Misplaced Pages

Does a hat need a close?

Because poor User:LealandA is very confused that no further entries to the page appear after your change. Acck, nevermind, someone fixed it. Shenme (talk) 03:54, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. The IP editor badly attempted to reopen. God, these nutcases... --GoodDamon 03:58, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Barack Obama birthplace controversy

I made no attacks. http://www.obamacrimes.com is the bona fide nane of the website of a the Democrat former Assistant Attorney General of Pennsylvania. It is no "attack." Your blatant, and likely politically motivated censorship, however, is an extreme attack on the human rights of all mankind. BTW - since you still can't produce the list of sites not allowed on eBay your position is as arbitrary as it is fascistic. --DaleEastman (talk) 15:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by DaleEastman (talk • contribs)

"Unsigned," is it? LOL. Good thing the Misplaced Pages's automated personal attack machine is of the same fine consistent quality I've come to expect here. --DaleEastman (talk) 16:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Look... The lawsuit will fail, as did the last one, due to lack of evidence. Believe me when I tell you this: If the absurd happens, and somehow despite the state of Hawaii authenticating his birth certificate, despite the hospital records which indicate he was born there, despite the birth announcement appearing in the newspaper the next day... if somehow, all of that is disregarded and Obama is barred from the Presidency on the grounds of his birth, despite the complete and utter lack of evidence and the utter lunacy of this whole absurd lawsuit... Believe me when I tell you, under those highly unlikely circumstances, that information will end up in Misplaced Pages. But right now, at this time, it has no place here. Anywhere. At all. GIVE UP. Accept that you are pushing a fringe theory that does not belong in Misplaced Pages unless and until it becomes not fringe. This isn't censorship; you are free to spout whatever lunatic claims you feel like making. Go somewhere else to do it, though. 16:33, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

ACORN/socks/meats/etc/etc

Hi GoodDamon. I still don't really understand the arguments that were/are under the ACORN section on the AN/I page. Yours arguments seems to be that just because a group of people agreed on something that they should be banned, whether they were sockpuppets or not. Am I right, or am I missing something? By the way, I have no interest in the ACORN subject or related (So far, I'm not even sure what the two sides were arguing about anyway). I would appreciate it if you could explain what the issue was, and why Misplaced Pages isn't surely benefiting from editors with different perspectives. Cheers, --Rebroad (talk) 13:25, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it had little to do with the ACORN article, other than that was where the disruption lay, nor with the perspective of the various accounts. In fact, see User:Die4Dixie and User:DigitalNinja as examples of accounts that have not behaved inappropriately, and whose contributions I've even defended, despite heartily disagreeing with both of them.

Now, I'm not an administrator, so I can't pretend to know for sure exactly what admin-only evidence was seen during that report, but let me see if I can break it down.

BryanFromPalatine (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a known puppeteer who used multiple sockpuppets to support his POV-pushing in several articles. Those earlier accounts, near as I can tell, were all eventually traced to the same IP address. They all used the same editing style, they all focused on the same group of articles, they all made the same spelling and punctuation mistakes, etc. All of them frequently missed edit summaries. When they did use edit summaries, they were frequently misleading as to the extent of the changes being made. He tried to vary it up with a few of the sockpuppets, claiming with several of them to be a supporter of the opposite POV he was pushing, but using those accounts to say his other accounts had valid points; basically, they were concern trolls.

So... Fast forward to recent events. WorkerBee74, Curious bystander, Marx0728, 300wackerdrive, and Kossack4Truth all appear on the scene. These accounts edited in a variety of articles, but generally tended to avoid too much interaction with one another too simultaneously. Because of similarities in style, spelling, punctuation, edit summary usage, etc. (see a pattern?) there were several sockpuppet reports on them. But the individual sockpuppetry cases always came back inconclusive. Yes, the results would say, WorkerBee74 and 300wackerdrive edit with remarkable similarity, but they use different IP addresses. So nothing came of it.

It wasn't until several of the accounts appeared on the ACORN article to vote-stack for a particularly contentious piece of content that I took the time to go through all the prior reports. And after reviewing all the evidence that had accrued, I felt there was, at minimum, a very good case for meatpuppetry, and in several instances, there were accounts whose behavior, on their own, should have resulted in bans. Now, when I submitted the final report, I hadn't yet heard of BryanFromPalatine, but one of the administrators mentioned him, and told us the editing patterns were remarkably similar. The same patterns of missed summaries, the same editing style and, lo and behold, Kossack4Truth resembled BryanFromPalatine's concern troll accounts. Then it came out that Curious bystander and Marx0728 were confirmed by checkuser, probably a mistake on the puppeteer's part.

At that point, the other three accounts received a more thorough examination. It was discovered that:

• 300wackerdrive edited without exception from the same IP address as BryanFromPalatine.
• Kossack4Truth edited without exception from a residential IP address in the same area.
• Their editing periods never overlapped. This makes it appear to be a single person, always editing from work with one account, from home with another.
• WorkerBee74 always edited from a mobile phone device. Not only is that extremely unlikely behavior -- what, he never had access to a computer, but could afford a fancy, internet-enable phone? -- but it also smacks of checkuser avoidance, one of the reasons checkuser is only one of the ways in which socks get found out.

The administrators found this to be extremely compelling evidence of a puppeteer who had simply gotten clever enough to proxy different IP addresses for different accounts. In the case of Curious bystander and Marx0728, the puppeteer used the same address, probably hoping to avoid their detection by mostly avoiding the same articles.

So... We have an established pattern of a puppeteer, now known to be BryanFromPalatine, who is clever enough to use different IP addresses to evade checkuser, and it took comparing the evidence accumulated from multiple incident reports and sock reports to finally put all the pieces together. Does all this help? --GoodDamon 17:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Missing answer

Hello Gooddeamon, since I wrote my answer to your last message about a month ago, nothing has arrived back. I don't understand why. What is wrong? Regards, Taodeptus (talk) 16:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Taodeptus

Hello. I actually answered you here, but it must have archived before you saw it. --GoodDamon 17:11, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Harvest Time @ COTW

Greetings WikiProject Oregon folks, it’s time for another edition of the fabled COTW. Thank you to all who helped make improvements to Wayne Morse and creating some members of the Oregon House. This week, we have by request Upper Klamath Lake which think made the news lately with a salmon plan. Then, in honor of the end of the harvest time, we will go farming with Fort Stevens. There is a beautiful link farm in the article that is ripe for harvesting into citations. It should provide for a bountiful feast, or alternatively you can take your hoe to it and weed some out. As always, click here to opt out of these messages, or click here to make a suggestion for a future COTW. WARNING: COTW is not approved for children under 3 and may contain choking hazards for small children. DO NOT leave your child unattended with COTW. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:44, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Scientology

You asked for calm talks and went away. Shall we? Shutterbug (talk) 03:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I was taken away by RL. --GoodDamon 03:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Happens! The article is now frozen. That should give us enough time to sort out the backlogged issues. Shutterbug (talk) 04:14, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

re: Heads up

Thanks for the heads up. All I was really trying to do is to push towards some sort of consensus so that we can identify the troubles and move on. I hadn't realized that you filed the report, or else I would have waited. Anyways, I guess we'll just see what happens. ←Spidern→ 15:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, now I'm recusing myself from it. I wanted to respond in the affirmative when I saw what looked like a real and quality consensus forming. --GoodDamon 15:48, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey mon

Hey, I commented in your ANI report. Much as I respect you, I really think that you are wrong-headed bringing that up there rather than asking the arbitrators to reopen the case if you think they are "doing it wrong". That is unfair to Shutterbug as some green admin might make a mess of things that then needs to be undone. I also think that you let your issue with Shutterbug get the better of you with that thin-skinned "incivility" thing - "utterly inappropriate edits like that which smack of POV-pushing and conflicts of interest" are strong words. If you want to say things like that then please grow some thicker skin. Reporting Shutterbug for replying to those words is also unfair. --Justallofthem (talk) 16:17, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I know how you feel, and respect your position. But as I said at the incident report, this is no longer an issue of content. Take a look at the evidence. If it walks like a duck...

As for the civility issue, perhaps my skin has grown a little thinner. But think of it from my perspective... I wasn't involved in that ArbCom, and only yesterday finally took the time to comb through it enough to see the evidence of WP:COI, WP:SOCK, and even WP:ROLE. I strongly defended Shutterbug and several of the other accounts several times, taking what I thought was a stance of neutrality. Perhaps I'm feeling thin-skinned because in good faith, I defended the edits of accounts that were not editing in good faith. That does get on my nerves. --GoodDamon 17:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, WP:DUCK-time! Please look again. I sent you a message. Shutterbug (talk) 00:17, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

How many

Hi GoodDamon, re 3RR – you are making your argument on AE in good faith, but please take a mo to look at WP:3RR. "Contributors must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period whether or not the edits involve the same material". Unfortunately, the way it is set up, editors don't start again at 0 for every separate issue that is being fought over. Cheers, Jayen466 11:03, 27 November 2008 (UTC)