Sockpuppet personas, Best attempt at making a new persona different to master Options

[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?)

[thekohser]

I thought I did a remarkable job with Cool3.

[Casliber]

I thought I did a remarkable job with Cool3.

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

[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!

[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.

[A Horse With No Name]

PS. The only checkuser on Wikipedia worth a damn is Alison...

And she's the only sexy checkuser, too!

[Malleus]

PS. The only checkuser on Wikipedia worth a damn is Alison...

And she's the only sexy checkuser, too!

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 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!

I think you mean not yet proven.

[-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.

[Jack Merridew]

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?)

(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}

[radek]

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?)

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.

[A Horse With No Name]

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.

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.

[Mr.Treason II]

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.

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.

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.

[-DS-]

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.

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.

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.

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

Stop bullshitting us.

[Mr.Treason II]

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.

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.

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.

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

Stop bullshitting us.

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: Proof of socking

[milowent]

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?

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...einer.html?_r=2

[EricBarbour]

One thing about socking

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

So stop talking about it as if it were inevitable.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Thu 21st July 2011, 5:24am

[MZMcBride]

Well I've got two admin accounts on da 'pedia.

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

[Guido den Broeder]

Pfah. My sockpuppet is Jimbo Wales.

[Mr.Treason II]

I thought I did a remarkable job with Cool3.

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.

[thekohser]

You, Kohs, have been the only one on this forum to do legal threats, get away with it

What legal threats?

I'm making a barnstar page for you on my website.

What website?