User talk:Amalthea

Human rights

We lost Khazar, fighter for Human rights, and I feel guilty because I had told him that DYK is a friendly place again, which he found it isn't. Thank you for reviewing in the PumpkinSky copyvio investigation. As of today, 492 articles have been checked, 237 are open. Flatscan noticed that in the lists on Montana people the text is the same as in Montana. I would not think THAT is copyvio, but learning. One sentence was removed, everything else ok so far. - I lost a friend in real life, PumpkinSky helped with that article and those of relatives. - Taking up the fight for Human rights here: looking at AN threads where you and I are mentioned I miss the respect of living people that we demand in BLPs, and I lack the words to fight it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I too am distressed by how ugly this got, and am sorry that Khazar left; I have stayed away from all related discussions since Friday so I don't know what caused it, but I can guess. I'll try to help out on the CCI page some more later this week. Amalthea 18:05, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Only a few articles are left in the CCI, please have a look, I would like to see it settled. I dislike three things in "Gerda Arendt is another absolute supporter of the copyright violator under any name it chooses". I mostly dislike the "it", talking of people, second the "copyright violator", I don't see the term justified. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:40, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mbhiii

I think I nailed Mbhiii to Trift to Dawakin. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 16:17, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Iluvrihanna24/Rihannano1fan

So, let me see if I understand this: Rihannano1fan gets blocked for two weeks, creates Iluvrihanna24 to evade the block, makes a complete pain in the ass of himself for nearly a year until getting indefinitely blocked, socks hard enough from his IP address that his IP winds up on a long-term block, and now wants what amounts to an IP exemption? My immediate instinct is to block Rihannano1fan so that when the IP block expires he can't resume use of the account. Having yet another editor that has inserting fan material into Rihanna articles doesn't seem like a result that I'm willing to bend any rules to help see happen.—Kww(talk) 17:45, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, and from the reply I just read I don't think that anything has changed. :/ Amalthea 21:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

FYI.—Kww(talk) 01:07, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for helping.

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I have actually been improving the sockpuppet stuff lately I noticed you were a checkuser tpoo, I hope maybe Wikipedia:Template messages/User namespace/Sockpuppets looks usefulish? Wikipedia:Template messages/User namespace looked like a giant mess to me so tried to help out a bit make it more human-readable friendly

I actually got told off by an admin for tagging sockpuppets, but all the templates it looked like you are actually meant to tag IPs if you suspect they are sockpuppets, and then someone checks them to see if they are right or not like with {{editprotected}} etc?

I'm interested cos I think you are honestly better having the "early warning system" decentralised rather than relying on only a few people, that makes sense for the actual checks but I don't think it's really constructive for people to be being warned for tagging sockpuppets for investigation?

My user and tak page got vandalised a tonne and the admins blocking didn't even tag most of them, I don't think they were ever investigated by the looks of it since the first one was tagged sockpuppeeteer and the ones after that sockuppets of the first, even though the first one was obviously a sock and not the real sockpuppeteer — I saw that too on the ones I tagged before and tried to help out, it seems to me like it might be the norm though that the templates aren't really being used properly? --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 12:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Lots of points to reply to:

1. While existence of a tag is apparently reason enough to use it in practice, it really shouldn't be. We have lots of article tags in particular that don't really have much purpose or are used way beyond where they make sense.
2. IPs are generally not tagged with sock tags, see WP:SPI/AI#Blocking and tagging. It may make sense to tag an IP if it is was used by only one person and had significant edits, but not otherwise.
3. Risker's note had of course more facets than just tagging an account for investigation.
4. Tagging an account with a sock tag won't actually make anyone look into it, no. If you want an account checked you'll need to start an WP:SPI case, and present evidence why you think abuse of multiple accounts is happening.
5. I don't see why a decentralized system would be better. For one, it's helpful in an investigation to have the archive with all previous investigations handy, including all prior accounts and comments. For another, I'd expect it would lead to much more conflict if editors felt legitimized to tag active accounts as suspected socks without having to present concrete evidence to back it up and "prove" it first.
6. In case of the edits on your user talk page, at least one of the accounts was checked, but apparently nothing came of it.
7. For trivial vandalism or disruption WP:RBI still works well. We don't really have to tag each disruptive account with the name of a sockmaster (and can't anyway), and it's often counterproductive. There are several ways to prevent disruption, and as long as we can keep the nonsense down enough to keep working on the encyclopedia it's enough.

I hope I got everything, feel free to call me out if I missed something or misunderstood you. Amalthea 18:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

You're right on a lot of that about the templates etc I guess, having looked at the SPI reporting pages it does seem a more clever way to have the discussion at least decentralised, and yeah, getting anyone to report in if they see stuff as a neighbourhood watch thing, I was putting this off to reply to properly (it's nice to get such a thoughtfully laid out reply to my thrown out points ) but that's probably it really lol

What I was thinking of though as well though is the more long term POV pushing RE stuff like WP:PAIDWATCH it would be useful if tagging was more standardised maybe even done semi-automatically somehow like with the Wikilove button, I had an arbitrator earlier say they found the system confusing too! User_talk:Elen_of_the_Roads#Trollolol I'm not sure if maybe there's some secret page that keeps track of stuff in the longterm though it seems like it would make sense for it to the stnadard to label sockpuppeteersa nd their sockpuppets uniformally so people can recognise stuff easier to report them when they arrive back on articles, this is especially important as they are sometimes quite sneaky about it inventing multiple false identities and even personalities, to continue catching them you need to keep up with them I think. For me it was less concerns about vandalism and nonsense but the more insidious WP:PAIDWATCH style pushing as I saw on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Websense,_Inc. --Mistress Selina Kyle ^{(Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉)} 13:54, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Outing

Kindly review your WP:OUTING policy. Thanx. (You know who.) --173.206.254.237 (talk) 20:18, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

• Kindly review it yourself, plus checkuser policy and the Wikimedia privacy policy. If you are concerned that I have violated any of those policies, contact the audit subcommittee to have my actions reviewed.
  My advice to you, if you don't want your accounts marked as socks of your original account, stop with inappropriate use of multiple accounts. If you want to engage in a constructive discussion about inappropriate behavior of administrators, request an unblock with your original account and become a welcomed member of the community first. Evading your block and creating mainspace (!) pages with a list of admins you find abusive will change nothing.
  Amalthea 15:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Precious

	reviewing eyes
	Thank you for reviewing in the Contributor copyright investigations/PumpkinSky! Paraphrasing (I hope not too closely): If everybody who reads this looked at one more article it could be over today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Review help appreciated

I told Iluvrihanna24/Rihannano1fan that I would unblock him with some conditions if he could prove to me that he could be a valuable editor by improving a sandboxed copy of the Rihanna article. This is the result. Any opinions are welcome. I'm a bit frightened by the idea of someone making 160 edits to the same article in a week, but I guess he's a little eager to be released.—Kww(talk) 12:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Heh. :) Yes, it would be helpful if he changed his editing work-flow: Useful edit summaries with every edit, previewing and checking changes before saving. I have only taken a glance at the changes (and can't promise that I will be able to take a closer look); there are a couple of minor things that I'd rather he wouldn't change, but that's no big. I have not checked to see whether he added any poorly sourced material, that plus unresponsiveness on his talk page was I believe the biggest problem with Rihannano1fan.
Amalthea 16:13, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thehelpfulbot

Hi Amalthea,

Thank you for your message - which reminded me that Thehelpfulbot still had IPBE. I was just testing Tor back in May 2009 and I didn't really use it after that time. I guess I forgot to remove IPBE!

Thanks again,

The Helpful One 22:09, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure, thanks for taking care of it. Amalthea 00:17, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey

Hi Amalthea! I had to look through some history on my talk page earlier, and I noticed this which led me to this. I had forgotten that it was me who gave you rollback rights years ago! I am glad I did give you them...you became an admin a few months later, and to my knowledge you have been a great editor and admin. :) At any rate, I hope you're well. Acalamari 23:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I had yet to learn to keep discussions on one page it seems. :)
But I still remembered that you gave me rollback, and also what you said half a year later. :) Amalthea 00:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Yep, I still agree with that comment of mine too. :) Acalamari 10:45, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

My clerckship and the chart

Your bot dosen't recognize that I'm a clerk when it fills out the 'Last Clerk/Checkuser to edit case' field at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview. Can you please fix that when you get the chance? Sven Manguard Wha? 04:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Yep, you caught me, I took a shortcut back then and hardcoded the list instead of parsing the clerk page. Will try to fix that ASAP, and have added you manually until then. Cheers, Amalthea 09:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Thx

Thanks for MSK fullurl fix. Nobody Ent 10:43, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

No worries. Was not moot, by the way: The link was a http://wikipedia.org/ link (note missing language subdomain) so it wasn't automatically switched to one of the two secure variants by javascript. Amalthea 10:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Do you want me to put up a SPI page?

For Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Rlevse? Or can look at them from that cat? My methodology for the IPs I've tagged is similar to what I used for the BarkingMoon case. The edit summaries left by the IPs I've tagged match edit summaries of Rlvese (via Snotty's tool). Will Beback tagged a couple more IPs which were open proxies; those were a bit more speculative, I think, but they toed the same line that FAR and some addressed people with "Mr." which I saw PumpkinSky even used as "Mr. IP" here. I thought this shit could be forgotten, but Rlevse's wikifriends insist on hearing some sort of official take on this. If any IPs used by BarkingMoon were saved somewhere, we might have an explanation for that mystery well. I'd be interesting to hear what you make of the geolocation of the IPs in that category anyway and their status a open proxies or not. Thanks, ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:53, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken none of those IPs made edits this year, so I don't see why there is any need for any action at this point? I assumed it was consensus opinion that some of the IP comments at the FAR were made by Rlevse, and he will presumably have to comment on them once he asks for an unblock. Who insists where on what?
Amalthea 22:37, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the disruption from those IPs was mild. They engaged in some personal attacks against Will Beback, for which they were admonished by User:Nikkimaria who is a "delegate at FAR" (according to xyr user page). Besides that, some of the IPs were indeed constructive in adding references etc. So, I don't see a great reason to investigate them further, but there are always disbelievers [1] accusing me of "misdirection" and "Hollywood theatrics". PumpkinSky was asked about the IPs on his talk page [2] but shortly thereafter he withdrew his unblock request and never answered that question. Other editors would like to see this clarified for different reasons [3]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Seemingly unrelated topic Human rights, see above, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:29, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmm.

• No opinion on whether those edits were disruptive.
• I think Balloonman is correct in his analysis of the community, as he often is.
• At this point, Wikipedia is not improved by us trying to uncover every last detail of this situation.
• If I looked into this and commented on it I might indeed provide fuel for this discussion. I am intent on avoiding that because I don't regard the discussion at this point as constructive, and because I have been accused of fueling the drama in this regard before.
• Once Rlevse returns, there may be a cause to investigate those particulars.

I understand that you are unhappy with Ched's words, but I still ask you to please let this rest for now. I can talk to Ched if you want. Amalthea 23:34, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Understood, this was my inclination a few days ago as well [4]. I'll just avoid engaging Ched on this topic until then. He has his biases, and I'm unlikely to be able to correct those anyway. I do have to make a correction to what I said above though. It was User:Dana boomer who warned one of the IPs [5] not Nikkimaria. I'm sorry for the confusion on that. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 00:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Amalthea 08:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Rihannafanno1/Iluvrihanna24/PhoenixJHudson

I've unblocked the PhoenixJHudson (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) account, and converted the corresponding IP block to a soft block. Pretty much normal restrictions, except that I experimented with a variation of 0RR: he isn't permitted to restore material that he added and another editor removes. I hate enforcing 0RR restrictions on heavily edited articles, because if you get too technical about it you can always trawl the history and find a version that matches the new version.—Kww(talk) 13:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! Amalthea 15:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

SPI bot

Do you think you can also have the bot clerk the "quick checkuser requests" section? Basically, remove a subsection with {{SPIquick|done}} after, say, 48 hours? T. Canens (talk) 03:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)