User talk:Nableezy
Recent known sockmasters in the area
I'm comparing suspected socks with known masters. These are the accounts I know of who have been CU blocked recently (or their socks have): NoCal100, Plot Spoiler, Tombah, Irtapil, Icebear244, 916crdshn. Are there others? Thanks, Levivich (talk) 04:23, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm sure there's an AndresHerutJaim sock or twelve that's been blocked recently too. Wasn't even aware of a Plot Spoiler one, but now I see Loksmythe was blocked as PS. Icebear and 916 whatever were "compromised". nableezy - 20:55, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I guess the default should probably be to assume all of the known sockmasters are active most of the time (then there are all the unknown sockmasters...). Also, I don't have very high confidence in the categorization of socks. It's possible that many accounts have been assigned to the wrong sockmaster which adds noise to the data. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:06, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Another complexity is stuff like this Salomeofjudea → winter queen lizzie → cloaked rename request → 21:34, 20 August 2024 מקף globally renamed Winter queen lizzie to Vanished user edc8363ad1718beb64ce9d923ab18295 → contributions. This makes tracking contributions challenging if you don't know the final account name in the chain (have to track via ids). This is an account that put a link to one of the offsite attack sites naming Wikipedia users on their user page early in their post-Oct7 PIA editing history, then quickly removed it. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:40, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- By the way, do either of you know whether admin candidates have checkusers run on them or how I can find out? I vaguely remember something about a sockmaster nearly becoming an admin but I'm not sure I was around at the time. Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:39, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland: The "nearly" one was Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Eostrix who was an Icewhiz sock [1]. Socks have managed to become admins previously, however [2]. Black Kite (talk) 09:20, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Anyone with the time and patience to turn a sock into a viable admin candidate would have no difficulty making sure their CU data didn't match their previous socks. CU can be a powerful tool but it's of limited use in detecting sophisticated bad actors. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed. Beetlebrox observed of that case that it was close to a miracle, and only due to the tenacity of a single admin, that Eostrix was caught out.'it nearly succeeded, probably would have if it weren't for one particular committee member who doggedly pursued this for quite some time.'There are a good many quack-like-a-duck probable/possible socks, I have over a score in mind, though nothing even vaguely actionable. One must just proceed in good faith. It will be an ironical victory for these editors if we have Arbpia5, because the present ARCA contention arose out of a legitimate longterm editor attempt to raise the issue, only to see themselves placed under suspicion as the real problem. Nishidani (talk) 12:17, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well, that's very interesting because when I run my work-in-progress software on Eostrix it highlights Icewhiz as a potential match using several different techniques e.g. this one. However, confusingly, it gives a very slightly better match to the NGO Monitor guy, Soosim (+Scarletfire2112 in one of the results). Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- One other difficulty is off-line coordination could lead to sharing accounts (esp. to get others to help in running up edit contributions to the same single account). Traditionally, one just had a number of common stylistic pointers, and vague hunches based on memories of past interactions, to sense a sock, so one good thing to come out of our ARCA deliberations is the perception that very sophisticated tools do exist, rarely used except at the last moment, to thresh out sock patterns. Your own suggestive indications have been exemplary, if I may say that without brownnosing.Nishidani (talk) 13:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- The other difficulty of course is how certain we need to be before we make an accusation. Some of these bad actors cultivate sleepers for months that don't do anything obviously disruptive at first and it's not easy to distinguish them from "legitimate" new editors on behaviour alone. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:15, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- ETA: Eostrix was at the "not obviously disruptive" point but the situation took on new urgency because of the RfA. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:23, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think it is often the case that experienced socks don't do disruptive things or try hard to avoid them. They keep their head down and just edit, maybe occasionally participating in slow motion edit warring, noticeboard discussions, RfCs etc. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- What I find problematic is that some people seem to exist in a sort of superposition of states - ban evading sock and productive contributor. This might be an example. I mean, pick one or the other state, not both. If someone comes back as a sock and they do nothing but productive editing outside the topic area, or even in the topic area (if the edits are not overtly biased or silly), no one will care, or even notice probably. But if they can't resist occasionally participating in the topic area's pointless shenanigans, someone will notice them and call it out, or want to. Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:22, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- The amusing thing to me is that when Gilabrand isn't using her socks to violate her topic ban, she's using them to conduct paid editing for her PR firm's clients.Dan Murphy (talk) 17:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- ETA: Eostrix was at the "not obviously disruptive" point but the situation took on new urgency because of the RfA. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:23, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- The other difficulty of course is how certain we need to be before we make an accusation. Some of these bad actors cultivate sleepers for months that don't do anything obviously disruptive at first and it's not easy to distinguish them from "legitimate" new editors on behaviour alone. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:15, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- One other difficulty is off-line coordination could lead to sharing accounts (esp. to get others to help in running up edit contributions to the same single account). Traditionally, one just had a number of common stylistic pointers, and vague hunches based on memories of past interactions, to sense a sock, so one good thing to come out of our ARCA deliberations is the perception that very sophisticated tools do exist, rarely used except at the last moment, to thresh out sock patterns. Your own suggestive indications have been exemplary, if I may say that without brownnosing.Nishidani (talk) 13:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well, that's very interesting because when I run my work-in-progress software on Eostrix it highlights Icewhiz as a potential match using several different techniques e.g. this one. However, confusingly, it gives a very slightly better match to the NGO Monitor guy, Soosim (+Scarletfire2112 in one of the results). Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed. Beetlebrox observed of that case that it was close to a miracle, and only due to the tenacity of a single admin, that Eostrix was caught out.'it nearly succeeded, probably would have if it weren't for one particular committee member who doggedly pursued this for quite some time.'There are a good many quack-like-a-duck probable/possible socks, I have over a score in mind, though nothing even vaguely actionable. One must just proceed in good faith. It will be an ironical victory for these editors if we have Arbpia5, because the present ARCA contention arose out of a legitimate longterm editor attempt to raise the issue, only to see themselves placed under suspicion as the real problem. Nishidani (talk) 12:17, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Anyone with the time and patience to turn a sock into a viable admin candidate would have no difficulty making sure their CU data didn't match their previous socks. CU can be a powerful tool but it's of limited use in detecting sophisticated bad actors. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland: The "nearly" one was Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Eostrix who was an Icewhiz sock [1]. Socks have managed to become admins previously, however [2]. Black Kite (talk) 09:20, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Also, talking of active sockmasters, and regarding this, I am unable to tell whether this result is significant or a series of false positives (the test dataset is only about 300 accounts right now). Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:05, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Notice of Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard discussion
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a report involving you at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement regarding a possible violation of an Arbitration Committee decision. The thread is IOHANNVSVERVS. Thank you.
I mentioned you in my statement. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:30, 10 September 2024 (UTC)