A queer thing just happened. I tried to log on on as one of my socks that was last used in December 2010 and blow me, it's gone!! Yep, stone cold gone!! I made dozens of edits using the sock and I'm pretty sure I've got the name spot on. Problem is, I can't recall any precise articles I edited, and as is customary with disposable socks, I never set up a user page or talk page. I was using the sock exclusively to revert some scumbag participant in the Anglo-Irish WikiWar. Anyone think what might have happened? The sock was low-level and wouldn't normally have come to the attention of those knuckledraggers who spend their time sock hunting.

Yes, I know, I'm a stupid twat! I had actually spelled the bugger wrong! Missing sock now found!

Moderators please feel free to delete this post.

What side of the Anglo-Irish war was this sock on, pray?

Well the right side of course.


God Save the Queen.

The first place I usually look is under the bed.

To the Annex!

I keep a text file containing the names of my various alternate accounts. Human memory is a cruel and fickle bitch.

Yes, me too, but I'd spelled it wrong in the file, hence the difficulty. I did manage to track it down though - and you'll love this, it shows just what a bunch of tossers us Wikipedians are - from time to time I take a dump of all articles linking to "another" article, just so that I can find out if anyone is deleting references to that "other article". There's a bunch of bastards who are intent on doing these deletions but I've got the better of them, for now. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I used this dump to find an article that had been butchered, knowing that I fixed it with my sock, and so I found its ID, correctly spelled.

It really is a bit of a bummer when you run a large number of socks and are expected to keep track of them all, but yes, a list does help.

This nonsense does not belong on our front doorstep.
Please, someone who cares, move it to the Annex.

Thanks,

Jon

And you, of course, are a paragon of sense

We need a bespoke application, or a hack of an existing editing application, with username/password and proxy management, editing notes, a nice visual timeline so you can recognise any patterns one might be building up, browser useragent modification and so on ... each sock account automatically setting up its own preferences.

And lacking imagination too. An excellent thread. If I were writing about Wikipedia for a general audience, I would need to give a flavour of what Wikipedia is about. I.e. this.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=269099

Are you saying we shouldn't move it to the Annex? Because I was just about to do that when I got to this last post of yours... I'm not trying to suggest Mr. Karting's original issue wasn't worth noting, but once it became clear that he'd merely misspelled the account name, I'm afraid it's hard to imagine a sillier basis for a WR thread.

Let's not be issuing any more challenges to people's imaginations …

{{Insert Standard Disclaimer from David Letterman's Stupid Human Tricks}}

Jon

This topic needs deletion, not any sort of move. Y'see, this is the sort of thing mods do - take out the trash.

I think if I'd gotten to it a little sooner I would have suggested that... maybe that's still the way to go, but I have to admit, Mr. Cock-up's post about "needing a bespoke application" does tie in nicely with the recent story on the US Air Force looking into Multiple Persona Management systems.

I'll move it to the Annex for now, though. I happen to be personally fascinated by interested in the idea of automating one's multiple-persona management, so maybe I'm not the best person to decide these things. So, any other mods, feel free to delete or whatever!

I was trying to track down my various alts recently to list on my userpage -- the only one I couldn't find was the one that I blatantly associated with myself. :-) Found it by accident somewhere later, when I wasn't looking for it...

Yes, there are idiots around anywhere, and people like commenting on anything.

Admittedly, when I wrote "feel free to delete or whatever," I wasn't necessarily saying the thread title should be changed so as to be insulting to the thread-starter. Besides, a more appropriate title might be, "Oops! Please delete!" or something along those lines.

So which scumbag nonce changed the title then?

This topic reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon:

Charlie Brown: "I wish I could be happy"

"I think if could be happy if my life had more purpose to it."

"I also think that if I were happy, I could help others
to be happy....Does that make sense to you?"

Lucy: "We've had spaghetti at our house three times this month!"

Charlie Brown: "Good Grief!"

(Yes, I am just that sort of person who comments on everything, but I own my faults.)

That would be me, you clueless asswipe of a Wikipedian.

Wow! and you're a moderator here

Judging by your choice of words you must also be a Wikipedia Admin and checkuser - go on, give us clue, which admin(s) are you?

Equating me, a 'Wikipedia Admin and checkuser', with GlassBeadGame is highly offensive and utterly uncalled-for. Please retract that immediately!

He probably thinks the guy that flips him off while on the freeway is a WP admin and the person who tells him to shut the fuck up at the movies is a "check-user" too. No Alison, there is no equivalence between us at all. It is easy to tell us a part. Not only don't I touch Wikapedia but I'm not covered in ED shit. So you can smell the difference a block away. I know...but it takes more than a few weeks for the smell to go away.

Word of the Day: Imbroglio.

Highly likely

I'm months gone now, as it happens. Didn't you get the memo? It's fortunate that I'm not craving your approval or anything

Wow, I was wondering what that smell was. GBG toilet water!

Love the new title, GBG. Noted that you replied on it.

And here I felt a pang of affection for the Fat Man after reading the first page of this thread. Way to disillusion me.

Well, at least you didn't imply that he's an idiot because he's anti-Irish, I suppose...

How about we change it to "A Life With No Idiots"? That would make it more like a Rene Magritte painting.

I suggest, "This Topic Is Not About Sockpuppets"

It is just fine the way it is.

How about:

• Sock Puppets: A 21st-Century Odyssey
• Near-Catastrophic Multiple-Account Failure
• A World Beyond: Weird Tales of Internet Persona Management Mishaps
• I Am Blind and My Dog is the Subject of a Wikipedia Article
• The M.C. Escher Memorial Thread (not actually about M.C. Escher)
• Makes Perfect Sense To Me!
• When Subjectivity Analysis Attacks

Uh-oh, he's on to us!

+1.

YABOFDOODAINEH

Yet Another Bag Of Flaming Doody On Our Doorstep And It's Not Even Halloween

Jon

Not a single morsel of cake in this whole thread.

Bait and switch.

The cake is made of lye.

For some reason I like the new title.

I see weak-willed Somey changed the title. Welcome Wikipedians all.

I dunno, I just think we have to draw the line somewhere - it's one thing to say in a post that one of our members has done something idiot-like, but it's another thing entirely to say that by changing the title of a thread which that member started. Bear in mind that the thread title is assumed by a casual visitor/observer to have been entered by the thread-starter, and if one of us changes it, there's no indication that it was changed unless/until said change becomes an issue in the thread itself. Thread titles are a bit more like Wikipedia in that respect, which is why I personally think we should avoid that if at all possible.

I guess what I'm saying is that changing thread titles to better reflect what the thread is really about is usually all fine and dandy, but using thread titles as a soapbox or a needling-tactic, ehh, not so much.

Mind you, I don't believe it would be a bad thing at all if this incident created a kind of "chilling effect" that reduces the number of threads about people being unable to access old sock-puppet accounts. That would probably be a really good thing... but there's no need to insult people over something like that, unless they wanted to use the old account for something genuinely nasty and rotten. (Admittedly, that may have been the case here too, depending on how you feel about the England vs. Ireland situation.)

I remember the original title, and I can see the present title. What was the intermediate title? Bead, have you been a bit cranky lately?

Is it just me, or is this thread getting more moronic by the second?

"An idiot with no life."

It's possible that Mr. Beadgame had an unpleasant incident recently in which someone with "no life" accused him of having "no life," and he's taking it out on Mr. Karting. But it's more likely he's got a rebellious teenage daughter or something along those lines - that's usually a fairly reliable source of personal stress.


Judging by what's here so far, new posts are only coming in every 20-30 minutes or so, on average.

I hope that's not the case. By the way, my teenage daughter is damn near perfect. She just got her first 'B' ever - everything else has been straight 'A's since jr high. She takes the challenging IB program, is in two sports plus coaches for another, and volunteers in two community programs. She has never lied to me. AND, her brother goes to Harvard!

I guess that makes you a happy idiot then.

I offered cake to everyone recently and had no takers.


Mods, quick, delete this! TC has accidentally posted enough info to identify him by revealing he has a unique daughter!!