Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Sarsaparilla

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[edit] User:Sarsaparilla

Suspected sockpuppeteer

Sarsaparilla (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log · rfcu)

Suspected sockpuppets

Ron Duvall (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log · rfcu)
71.63.91.68 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Report submission by

MBisanz ^talk 06:54, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Evidence

On Feb 9, 2008 [1], Sarsaparilla, started the page Wikipedia:Delegable proxy. From then till today, the only people to have edited that page are him, User:Abd, User:Ron Duvall, User:Kim Bruning (tagging as rejected), User:Prodego (also tagging as rejecting), and User:71.63.91.68 reverting Kim. Also on Feb 9th [2] he nominated User:Abd for adminship. On Feb 12th, he proposed vote trading at another RfA [3] when Abd's vote count was 17/15/6. And was identified by User:Abd as socking [4] from User:71.63.91.68 and later identified from that IP as being Sarsparilla in [5].

On Feb 14, 2008 User:Ron Duvall made his first edit [6] as a response [7] to a comment on a proposal Sarsaparilla has made on Feb 10 [8]. Ron Duvall's second edit was the rather obscure Wikipedia:Delegable proxy [9] proposal, including the comment "Anyway, the purpose of a brainstorming tag would be to say, Please hold off on closing this debate, because the idea is still a work in progress, and if the users reject it, we would like to be given a little time to reformulate it", indicating previous participation in this proposal.

Already having a suspicion of something being amiss, I made a post to Sarsparilla's talk page [10] on Feb 21, pointing him to Ron Duvall as an editor he might want to work with on the Delegable proxy proposal. An hour and a half after I posted, User:Abd pointed [11] my post to Sarsaparilla out to Ron Duvall on his own (Abd's) talk page. Ron Duvall's response [12] included the phrase "Actually, now that I think about it, there's this other guy named Captain Zyrain who was saying earlier he would like to nominate me as proxy, I better get back to him about that...". But User:Captain Zyrain hasn't editted since October 28th, 2007 [13], before Ron Duvall, but not before Sarsaparilla began editting.

Additionally, on Feb 17th, Ron Duvall created a page [14] designating User:Abd as his proxy, per proposal. On Feb 9th, Sarsaparilla had identified User:Abd [15] as his proxy.

Now what concerns me is that on January 13, 2008, Sarsparilla made this post [16] to the Village Pump, offering to sell his username. Granted such a transaction was never consummated on-wiki, but given his sudden lack of participation following the vote-trading incident and the emergence of this "new" User:Ron Duvall, who has the exact same interests, I am concerned as to potential identity abuses and support-stacking re: Delegable Proxy

Lastly, on a semi-connected note, I identified that User:Captain Zyrain has made User:Abd's first nomination for adminship Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Abd that failed per wiki-snow, in nearly an identically surprisingly short and unexpected to Abd manner that Sarsaparilla would do Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Abd 2 five months later. But I can't establish as a direct connection and given that User:Captain Zyrain's departure is beyond the window a checkuser could verify, I don't think its worth pursuing that avenue.

Comments

This could be interesting. I could write a great deal here, but, bottom line, User:MBisanz is a brand-new administrator who seems to think that evidence of sock puppetry, without abusive editing or vote-stacking, is some kind of offense worth some wikidrama. Sock puppets, per se, are not prohibited, nor is leaving one account and starting up a new one. What is prohibited is vote-stacking, using socks (or meat puppetry) to frustrate WP:3RR; essentially, if you take the collection of actions of an alleged puppet master and all socks and meat puppets, and consider them as one user, has there been any violation of policy? If not, it's moot. If a user registers a new account, the user may have very substantial off-wiki reasons. Indeed, revealing real identities behind accounts is prohibited here unless it is truly necessary. (For example, an IP editor, editing contentiously on an article, might be identified as COI.) This SSP report could be damaging to the user; while it is based on public record, it is waving that record about on the Talk page for a user, where some outside and hostile reader might notice it, whereas it might easily escape notice without this.

A new offense has been invented by Mbisanz here: "support-stacking." Not in an explicit way, as in multiple voting in an RFC, but merely because of participating in editing an article or proposal under one account, then switching to a new account. Going back and forth, maybe. But serial participation? If I were an administrator, I'd probably consider all the accounts and IP above as a single user. Then what? Stocks? Public humiliation? Pull out the wikitrout? If these accounts, considered as one, engaged in anything blockable, I'd warn and block. Based on the evidence, I wouldn't bother a checkuser, I'd act. However:

User:Sarsaparilla's last contribution was 12 February 2008. User:Ron Duvall's first contribution was 14 February. There is no overlap. Absent vote stacking -- which is not alleged -- what is the basis for wasting the community's time with this report? If Duvall were to seriously cite Sarsaparilla's prior posts as some kind of independent evidence for something, this might be worth a warning. Did he?

The IP edits may simply be failure to log in. Is there any pattern of using IP edits to do what could not be done with a single account?

As to my RfA, I've wondered myself about this. Both RfAs were nominations, unexpected. Since I consider an RfA to be an invitation to pick up a mop and start swabbing the decks, and since I consider service when requested to be an obligation (subject to my capacity), I accepted both. The first RfA was filed 10 October 2007, when I had been seriously editing for less than three weeks, since 23 September 2007. It was snowed for the obvious reason. The second was filed 14 February 2008, four months later, and closed 24/30/13. Given my short edit history, and that something like five votes were from the SPA Yellowbeard and those he canvassed, and given that I was deliberately verbose in response -- something I wouldn't be if I was actually seeking the mop -- I found this little short of astonishing. I think his purpose was to introduce me to the community. This user is a long-time Wikipedian. Because he has used serial accounts (which begin, obviously, before any account known to me), it is not possible for me to determine overall contributions, but I'd guess they are in excess of 10,000.

I request that this SSP report be deleted and the warnings or notices regarding it as well. Absent abusive editing, this report (and especially the Talk page notices) functions only to publicly connect accounts which a user obviously wishes to remain separated from simple public examination.--Abd (talk) 15:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)\

I appreciate your coming to my defense but I may as well admit, I am indeed the other users mentioned above. I have a habit of changing identities frequently by dropping one username and picking up another. I haven't gone out of my way to hide it (in fact I sometimes joke around about it and make oblique references to it) but I don't really make it all that clear, either. The name change from Sarsaparilla to Ron Duvall was motivated by the fact that people kept mistaking me for a girl. By the way, given that WP:PRX is not even really a proposal at this point (last I checked, we had reverted to the {{brainstorming}} stage and were still trying to figure the technical details while continuing to parry objections). Had it been a formal proposal, where we were trying to move it forward toward being a policy (it is definitely a long way from policy) or else tag it rejected, then I suppose the unannounced change in accounts could have been viewed as manipulative... Anyway, whatever, next time I'll just make a formal announcement of a name change so we don't end up at WP:SSP. 71.63.91.68 (talk) 17:12, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Conclusions

There is clearly no violation to the sock policy here. The editing periods of the two accounts do not overlap and there is no reason why any editor in good standing can't change their name. I do advise caution as paranoia levels are always pretty high and there does remain the possibility of a false negative based on existing knowledge of the system. I'm going to save this edit and delete the case for privacy as there really is nothing to see here. Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:40, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

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