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Posted by: Casliber

One thing about socking, I have been intrigued about folks' perceptions of sockmasters who have created a sock and successfully made a new persona that wrote and interacted substantively differently to the original account. Has anyone been really impressed at one which turned out to be a sock, and had otherwise been successful at sounding completely different?
Cas

(has this topic been asked before somewhere?)

Posted by: thekohser

I thought I did a remarkable job with Cool3.

Posted by: Casliber

Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder - that episode passed me by a bit. I'll see what observers think of that one....I might take a look myself if I get a minute

Posted by: chrisoff

I think I did a great job! (Not telling who I am) but I have been accused and accused of being this and that sock. All proven wrong!

Posted by: RMHED

Well I've got two admin accounts on da 'pedia. The key to successful socking is separation, use a different computer and ISP for every sock account you regard as valuable.

PS. The only checkuser on Wikipedia worth a damn is Alison, all the others are remarkably dim.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

And she's the only sexy checkuser, too!

Posted by: Malleus

I thought you made a fair fist of it with your Pastor Theo personna, and it seemed to convince a fair number of the usual "Why not?" RfA voters.


I think you mean not yet proven.

Posted by: -DS-

I've been running a not-inconsiderable number of socks on Wikipedia for some time now. As far as I know, nobody (besides "Mathewignash", but he suspects everyone of being me anyway) has the slightest clue it was me all along.

Then again, that may change.

Posted by: Jack Merridew

(prolly, but I'm a noob, here.) "Socking" is the two-hands thing;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukla,_Fran_and_Ollie
Swaying consensus (even if you've an IQ of 156 and the other user is a neurotypical (and I mean this in Margaret Atwood's sense)). Other forms of multiple accounts can be *fine*. [[WP:SCRUTINY]] has a huge opening for genuine harassment. Grawp's still wanking at the AC's smackdown of me; a feast he's been after for years. I've been reading the firestorm talks; I think it's too late. As was said about communism; nice theory, wrong species.
Anyway, socking with faux-persona is game-play. Poetlister and Phaedriel, for example. Too much of wp is twerps playing games. The place needs a purge; LhVU's taking some sense. WMF is so far out of it's depth, it *is* funny. They're insulating themselves from all manner of liability by saying it's "the community", not us. Most of my Socks, especially the reent ones, were obvious as hell, but I just went to articles no one much knows; Quick (no peeking): what's [[Gangtok]]?

Funny thing is, no one ever realized that I'm a sock of [[A Nobody]], Jimbo, and some guy that's gonna rename an account on hundreds of wikis to characters that most can't type, and some tools can't handle. My Gift

{ygm}

Posted by: radek

I think you've overestimating the "persona" of the average Wikipedia editor. To have a persona one must have personality and a lot of them don't. Even if they do, it's not that hard to create "generic Wikipedia editor persona". This whole "it's easy to change IP but hard to change the nature of the edits" is received conventional wisdom, but it's simply not true.

For the record I've never used socks (never had much reason to either, plus it's Wrong! WRONG I tell you!) but as it turns out, apparently some of my Wiki friends have (and I was surprised) and I see a ton of what I essentially know are socks. I know they're socks because I'm familiar with the topic area. And usually there's clear cut red flags - like in Race & Intelligence area there's a buttload (something like a dozen) of accounts running around which were all created in October or November 2010, in other words, exactly during or right after the R&I case. And they're all SPA. You know they're socks of one person or another that got sanctioned in that case. Hell, some of them even admit to "having edited Wikipedia before". But all the AGF bullshit means that if you call any of them out on it, it's gonna be you who gets dragged to AE or AN/I for "incivility" and "harassment". Same thing with Eastern European topics (some of them I think I could actually compile enough evidence to get busted but as long as they don't get too obnoxious, it's not worth the trouble). Of course where I a big-shot admin, I'd have the right to just ban-hammer them based on a whiff of suspicion...

Anyway... I actually think that a lot of these sock puppet masters WANT TO GET CAUGHT. For folks like Poetlister it's part of the game, and hell, what fun is it to play the game if nobody knows you're still playing. Similar thing for Kohs and some of other youse, though the motivation is different. If Greg ran all his socks 100% under the radar then he would cease to be the bete noire of certain people, and would risk slipping into irrelevancy (in relative terms). So I'm sure it's actually good for him if once in awhile a sock or two of his gets caught and exposed.

The people who are really getting away with it are the ones who don't give a shit about personal notoriety or attention. They're serious about their POV pushing and all they care about is whether the content reflects their world view. And then flying under the radar is quite easy - make controversial changes, but avoid discussion. Keep edit summaries to a minimum. Pretend you don't speak good English, or, if in fact you really don't speak good English, make sure all your brief and succinct edit summaries are perfection of short English prose. Make a lot of bullshit Twinkle edits, or spend a lot of time assessing articles for a Wiki project, use Wikipedia jargon as much as possible instead of real English. Like I said, it's trivial.. and irritating as hell.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Eh, all they saw was "Pastor" and assumed that the persona was a vicar that you'd find in a Jane Austen novel. I can't say that I miss the pastor - even I have to admit that he was an annoying persona. I much preferred my colorless, personality-free alter egos like Warrah or Regent of the Seatopians, who brought in a good amount of content and copy editing plus a lot of vandalism tagging without getting wrapped up in the Wiki-drama. Of course, the vindictive arbs abused the checkuser process by "fishing" them out. But, then again, you cannot expect idiots to behave as anything but idiots.

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

I have got 92 socks that are unrelated to the original vandal IP or Wikieat. The first vandal account was a IP, then it was a parody of Archtransit's username. My socking consisted of threats to sue people on Wikipedia combined with Hivemind links and extensive POV pushing at many topics. I even set up my own RfA and used socks to push the RFA. I used the socks Soundclerk and Shockwave. They edited within 2mins of each other and were indeffed by PeterSymonds. The sock I nominated was Fiver. Fivers Rfa was not good because of the Wikipedia person PS. I intended to use it to block SV. I was always editing with a trollish connotation from Sep 2010 to Feb 2011 then June 2011 to July 2011.

Posted by: -DS-

The accounts Shockwave and Fiver have never edited and Soundclerk doesn't even exist.

Stop bullshitting us.

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

These accounts were on the simple wikipedia. You may be right about Shockwave and soundclerk, but on simple wikipedia fiver has created a article to promote Dr. Mercola. Link to page that shows that Fiver has made the article: http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Fiver/Mercola&action=history

Posted by: milowent

i'm generally impressed at how many socks barely try to hide that they are socks, and they go relatively unnoticed for awhile, at least until they do whatever troll plan they intended to do. but wikipedia is not much different than the rest of the internet. in a footnote to last month's "weingergate" debacle, it emerged that the account that first sighted Anthony Weiner's errant tweet of a crotch shot was a sock (of some unknown person, possible GOP operative?), as were two fake teenage girl twitter accounts. as to these two girls, conservative blogs went crazy for a few weeks after the below article trying to figure them out (to no conclusion).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/nyregion/fake-identities-were-used-on-twitter-to-get-information-on-weiner.html?_r=2

Posted by: EricBarbour

...is that if you reformed the Wiki-mess you oversee, it would not exist.

So stop talking about it as if it were inevitable.

Posted by: MZMcBride

You're that addicted? And you openly admit it?

Posted by: Guido den Broeder

Pfah. My sockpuppet is Jimbo Wales.

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

Hooray! You got admin! Cool3 has blocked accounts and has been nominated for adminship! You, Kohs, have been the only one on this forum to do legal threats, get away with it and get the mop for free. Isis did it before the desysopping in short bursts, but you just did it for a very, very long time. I'm making a barnstar page for you on my website.

Posted by: thekohser

What legal threats?


What website?

Posted by: powercorrupts

You mean ambitious, self-interested, obsequious, hypocritical and generally-slimy social climbers?

Exactly - admin (and their attention-grabbing wannabees) groom and vote for people who are exactly like themselves, which is partly why they are nearly all so very very very bad.

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

The site at mrtrezons-site.pcriot.com, which with your help will be moved to mrtreasonfoundation.wikipediareview.com. (The hosting will be on my servers. And the legal threats are as your Zibiki Wym account. Anayway, Cool3 is your only sysop account. I use many socks and TROLL ACCOUNTS (sorry my caps lock screwed up) on wikipedia.

Posted by: -DS-

.....Those were legal threats?

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

I've run 130 sockpuppets on wikimedia projects.

Posted by: -DS-

I've run 248. That post referred to the sockfarm I'm running at present.

Posted by: Abd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Editor_XXV/ArchiveYeah, Mathewignash is a tad obsessive. Quite a few rejected accusations, where some POV or "interest" is the basis for the claim.

One would think that the presence of these massive sock farms would make it obvious that the Wikipedia "consensus" system might not be working. The wasted labor is enormous. And I believe DS, this user could easily have many undetected socks, they only detect ones with obvious connections, any sophisticated user can avoid UA and IP detection.

There have been alternative approaches suggested, but there are entrenched constituencies which probably enjoy playing whack-a-mole, with the associated illusion of power. Having played both sides of that game, I'll testify now to what I long suspected before I did any socking, that the "mole" side has more fun. That's a setup for entrenched inefficiency.

Posted by: Milton Roe

You naughty, naughty boy. Stop putting stupid words into his mouth. It's not fair.

Posted by: -DS-

As far as I can tell, he's pissed that I dared to try and trim his walled garden of fancruft, as well as tried to remove links to a site he's blocked from, on COI grounds (which is true, the links were being inserted by the site's admins).

Some people just defy reason.

Posted by: Tarc

Mathewignash? Jesus, one of the most retarded, basement-dwelling neckbeards I've had the misfortune to interact with in recent memory.

I wonder if those wikialpha fools are having second thoughts about their save-the-deleted-content project, as all it has become is Mathewignash's Personal Transformers Masturbatathon.

No one else

http://en.wikialpha.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges

is doing a single thing there at all.

Posted by: EricBarbour

So, DS is the guy who writes all those insane articles about various Transformers?

Hey DS!!! I want to interview you! Insane sockers are just the ticket!

Posted by: radek

I think he's the guy who tries to get them deleted, but honestly, I could be just way confused.

Posted by: -DS-

I tried to get a lot of them removed, actually.

I have nothing against pop culture in general and Transformers specifically, but you gotta admit, http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Transformers, most of which are cited to various fansites or just not at all, is insane.

You still up for that interview?

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

You're good! You get a big Horsey kiss for knowing your Brit lit. Mwah!

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

[quote name='-DS-' date='Sat 6th August 2011, 8:44pm' post='282518']
[quote name='Abd' post='282510' date='Sat 6th August 2011, 7:47pm']
[quote name='-DS-' post='282508' date='Sat 6th August 2011, 1:30pm'][quote name='Mr.Treason II' post='282507' date='Sat 6th August 2011, 7:23pm'][quote name='-DS-' post='280193' date='Thu 14th July 2011, 9:18am']I've been running a not-inconsiderable number of socks on Wikipedia for some time now. As far as I know, nobody (besides "Mathewignash", but he suspects everyone of being me anyway) has the slightest clue it with 30 sockpuppets on wikimedia projects.[/quote]I've run 248. That post referred to the sockfarm I'm running at present.[/quote]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Editor_XXV/ArchiveYeah, Mathewignash is a tad obsessive. Quite a few rejected accusations, where some POV or "interest" is the basis for the claim.[/quote]

As far as I can tell, he's pissed that I dared to try and trim his walled garden of fancruft, as well as tried to remove links to a site he's blocked from, on COI grounds (which is true, the links were being inserted by the site's admins).

Some people just defy reason.
[/quote]

I've also imported my sock puppets on Metapedia, Wikifur and have set up accounts on Wikisage, Ohinternet, Encyc, TFWiki and Wikipedia Review to put Pro Gaddafi Pro Girlvinyl
Propaganda to create a stronger co-operation between Girlvinyl and my new jolted Wikipedia Review at joltreview.co.cc, a anti-wikipedia version of Wikipedia Review.
Much moar tolerant of dox and lulz. So far, I've got now 152 sockpuppets and 1 meatpuppet.

Posted by: victim of censorship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts/archive90#User:Goethean

This editor particularly loves WP:HUSH...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Beerandnuts&diff=prev&oldid=447535010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Teaball
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Vedvyasa&diff=prev&oldid=350641969



More reason to consider Admins that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Goethean

Posted by: Tarc

Ahh JoJo, are you still mad that your socks get spotted instantly? Your particular strain of batshit insane has a stench that no wiki-deodorant could mask.

Posted by: victim of censorship

Sock puppets...is that all that is important on Wikipedia is to catch my socks??? What a joke. You wikipediots are clueless to the real issues of wikipeidia... And this is why Wikipeidia is a failure and and hazard to the internet. And you, Tarc are a JIMMY cum sucker..

Posted by: the_undertow

It was Xmas, 25 years ago (picture it, Sicily...), and I received a floppy disk drive ($299) and a 300 baud modem, used ($180).

I never thought of creating a "persona." The Internet was always an extension of my real-life personality.

In the 80s, real names were common. But with the explosion of the web in the 90s, AOL encouraged handles, once again.

I can only say that 20 years ago, using your real name, associated with an email address, was looked down upon. Now, it is common place. That being said, my personality has always transcended whatever username I chose.

I got lucky with "Law," because I was attending graduate school, and creating articles was a way for me to study; hence the articles on taxation. However, I sold enough Google stock to live in San Diego for a year, without having a job. The more I drank, the more the temptation to alleviate myself of living behind a shell. So, I would tell people that I used to be the "undertow," without thinking that it would affect others.

Psychologists would say that I wanted to be "caught." That may be true. All pictures of me were real. My personality was real, and that's why I wasn't/couldn't be a successful sock, because I felt that while writing articles was a good hobby, it really isn't as fun without being honest about who I am. WP is a social structure; however the readers generally have no idea about that aspect.

To me, after being the undertow, it just became a game. I really had no grasp that every google search would lead to an article, and that some kid was going to benefit from my knowledge, and grasp of wiki-code. It's not a game. BIOs really affect people, which I why I've always advocated having them on a separate wiki or non-existant. I realize that I have created them, but I do so with neutrality, or so I hope.

People rely on WP. They shouldn't, but they do. I wouldn't have done anything different as undertow, but as Law, I may have. I could have shut the fuck up. But it came down to the same exact circumstance - I felt that someone was being bullied, and I rectified it. Temporarily.

I know this is long, but my point is that my personality will always transcend a screen name. So no, I was not a successful sock, in the traditional sense. If you can't be yourself, I just don't see the point in interacting with others. I was me. Still am. The "addiction" for me, was not in the actual creation - it was with the social interaction that was lacking in my life. It was popularity. It was fun and it should be.

I do a little editing here and there, but I do it as the undertow. Because I learned that I'd rather be a blacklisted editor, than create a persona that simply isn't mine. I've tried it, and it sucks. It's like any relationship, you just want someone who accepts you for being you - not for who you pretend to be. There's no fun in that.

Posted by: nableezy

Yo, its "dick/cock sucker" and "cum guzzler". Not "cum sucker". Lets try to get this right.


The preceding message brought to you by Chicagoans for better insults

Posted by: Zoloft

There should be a douche stylebook.

Posted by: Sololol

It's a pretty powerful union, I think Rahm Emaneul used to be president.

Posted by: nableezy

Then I quit. I take it back VoC, keep sucking the cum.

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

Moar liek cock/dick sucker, cum drinker.
The preceding message brought to you by Mr. Treason for better insults n' lawsuits

Posted by: EricBarbour

I have the ultimate insult.

"You-think-Wikipedia-can-be-fixed"

Posted by: Mr.Treason II

I have the ultimate insult.

"You think Wikipedia is good? GET LOST JIMMY CUM SLURPER!"