QUOTE
new editors who come to LaRouche topics are almost always HK socks
-- WIll Beback
Not necessarily. There are exceptions. BillMasen, who shows up with a POV that is amazingly similar to Will Beback's, is seen to have "
brought fresh eyes to this overlong article," so he's clearly in no danger of being banned.
Those new editors whose POV is
not amazingly similar to WB's are subject to
The Duck Test, and will be banned. Here's how it works: at
Wikipedia:Blocking policy (T-H-L-K-D), it says the following:
QUOTE
Conflicts of interest
Administrators must not block users with whom they are engaged in a content dispute; instead, they should report the problem to other administrators. Administrators should also be aware of potential conflicts of interest involving pages or subject areas with which they are involved.
So, how can Will Beback block his opponents almost as a reflex? Well, he has referred on talk pages to another policy, which I can't seem to find, that says a sock of a banned user may be blocked by any admin, presumably without regard to conflict of interest. The closest thing I could find was this:
QUOTE
In the case of project-wide bans, the primary account of any banned editor may be entirely blocked for the duration of the ban. If the banned editor creates sock puppet accounts to evade the ban, these usually will be blocked as well. --
WP:BANWP:BAN also says this:
QUOTE
Edits by banned editors or on their behalf may be reverted without question (
exceptions), and any pages that created by banned editors where they are the sole contributor may be speedily deleted under CSD#G5.
Nota bene: I am a banned user. I was banned by a
Community Ban. The "community" consisted of Will Beback and
JoshuaZÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
. Here are the
proceedings.
So, WB routinely asserts that his opponents are me. He avoids any public discussion in the form of
SPIs. When challenged, which is a rarity, he will rely on the Duck Test (i.e., POV,) plus arguments which I believe go along these lines: I, HK, have publicly acknowledged that I use AOL and I live in southern California. So, right away we may assume that anyone who seems sympathetic to LaRouche and edits from AOL must be me (I recall one case of a guy living in Idaho); plus anyone living in southern California must be me, or minimally my meatpuppet. According to Will's reading of policy, he can make spot-bans of meatpuppets also.
Now, there's an additional wrinkle which I don't fully understand, because Will alludes to it in ambiguous terms. I think that each time he bans a user who geolocates to southern California and does
not use AOL, he will add that user's ISP to a list of "known HK ISPs," which means he can vastly expand his banning range to include users who do
not geolocate to southern California, but use an ISP from that list. This is how he created
this magnificent edifice.
One other tactic which WB now routinely uses is that of stretching the truth just a tiny bit on talk pages:
His most recent scalp is User:Owen Roe, and WP places on the user page a template indicating that Owen is a "suspected sockpuppet of Herschel Krustofsky." I take this to mean that the block was done strictly on the basis of the Duck Test. However, on the talk page for "LaRouche Views," Will implies that the case is proven: "
Another drawer full of HK's socks has been found and blocked."
BillMasen enters the LaRouche sweepstakes
