Wikipedia talk:Signs of sockpuppetry

Common spelling/punctuation/grammar errors

"Travelling" is not a misspelling. Indeed, as "travelling" is the English spelling of an English word there is a case for saying that the (American) version "traveling" is the misspelling. The principle is sound, but a more scrupulously chosen example is needed here. — Tim riley (talk) 18:51, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

"Naboxes"?

Article mentions "naboxes". I was hoping to wikilink it but can't find what to link it to. Is it meant to be "navboxes"? --Northernhenge (talk) 20:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Anonymous rerouting

We had an interesting case over on Talk:Ronald Ryan a while back. The article had a history of sockpuppetry, eventually resulting in semi-protection and banning of identified sock accounts. Not long afterwards, a whole bunch of IP editors started posting on the talk page, all with the same agenda and writing style as the banned user, all claiming to be distinct people.

Traceroute showed that the IPs were coming from all over the world - Slovakia, Japan, Netherlands, and a range of hosting services etc. in the USA. Ryan is a controversial topic within Australia (last man hanged in Australia) but not of much interest to the rest of the world, so a sudden influx of multi-national IPs is suspicious in itself; presumably the guy was using some sort of anonymous rerouting service. (One of the IPs was named "ip-anywhere.net", which was a bit of a giveaway...)

So it's not just highly regionalised addresses that you need to watch for; excessive diversity (in the context of the article) can also be a symptom of sock abuse. --GenericBob (talk) 12:24, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry blocks and the duck test

A recent SPI has led me to wonder if the WP:DUCK test might not be as reliable as we want in cases involving non-native speakers of English and/or topics of interest to small communities of users. Supposedly "unique" linguistic features of an alleged sock could, in fact, be class characteristics applying to an entire group of people (analogous to the risks of an eyewitness fingering an innocent suspect whose regional or foreign accent resembles that of the perpetrator). And if some obscure topic happens to be the talk of the town in a small region, then multiple users from that region could risk being misidentified as socks of a single user. I'm especially uneasy about this because, once a user has been labelled (or perhaps mis-labelled) as a sock, it can be well-nigh impossible to convince anyone to second-guess or even seriously reconsider that determination later on, no matter what sort of evidence the presumed sock might try to offer in his defence. Especially given that WP:DUCK ranks the "duck test" as occupying the realm of "suspicion" rather than any real level of proof, I think it may be appropriate to suggest that a sockpuppet ruling based primarily on the "duck test" is not necessarily entitled to the same level of hands-off deference as a ruling based on more clear-cut evidence would be. Comments? Richwales (talk · contribs) 19:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

It depends on the strength of the evidence. Similarity in editing can be a much more reliable indication than the usual Checkuser result , if the checkuser shows anything other than exact identity, and even so only if the ip is distinctive (in some countries, such as the UK and India, it is not). DGG ( talk ) 00:47, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

"CheckUser is not magic pixi dust"

As a recent victim of a false sock puppet conviction, I am mildly motivated to attempt to make improvements to the sock puppet conviction process. In my case, the key problem was that CheckUser is being used exactly against published policies that state clearly that "CheckUser is not magic pixi dust". My intention is to make it clear that a simple result of "technically indistinguishable" is not sufficient to ban a user.

For example, the introduction to this article states "unless it is obvious beyond a reasonable doubt that sock puppetry is occurring, or the checkuser data shows a connection, no action shall be taken against the accounts in question for sock puppetry". The statement "or the checkuser data shows a connection" negates the first statement and turns checkuser into an infallible tool, which it definitely is what happened in my case and it is definitely fallible and should not be used as the only evidence against a user.

My first suggested edit is to remove that statement.Sthubbar (talk) 00:24, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

I feel like I've seen this before

So this clueless noob suddenly turns. I've seen this multiple times. I can't say who; I'll start collecting now. But is this recognizable to others? And since I don't have any evidence, what do I do with this spidey sense? —valereee (talk) 02:04, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Valereee, there are a fair number of sockpuppeteers/LTAs whose signature is, shall we say, less-than-competent "counter-vandalism," so it could be any one of several. If your spidey sense is tingling but you can't conclusively identify the sockmaster, best to ask a friendly CheckUser to have a look (in general, that's the right thing to do when you've found someone who looks like a sock but you have no idea whose sock it is). I pinged a couple of checkusers on IRC to have a look at this, since I agree that there's enough here that they could be one of those LTAs. GeneralNotability (talk) 16:55, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

GeneralNotability, thanks! This is either a kid or an incredibly sophisticated sock. Drafted an article about a K-8 school, made a couple of edits on the neighborhood that school serves, which happens to be a Chinatown in Toronto, and has made probably well-intentioned edits to some Chinese Emperors and a few Canadian topics. If it hadn't been for that post, I'd have been willing to believe it was some 8th-grader bored during lockdown. I'm like...do socks develop a character before appearing on-scene? :D —valereee (talk) 17:07, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Valereee, answer is "not obviously anyone we know," see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Xayahrainie43/Archive#30_July_2020. You're probably right about it being a bored kid (though to be fair, I think several of those LTAs I mentioned are also bored kids). GeneralNotability (talk) 17:46, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Good to know I'm maybe not just feeding a troll. :) —valereee (talk) 17:53, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Witness

I think this one can be a bit far-fetched- who would look at someone's screen and see if they are engaging in sockpuppetry? Also, this could turn it into a he-said she-said thing. I don't think eyewitness evidence would be a good sign of sockpuppetry. 747pilot (talk) 20:11, 11 May 2023 (UTC)