QUOTE(Kato @ Fri 4th September 2009, 6:29pm)
So either User:172 was the most brilliant stooge account ever (going back to 2002), or WP's checkuser facitilities are so incompetent, it has convicted the Witchfinder General of being a witch!
Almost certainly the latter. I was told confidentially that checkuser is (as it has always been) almost useless for any but the simplest forms of sockpuppetry. Many of these POV sock declarations derive from offline conversations among checkusers and other editors who keep files of old IP addresses for their nemeses, to use for later comparison. Never mind the half-life of a particular IP address, if the editor with the suspect POV edits from the same city, the same ISP, the same geographic area, or uses the same browser, computer, or operating system,
from several years earlier then they feel that is enough for a
"sock confirmed by checkuser" finding, effectively insulating it from question.
In a way, this is the most negative legacy of Poetlister. Wikipidiots were so aghast at having been led round the rosemary bush by PoetGuy, they have a hair-trigger now, and the gun cabinet isn't locked.
Of course, this isn't entirely new, either. Before he was defrocked,
JayjgÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
was fond of banning editors who hadn't edited in over a year, claiming "sock confirmed by checkuser". He just didn't care what people thought, and I'll bet they don't care much more now. They ban whomever they please, all the rest is window-dressing.