of them running multiple accounts in parallel did occur to me. I always check for them, but I looked more carefully than I might otherwise have done, in light of the previous cases. All I can say is that some of their editing (but not the majority) comes from a shared IP address, and there are a few other accounts on that IP, any of which might be them, but based on a combination of technical and behavioural observations, I think that unlikely. Certainly, none of them are interested in any of the same subject matter, none of them get involved in discussions or articles that the others are involved in, and it looks for all the world to me like they're all innocently using an institutional internet connection that multiple people have access to. Most of their editing is coming from private IPs, which do not have any other traffic on them. Now, there's no way that CU could detect someone using multiple accounts if they are careful to use different devices and internet connections for each one; all I can say is that if they're doing that, they're being a lot more careful about it now than they have been in the past. Girth Summit _(blether) 15:27, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

The way I look at it is that if I'm willing to waive anonymity, I should have access to the private information currently redacted from the databases for the other 48 million accounts. There might be a flaw in this logic, but I'm just not seeing it. Thanks for the extra details, interesting. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:46, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Me too! Unfortunately, it's not unfettered access. Every time I run a check on an account, or an IP, that action is permanently logged, and other CUs can see what I'm up to. They even audit my activity (the cheek!) If I run inappropriate checks, some pesky ombud or arb will come along and take my fancy permissions away. It's so unreasonable! Girth Summit _(blether) 22:45, 8 November 2024 (UTC)