http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...as_a_sockpuppet

[[User:dmcdevit]], on what appears to be the flimsiest of reasons (and apparently no Checkuser at all), blocked [[User:Gerry_Lynch]] for being a sock of [[User:Runcorn]]. Lynch came back to WP under his IP address, asked what happened, and got the IP address banned as an "admitted block evader". It's a bit convoluted to summarize, so you really need to read the whole section, but Lynch's reaction is a keeper.



I doubt Lynch is going to get very far "creating a new policy", but one would hope dmcdevit's blockmania and abuse of power eventually gets him... um... some form of negative reinforcement. (Yes, I know that's about as likely as Daniel Brandt getting voted to the WMF Board of Trustees, but one can maintain a faint glimmer of hope.)

For the record, I was just the block review admin. I initially declined his unblock but unblocked him after the guy emailed me with some details (as did one or two others). It's not over yet, because myself and Gerry and Nicholas W. are still emailing about it & I intend to followup. Check my talk page, because it's still under debate there.

Either way (and this isn't on-line anywhere), it turns out that I've known Gerry Lynch and Nicholas for years on usenet. We only found out after I lifted the block.

-- Allie

These people are such idiots... And Dmcdevit is one of the absolute worst. I mean, how many people live in the Greater London area, 7 million? Does Dmcdevit, who really is just a college student from Arizona, even know that?

No, probably not - "it's not in the United States, so there can't be more than a few thousand people there," is probably what's going through his tiny little brain. "And surely if two Wikipedia users outside of the US are on the same IP range, that must mean they're the same person! What other explanation could there be?"

I myself got the same thing from the Brits, though, so it's not just the Yanks who are doing it. Iowa has 3 million people in it, but Dave Gerard probably thought there were more like, I dunno, fifteen people when he started spreading rumors about who I was supposed to be. Good job, Dave!

The problem is that nobody can conceive of what 7 million, 3 million, or even half a million people looks like. It's practically beyond human comprehension, and yet they refuse to accept the idea that anything could be beyond their comprehension. We're Wikipedians! We comprehend everything!

Of course, they could never admit that the size of the user base, not to mention the database, is now completely beyond their capacity for intellectual control, could they? That would tend to suggest that they don't somehow have a divine right to impart their version of "the truth" to the world, even though they can't comprehend the extent of that either.

Why did you decline the unblock in the first place? Why did you block his IP for "block evasion"?

It's been pointed out that there was nothing on WP:RfCU here. There was nothing in the original Runcorn case, either. It does make one wonder about whether anyone is doing any checkusers or just relying on finely honed linguistic skills.

From what I've read, CheckUser blocks aren't supposed to be overturned. I know this from reading the User:Tennis expert debacle.

Ok, I don't want to go on too much about it here as it's still in discussion and I'm still working on this one. It's not over yet.

I initially declined the block based on the block log indicating that Checkuser had been run. I took a glance at RFCU and didn't initially see the entry for Gerry. I'd not been following the Runcorn case in detail but knew it was pretty convoluted. I'd no reason to doubt Dmcdevit's checkuser block and a quick check of the evidence available at the time seemed to show everything was in order. In retrospect, it was not and I should have dug deeper (Checkuser blocks are pretty incontrovertible and my unblock is likely to be somewhat unprecedented).

A short while later, I suggested Gerry email 'unblock-en-l' for more visibility as well as suggesting another {{unblock}}. I then received pmails from Gerry and Nicholas and others which convinced me that a mistake was possibly made. I unblocked the guy and apologised.

I may yet regret this. We'll see. I'm not above unblocking and apologising where it's a appropriate.

Re. the IP block, the guy was evading his block, by definition. That's not the way to resolve this, esp. given that it was still ongoing. Other ways had been pointed out before he started roving off. I blocked the IP for a short while to prevent this.

Later on, someone else would immediately block an IP who was speaking in support of the blocked editor. I'd nothing to do with this.

-- Allie

Weeeell ......

Check out the ongoing Miskin arbtration case for a clear statement of block and unblock rules;

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...osed_principles


Even in unblock review, it's not a Good Thing to overturn a block without discussing it first with the blocking admin.

Also ...


That about sums things up and is relevant here.

-- Allie

Tennis expert said:

It's not like being speedily tried, etc. It is being speedily tried, etc. One of the insidious things about CheckUser is that they refuse to let people see the alleged evidence, as no doubt plenty of people here will know.

There was the Poetlister unblock.

Seems to me that Dmcdevit is proverbially getting on the Wiki-tower and throwing his ban hammers at random people, shouting: "There's a sock! Another sock! Take that, sock! Runcorn! Poetlister! Gerry! Jimbo! All socks! All the socks must be banned!"

Have any of the other Check User people confirmed his findings or is everyone just taking Dmcdevit's word for all this? This is really getting out of hand!

I think this Check User business is more trouble than its worth. I'm not a technical person, but it looks to me that there are so many ways of avoiding blocks and Check User scans, that its really impossible to truly stop someone from editing WP if they are persistent. Honestly, if a person isn't doing anything wrong or breaking any other rules (aside from being a "sock"), what's the big deal in letting it continue editing?

What's more idiotic is reverting the good edits of the banned user once they are found out. I just don't get it.

If you understood it, that would probably mean there was something wrong with you.

Here's the simple fact. Wikipedia is an MMORPG, but they couldn't even do that right. The main feature (actually, the only features) are the insanely broken level system, and the unbalanced and often brutal PvP. If you're the kind of person who gets pissy when some idiot in Runescape absconds with your arrows and then shoots you with them, don't edit Wikipedia, as the system is much, much, uglier.

WP:RFCU is a spam filter. 90% of user checks are run by the Checkusers themselves after seeing suspicious activity, or in response to private requests over IRC or e-mail. The best way for an admin to review a contested checkuser block is to ask the blocking admin, and if you have doubts to ask a second checkuser to review the findings. Since checkuser now reports user agent data as well as the IP address, they have a lot more to go on in determining identity.

Inform me, lightly informed of "teh internets", what is "user agent data".

Greg

Typically it's what internet browser a user is using in order to access a webpage.

So if a Checkuser finds two similar IPs and they're both using Windows XP, that's additional confirmation that they're the same person.

Weakly probative at best, unless both use an esoteric OS/ browser. I'm sure the value is greatly exaggerated in the Checkuser's analysis.

they would see a field like is on this page: http://www.showmyip.com/ - under Browser (User-Agent):

There are tools available to hide this, or change it to whatever you want.

The day someone invents and releases a true way to easily spoof IPs, Wikipedia shall be set free.

"Tis true. And such tools allow you to release an army of anonymous socks upon WP at will-- no need to create a single account. Not that I would do that, mind you.



Or would I?

Get your computer hooked up to some kind of wireless package like a cell phone with free night and weekend minutes, free nationwide long distance, and doesn't do extra charges for modem calling beyond a monthly flat rate. Get one that's 56k. Then you can call anywhere in the 48 states for free. Make 1 account per state and it's 48 socks. Get some more ISPs and it's 100s of socks. Unleash them all and you can create havoc.

Get a browser plugin that changes your user agent and then make a text file of each account with each state, ISP, phone numbers dialing to get the sock's IP range, and the fake user agent unique per sock for that sock.

I'd like to add Dmcdevit to my "bad" list of block-happy admins. If anybody has personally-identifying information about him, there's no love lost with me if it's posted here or delivered to me privately. I have no interest in stalking or harassing. I just like to know what real-world authority a person may have to block real-world donors to the Wikimedia Foundation from editing its most noteworthy encyclopedia project.

He published this about himself in 2005:



So, he's probably finishing up at Reed soon. A real man of the world, with tons of experience and authority to deny to an IP address used by hundreds of different people every day access to Wikipedia's fundamental privilege -- editing out mistakes from articles. Way to go, Dmcdevit!

Greg

P.S. He'd love it if you buy him a $110 bread maker.

Wasn't Dmcdevit the bird-brain who banned Poetlister for "living in England in a similar way"?

People who believe in the Checkuser Fairy, on both sides of the bludger-brain barrier, are simple-minded hallucinating morons.

Jonny

He certainly blocked Herschel for one year.

Indeed, and who subsequently banned someone else as a Runcorn sock only to have several people complain that they knew this "sock" personally. Alison unblocked, after which Dmcdevit disappeared in a sulk for some time.

According to Wikipedia, the population of Greater London is 3 trillion....no...6...no...Mrs Parry's budgie...no....erm

According to the New York Times, there are 7,480,201 people in Greater London.

The biggest ISP is British Telecom and so an awful lot of people have btcentralplus.com based IP addresses. It means nothing if I share an IP address with another user because most of them are leased on a 12 or 24 hour basis.

British Telecom changes its IP every time you reboot your server. Further, BT covers the whole of Great Britain, so an address that's in Plymouth one day may be in Birmingham or Newcastle the next. No doubt some American admins think that these places are next door to each other anyway.

I'm not so sure of that. I'm on Virgin Media and they divide up numbers geographically, and I'd suggest that BT must do the same to organise such a large network - useful to physically manage the system. That does not mean that over a period of time the addresses will be guaranteed to be in the same location.

I'm pretty confident of that, as I've seen mapping software based on IPs where I know who the person is, and it can locate people to the right town.

It doesn't work for businesses though, where the IP often locates to the IT department rather than office location.

A quick check on his mainspace edits

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...vit&namespace=0

reveals that none of them have any content whatsoever. You can clock up an enormous amount by putting silly category tags, moving bits around, adding to a list, deleting the odd word (very daring), disambiguation and (if you are admin) protecting and unprotecting.

I'm still trying to find the bit to select from the dropdown menu that gives me the number of valuable edits a user has made.

I repeat:


Here's just one example —

• User Page
• Talk Page

Check out who it was that tagged it.

Jonny

I'm on BT and I've sometimes had IPs that apparently map to outside London.

Is it slim?

Just today I found his pic from Wikimania 2007 in Taipei. He's been on hivemind for two years, but I neglected to record where I got the information that "Dmcdevit" was one "Daniel McDevit." Now he calls himself "Dominic." Did I get it wrong two years ago, or is he pulling a fast one? Only the Reed College registrar knows for sure.

The name "Daniel" has fallen from grace in Wikimanic Circles of late.

Jonny

I think I found him. He said he was thinking of majoring in history. He went to Taiwan, he loves to snap pics. This means I was wrong two years ago, and his name, according to Reed College, is:

Dominic McDevitt-Parks

Gee, why didn't he email me and tell me I was wrong two years ago?

Not only that, but he was on Essjay's (Ryan Jordan) Facebook list of friends!

(I now suspect this is one list that should be revisited for more clues.)

Facebook friends of Ryan Jordan, captured 2007-01-20:

Ryan Jordan's Friends
Friend List
Ryan has 80 friends.

Name: Kendall Allen
Network: Centre '09

Name: Jeff Bachey
Network: Centre Alum '06

Name: Stephanie Bailey
Networks: Centre Alum '05
Cincinnati Grad Student
Cincinnati, OH

Name: Kellen Baker
Network: Kentucky Alum '05

Name: LaToya Patrice Battle
Network: Murray State KY '06

Name: Angela Beesley
Network: London

Name: Adam Blandford
Network: Centre '06

Name: Sadora Bloom
Network: E. Kentucky Alum '06

Name: Erika Boyle
Networks: Centre Alum '05
Chicago, IL

Name: Blake Brandenburg
Network: Centre '09

Name: Michelle Bryant-Funk
Network: Louisville '06

Name: Brandon Cain
Network: Centre Alum '05

Name: Brittany Camenisch
Network: Centre '09

Name: Melissa Clemmons
Network: Kentucky '06

Name: Josh Coakley
Network: Kentucky '06

Name: DeShawn Collett
Networks: Centre Alum '05
Louisville, KY

Name: Colleen Cooney
Networks: Charleston, SC
Hope Alum '05

Name: Corey Coons
Network: Louisville '07

Name: Jeremiah Cox
Network: Kentucky '06

Name: David Crowley
Network: Centre Alum '05

Name: Jared Cutright
Networks: Centre Alum '05
Johns Hopkins Grad Student '09
Washington, DC

Name: Amber Dahlhauser
Networks: Spalding Grad Student '07
Louisville, KY

Name: FN Denton
Networks: Kentucky Grad Student
Centre Alum '06
Lexington, KY

Name: Berkley Donaldson
Network: Centre '09

Name: Markham Dowell
Network: Kentucky '06

Name: Shawn Drake
Network: Kentucky '06

Name: Lori Fey
Network: Kentucky Alum '05

Name: James Forrester
Networks: London
Warwick Alum '05

Name: Bryan Gatlin
Network: Kentucky

Name: Chris Gooden
Networks: ETSU
Tennessee

Name: Erin Greunke
Network: W. Kentucky Alum '05

Name: Sarah Harrison
Networks: Centre Alum '06
Kentucky
Xavier Grad Student
Lexington, KY

Name: Randy Hays
Network: Centre Staff

Name: Erin Henegar
Networks: Wisc Stevens Point Grad Student '07
Centre Alum '05
Wausau, WI

Name: Brittney Hertog
Network: Centre '09

Name: Candace Hobbs
Network: KYSU Alum '06

Name: Stacey Hohl
Networks: Louisville, KY
Centre Alum '05

Name: Kenneth Horton
Network: Kentucky

Name: Samuel Horwitz
Networks: J. R. Masterman High School '07
Philadelphia, PA

Name: Heather Johns
Networks: Los Angeles, CA
Michigan Alum '05

Name: Ryan Jordan
Network: Thiel '09

Name: Shanel K
Networks: McMaster '06
Toronto, ON

Name: Bill Kaufmann
Network: Harvard Alum '88

Name: Rachel Kitzero
Network: E. Kentucky Alum '06

Name: Vicky Little
Networks: WashU Alum '05
St. Louis, MO

Name: Chrissy Masero
Network: Kentucky '06

Name: William Masterson
Network: Kentucky Alum '05

Name: Frances McClasky
Networks: Louisville, KY
Louisville Grad Student '06

Name: Dominic McDevitt-Parks
Network: Reed '09

Name: Michael McGee
Networks: Washington, DC
Centre Alum '05

Name: Drew McKinney
Network: Centre '09

Name: Gerron McKnight
Networks: Indiana Grad Student '08
Kentucky Alum '05

Name: Allis Mclaughlin
Network: Centre Staff

Name: Leah Moss
Network: Purdue '08

Name: Ilya N
Network: Illinois Math and Science Academy '09

Name: Justin O'Malley
Networks: Kentucky Grad Student
Centre Alum '05

Name: Joung Park
Network: Centre '08

Name: Gil Penchina
Network: San Francisco, CA

Name: Erin Powers
Network: Centre '09

Name: Lindsay Rall
Networks: Centre Alum '05
Lexington, KY

Name: Cheresa Reynolds
Networks: Centre Alum '05
Louisville, KY

Name: Randall 'Rudy' Richardson
Network: E. Kentucky '06

Name: Chris Russell
Network: Centre '09

Name: Kelli Ryan
Networks: Centre Alum '05
Louisville, KY

Name: Justin M. Sanders
Networks: Louisville, KY
W. Kentucky Alum '06

Name: Scott Singer
Network: Centre Grad Student '08

Name: Kenny Smith
Network: Centre '09

Name: Kaniece Smith
Network: Louisville Alum '05

Name: Michael Swartzentruber
Network: Centre '06

Name: Anna Uebele
Networks: Centre Alum
Louisville Grad Student

Name: Jimmy Wales
Network: San Francisco, CA

Name: Kat Walsh
Networks: George Mason Grad Student '09
Stetson Alum '05
Washington, DC

Name: Tessa Wilkinson
Networks: W. Kentucky Alum '06
Louisville, KY

Name: Robert E Wooten
Network: Alaska Fair

Name: Chad Yaden
Networks: Centre Alum '04
Lexington, KY

Name: Jing Zhang
Network: Centre '09

You should have written that he [method of preparation redacted] and ate the [portion of anatomy redacted] of [name of celebrity redacted].

That's the only sort of language Wikipediots understand.

Jonny

I am using Ubuntu Linux, and Firefox has an optional plug-in called User Agent Switcher.
Highly amusing--especially when you have a website running Javascript that won't allow
Linux browsers.....



It's called a proxy. People use them on WP all the time. (Not that any admins realize it. )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dmc...art_for_English
Damn. What a charming little exchange.
" Your random attacks on my character, for having the gall to make a harmless edit with no changes to Wikipedia, are quite appalling. I have no idea why you think that I am some evil maniac out to destroy content. I'm embarrassed that I would be treated this way by an admin here, frankly. Just back off and do something productive. Dmcdevit·t 11:30, 4 November 2007 (UTC) "

Well, there's yet another teen banmonkey. The list gets longer and longer.

Yes this idiocy is often used by admin to push their little interests also. The whole of Hong Kong and region seems to have been blocked from certain cult sites as cult awareness is a big issue there, with large groups of consumers up in arms about cult cons. If you are editing with an HK IP on a cult related site that any admin wants to promote, then you will probably end up banned as some sort of sock.