User:Cool3/Puppets

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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it.

The essay below is primarily for the purposes of advancing an interesting argument. Before reading it, please note that I do not have any sockpuppets and do not condone breaking Wikipedia policy by abuse of sockpuppets.

With that disclaimer aside, here is my reasoning in support of sockpuppetry based on Wikipedia Policy. Essentially, I feel that the rules against sockpuppetry are anomalous and contrary to other policies on Wikipedia. I have divided my arguments below into several categories. I anticipate revising this essay, it is currently a working paper.

My basic conclusion is that each account on Wikipedia should be treated as a separate person.

Contents 1 Arguments based on WP:NOT 2 Arguments based on WP:IAR 3 Arguments form WP:5P 4 Pratical Arguments 4.1 It is impossible to categorically demonstrate sockpuppetry 4.2 People Judge Accounts on their Contributions 4.3 If A Vandal Wants to Contribute Legitimately, What's the Harm? 5 Conclusion 6 Some Notes

[edit] Arguments based on WP:NOT

First of all, Wikipedia is not a democracy. It is often said in reference to Wikipedia that "voting is evil". Because Wikipedia is, in theory, governed by consensus drawn from debate, the number of opinions on any given side should not be a primary consideration. Instead the quality of reasoning advanced by the involved parties should be considered. Thus, sockpuppets should not be considered a threat to the decision making process on Wikipedia. If an editor supplies a single none-to-compelling argument and then echoes with 15 sockpuppets echoing "Delete per ContributorX", the 15 sockpuppets should not strongly influence the decision of the closing administrator. Thus, in theory, sockpuppets do not offer a substantial threat to discussion on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. From the WP:NOT page, I take the following: "A perceived procedural error made in posting anything, such as an idea or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post". While this is perhaps a rather liberal reading of that statement, I would interpret those lines to mean that the use of sockpuppets is not ground for invalidating a post. After all, sockpuppet use or abuse is nothing more or less than a procedural error (if a grave one). As above, what a contributor has said should speak for itself. Reasoning, not the source of reasoning, should be what is important.

[edit] Arguments based on WP:IAR

I suppose Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules invariably comes up in any objection to policy of any kind. It's a rather brief policy so I'll just quote the whole thing here: If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore them. In my humble opinion, there are many circumstances in which the ban on sockpuppets could prevent a user from improving Wikipedia (several of these are already detailed in the list of allowed uses of sockpuppets), but I believe that sockpuppets have many other potentially beneficial uses when used secretly. For example, a banned user may wish to return to Wikipedia and edit constructively without going through the hassle of having the old account unbanned and without the inevitable conflict stemming from whatever caused the conflict in the first place. I feel that this is acceptable. Personally, I advocate a position of judge the account not the person.

[edit] Arguments form WP:5P

The first pillar of Wikipedia is "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia". This is the crux of my whole argument. We're here to build an encyclopedia people. We're not here as a police force or to prevent people who want to edit articles from doing so. If a user uses multiple accounts to edit Wikipedia, what's the big deal? If the same person maintains two accounts and uses one to vandalize and the other to write great articles, block the vandal account and leave the other account alone. If you block the account making beneficial contributions, all that you are doing is stripping Wikipedia of a potentially valuable contributor. That makes no sense.

While Wikipedia may have created a community, Wikipedia is not a web community. It is an encyclopedia. Issues of sockpuppetry are firmly in the category of community not encyclopedia and thus sockpuppet use or abuse should not be considered a threat to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

[edit] Pratical Arguments

[edit] It is impossible to categorically demonstrate sockpuppetry

Unless Wikipedia invests the resources necessary to have former FBI agents follow its contributors around (which I feel is unlikely), there's simply no way to prove that an account is a sockpuppet. While I am not intimately familiar with the CheckUser process, I can tell you from my knowledge of the world that it can't possibly prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the same person is editing from two accounts. Even if you establish that two users are editing from the same IP address and have similar editing patterns, that is a long way from showing that the two accounts are the same person. It is quite possible that such editing could arise from a number of situations including roommates, siblings, a husband and wife, employees at the same office, or almost any group of people that share an IP address.

Because it is impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that two accounts are sockpuppets, blocking or banning users solely for the reason of being sockpuppets is unwise. Perhaps two people share a computer: one is a prolific vandal and one is a somewhat active productive contributor. Under the current situation, I would not be surprised if the productive contributor were indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet confirmed by CheckUser. In such circumstances, the productive contributor would not be likely to return. Sure they could theoretically go through channels and be reinstated, but people put great faith in CheckUser and don't tend to AGF in suspected sockpuppetry, so getting the ban lifted would be very difficult.

For this reason, I advocate a policy of treating each user account as a separate person if the account has a sufficient edit history to be considered a contributor in its own right.

[edit] People Judge Accounts on their Contributions

In an AfD discussion, votes from new users with only a few edits tend not to be taken as seriously as those from established users. Thus, in practice, rules against sockpuppetry are unnecessary for removing the influence of puppets on discussions. If someone wants to go to the trouble to make 500 good edits under a different user name so as to be taken seriously in an AfD, RfA, or other discussion, I say Wikipedia is better off on the whole. The 500 good edits more than cancel out the negative effect on consensus.

In my opinion, the same principle applies to the use of POV-pushing socks.

[edit] If A Vandal Wants to Contribute Legitimately, What's the Harm?

A common reason to block sockpuppets is the belief that they belong to a vandal. I say, if an account hasn't vandalized, what's the harm? For a time, I like many people, subscribed to the fear that a vandal could use a legitimate account to "game the system". Quite frankly, I don't see this as a problem any more. There simply aren't many ways to game the system. The only way that a vandal could do significant damage is by gaining adminship.

In order to become an admin, a user has to demonstrate a great number of strong, positive edits to Wikipedia. The good that any person who makes it through RfA has already done for Wikipedia is quite great. The potential for damage even by an admin, on the other hand, is relatively slim. Yes, a vandal turned administrator could make a few quick attacks. He/she could change the main page to read something obscene, but such an action would be caught very rapidly. In that case, another admin could quickly revert the damage and block the offender. Admittedly, the vandal-admin would still then retain admin abilities, but there are enough administrators on Wikipedia to quickly revert the vandals changes until a steward could be summoned for de-sysopping. And in all, the damage done by the vandal in the short time he operated would probably be less significant than the good done beforehand.

[edit] Conclusion

As I said above, I think we should treat every user account as a separate person. Rules against sockpuppetry run counter to other policies and to logic.

Cool3 22:05, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some Notes

• This is NOT a formal proposal for a new system, it is merely an analysis of what I see as wrong in the current system.
• I can not condone the actions of anyone who decides to be bold and act on this essay in a manner contrary to existing policy.
• I do not reasonably expect current policies to change any time soon. A revision to the sockpuppetry policy would be a rather drastic change and take quite a bit of time.