QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Wed 9th September 2009, 11:43pm)
Last I heard the checkuser history was around 35 days, but I have heard rumors that it's longer now. The checkuser corps likes to play SooperSekretSpyGames with their techniques like they're running some sort of Junior Quantico, and they make all their little sekretagents swear never to tell.
Sigh. Point of diminishing returns is long past, I think.
There's nothing terribly secret about the length of time, in fact it's posted publicly if you know where to look. Checkuser really only catches three kinds of sockpuppeteers; stupid, lazy or careless. Giving out the exact duration would slightly enable the stupid and lazy category, so why do it?
QUOTE(TungstenCarbide @ Wed 9th September 2009, 11:48pm)
Can't checkusers save data and then manually combine with new cu runs? I know there's been spreadsheets of this data floating around long before the checkuser feature was implemented.
Checkusers can keep records if they want to. But you also have to realize that old data is worth a lot less than current data. Even if 172 or Cognition were checked "back in the day", they might have moved, or changed jobs, or changed internet providers, so old data is of limited usefulness.
QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Wed 9th September 2009, 11:52pm)
Yeah, somewhere around here I have a hard drive with some old checkuser results from 2006 on it. I'm sure the more active, less scrupulous checkusers have rather thorough dossiers on their favorite suspects.
So, a current checkuser, who is authorized to see this information, is
unscrupulous if they save it for future comparison, but your retention of data you are no longer authorized to have is perfectly scrupulous?