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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 האופה. Thank you. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:03, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

This is really fascinating. Proposing, in a thread that has nothing to do with Nableezy, to topic ban him - the wikipedian who holds the record for exposing sock puppets in the I/P area - because he remonstrated with one of the adjudicating admins. I've always believed that neither logic nor evidence has much purchase on many of these AE discussions and outcomes, too many are humoural, while recognizing the enormous strain and good faith on admins who have to handle those issues.Nishidani (talk) 19:11, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Just for clarity: I was not the admin who suggested sanctions, but instead provided notifications after another uninvolved admin suggested them. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:13, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
No problem there. I am biased of course. Had it not been for Nableezy's meticulous detective work over the last 12 years, - work whose mechanics are far beyond me -I would have been hung, drawn and quartered by socks years ago. I can detect them by instinct. He knows how to prove what are otherwise mere intuitions, that have no force, properly so, in our deliberations. And he has done so without consulting me, or my pressing him. As long as it is understood that his absence there will make the chronic toxic invasiveness of IP socks so much easier. No one is indispensable but . . . Regards Nishidani (talk) 19:17, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Lèse-majesté. nableezy - 19:27, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I will make one point about the insinuation that tagteaming exists on both sides with rough parity. I have no idea how others work these numerous pages. When an edit comes up on my watchlist, I click diff, examine its merits and if it contradicts known facts by suggesting the Druze in Majdal Shams are Israeli, the Golan is in Israel, East Jerusalem is in Israel, settlements are legal (multiply by dozens of other instances) then I revert it, without looking at the edit history of the page. In doing so I haven't the foggiest notion whether my revert chimes with someone else's. I haven't got that sort of time, just as I haven't the time to follow editors around via their contributions. I don't state that to exculpate myself from such tag-teaming accusations (which by the way are a standard meme in off-line sites whingeing about wikipedia's putative 'coven' of 'anti-Israeli editors'). I state this because it is a considerable assumption by arbs that any revert which turns out on later examination to be identical to one made by an earlier editor is evidence of tagteaming. It is very easy on this premise to prove any pattern you like to elicit. The minimum corroboratory evidence would be to show that an editor turns up on a page they have never edited or mentioned where an edit conflict exists, to weigh in on the side of some other editor, usually with zero efforts to explain themselves on the talk page, and that this is regular enough to suggest a pattern. Nishidani (talk) 20:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
And if I may comment on the gravamen. Levivich's evidence in those cases formalizes what I think was a reasonable impression probably held by not only myself that the sudden rash of relatively new editors coming to numerous articles and editing in contradiction of either known facts or stable text based on numerous past discussions didn't look healthy. I thought (sorry Lev!) those reports somewhat premature, and more patience should have been exercised, but the pattern he noted - poor talk page presence and readiness to go to the same articles they hadn't edited before to revert supportively - is there. I well imagine these reports might be dismissed, but to reframe the very recourse to AE, as it has unfolded, as indicative of a wider battleground mentality which is shared by long-term editors who have stayed the course without (aside from myself) many complaints laid against them, strikes me as seriously flawed. I'm no expert on diff proof. A good memory tells me I have had strong disagreements and been reverted at times by Nableezy, Iskander and Selfstudier (I leave Levivich out. He has no identifiable POV, but we have had vigorous disagreements in the past, and at one point, I think, he was a few minutes away from taking me to AE) and that they too have had their differences. This, challenging other editors at times, who are otherwise, commonly identified as belonging to a coven of editors with the same POV, is not something one encounters in groups who do notably appear to tagteam for the other so-called POV. There, solidarity seems automatic. But I have no evidence for this, other than an impression based on extensive experience. Nishidani (talk) 21:41, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Nothing exists in parity with both "sides" here, because the people arguing here are not each arguing from the opposing viewpoints. One group is, across a range of articles, pushing nationalist, revisionist in some cases, denialist in others, talking points. Nobody is even attempting to push the opposing nationalist viewpoints. Nobody. And thats part of what makes His Adminship SFR's peculiar understanding of what is battlegrounding so silly. He seems to think calling tendentious, mendacious bullshit out for being tendentious, mendacious bullshit is "battlegrounding". He thinks that means my interest is "beating" whoever, not working towards a well-sourced, well-written, balanced encyclopedia article. But when somebody is saying something as abjectly wrong as, oh just for instance, that wire articles are "written" by the wire agency and "published" by the newspaper carrying them, making each of the sources individual independent reliable sources, somebody needs to call bullshit on that.

Part of the problem is that many of the admins who go up in the ranks, or try to play SuperCop across a range of the most difficult areas to actually edit in, have never edited such a difficult place to edit in. So they fall back on these altruistic ideals like everybody always has to remain calm and assume good faith. But that isnt the real world, not everybody here is operating in good faith, and not everybody here is interested in good faith discussion with honest arguments. And the percentage of those people increase as the topic gets more "intense" for lack of a better word.

Ultimately though, ArbCom, in its infinite and divine wisdom, has already decided that "being right isn't enough". So maybe Sir SFR's fourth or sixth (im not sure, lost count of the times he would see if somebody would bite at sanctioning me like this) attempt at banning me takes hold. Ultimately it isn't something I'm going to be too concerned about, because while being right may not be enough to remain on Wikipedia, it certainly is more important to me than being on Wikipedia. And if being faux polite while insulting the intelligence of everybody around you is more important here than being right, well the articles will end up being more wrong than right too.

I forgot to add, highly recommend this song by Cairokee. Actually, it makes some Wiki-applicable points. English translation on the video, and by the official article channel so no not a copyright violation. nableezy - 09:30, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm really sorry to see this. I read the above this morning and then went down to fix a mucky half-blocked drain, thinking as I did so of an analogy. That the I/P area is viewed by arbs with despair and customarily called ‘toxic’, even in periods of relative calm, is well-attested. Few venture actively into it, and SFR is one who has, with patient pertinacity, ventured into terrain where our angels, understandably, fear to tread. That is in itself admirable, and not only admins appreciate the dedication to work in what is widely avoided as a time-sink.
What's not understood is that it requires particular fortitude to handle the pullulating ineptitude or nonsense that purely politically-fixated editors bring to it. Virtually all of these editors show no familiarity with the history of the region, and are incapable of understanding that there are alternative ways of viewing anything. It is doctrinaire, the desire to fix a national POv as the neutral default interpretation. Scratch and this comes up invariably as the core problem. When Levivich opened his case against HaOfra, I didn't have much time to follow it, or review the evidence. I just looked at three diffs
At least half of the 7 editors here were dubious newbie accounts, several subsequently compromised or sanctioned.
What that diff expunged was the four excellent RS sources I think I had added when editors were claiming early Zionism did not think of the project as a form of colonization. The four sources proving that this is absurd regard quotes from four of the most influential early Zionists, Theodor Herzl, Arthur Ruppin, Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Berl Katznelson.
Gur Alroey, "Zionism without Zion"? Territorialist Ideology and the Zionist Movement, 1882–1956,' Jewish Social Studies, Fall 2011, Vol. 18, No. 1 pp. 1-32, p.5, p.20
Alan Balfour, The Walls of Jerusalem:Preserving the Past, Controlling the Future, Wiley 2019 ISBN 978-1-119-18229-0 p.59
Etan Bloom, Arthur Ruppin and the Production of Pre-Israeli Culture, Brill 2011 ISBN 978-90-04-20379-2 pp.2,13, n.49,132.
Shira Robinson, Citizen Strangers:Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State, Stanford University Press ISBN 978-0-804-78802-1 2013 p.18
One could add a dozen other high quality sources documenting the pervasiveness of colonialist thinking by the founding and foremost executive figures of Zionism for half a century, but it would be only reverted. Why, that evidence is disliked. It mustn't appear in the record, and even if removing high quality sourcing is frowned upon, the urgency of disappearing evidence takes precedence over any formal acknowledgement that the evidence, the historical facts, is overwhelming and evaluated as such in modern secondary sources.
What was perhaps even worse is that these optimal RS were stripped out, while the reverted text left in three absolutely useless, indeed comical sources. Namely
What HaOfra did leave in was a quote in support of the non-colonization theory (i.e. the source ostensibly doesn't mention it. Namely,

  • 'The ethos of Zionism was twofold; it was about demography – ingathering the exiles in a viable Jewish state with as small an Arab minority as possible – and land.'Shlomo Ben-Ami 2007 no page given

Deduction? One more proof that HaOfra for one doesn't read the very sources he conserves because he thinks, as they are quoted in the accepted snippet, they support his viewpoint.
That unpaginated quote comes from Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, Oxford University Press 2007 ISBN 978-0-195-32542-3 where that remark occurs on p.50 (and occurs there after a prefatory remark about the putative impossibility of repatriating the 750,000 Palestinians who had fled or been driven from their properties and homes to make way for Jewish immigrants. Presumably it would have made accommodating them in the 200,000 homes Arabs had been forced to abandon somewhat difficult).
Any editor familiar with the book however will notice that Ben-Ami himself gives more than a page in the introduction to Zionist colonization.

Zionism was not only a movement to redeem the Jewish people it was also a movement of conquest, colonisation and settlement in the service of a just and righteous but also self-indulgent national cause. . .. Zionism, however, cannot be seen as typical colonialist movement, an extension of Europe’s nineteenth-century grab for colonies, and raw material throughout Asia and Africa. It certainly behaved as such, mainly after the Six Day War, when it could no longer claim with any credibility that its drive to occupy and settle the West Bank, exploit is human and natural resources and turn the Palestinian population into the hewers of wood and drawers of water of the Israeli economy was the affirmation of its natural right as a movement of national liberation.. . though clearly an avant-garde that came to colonise and possess a new land Zionism was a movement of national liberation . . David Ben-Gurion described Palestine on the eve of the Zionist colonisation as ‘primitive, neglected and derelict’.'Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, Oxford University Press 2007 978-0-195-32542-3 p.3

So the source HaOfra retains while expunging other RS that mention colonization, itself recognizes the colonial aspect of Zionism, only differing in thinking it an atypical case, until 1967 when Ben-Ami acknowledges that the behaviour characteristic of colonization in the standard historical sense became prominent.Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
So what do we have in just one diff? (a)The cancellation of 4 RS of optimal quality on colonization in foundational Zionism (b) the retention of an optimal source for just one quote which does not mention ‘colonization’ on page 50, but certainly acknowledges it as a feature, if atypical, of Zionism, both at its foundations and especially after 1967, therefore challenging HaOfra own contention (c) the retention of hack sources that aren’t, encyclopaedically, worth a nob of goat’s shit. The triumph of poor sourcing over scholarship (d) to defend a revert which several editors, most now with compromised accounts, prefer.
That, I thought, was just one diff which, had what it was doing been grasped objectively, would have warranted a sanction. But, experience tells on that this is not how evidence works on Wikipedia. Such evidence is brushed away as a content dispute: the licence to disrupt by thoughtless (political takes on history are basically thoughtless) reverting, if the editor remains formally polite, remains intact. Anyone who, at a glance, can see the abuse for what it is, becomes, if he reverts this kind of crap, as suspect of edit-warring as the historically uninformed editor who erased the RS material in the first place.
Worse still, is that on AE one can so flood the place with diffs that the significance in context (available only if you know your stuff) of any one diff is lost from view. It's distressing to see that you were dragged into this mess by a diff that mentioned you en passant, and your response suddenly became the real focus of the complaint, rather than a pert exercise in defending one's impugned integrity. Best regards as always, Nab. Nishidani (talk) 16:27, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
If I were to say that it almost seems that an admin who knows I have a hard time not calling bullshit baited me into calling bullshit with that diff that admin would complain that this battlegrounding editor should be banned for battlegrounding for having the temerity to say that’s bullshit or for not recognizing their pure as the driven snow good faith here. nableezy - 17:43, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
Don't let it get to you, Nab. In my last indictment I was called 'a net negative for the project', and SFR said there was evidence that 'I am ‘a long-term agitator.’(i.e.,'a person who urges others to protest or rebel.' 'Agitator' is the precise term fanatically pro-Israel off-wiki smear sites use of me. ) I didn't reply, even though both insinuations are insulting. Insults don't worry me because, apart from rare occasions where reflection may suggest there might be some truth to the slur, I generally parse them to try and figure out why the person throwing them my way thinks that way, and what this tells me about them.Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
And just in case you missed it, in the same vein, the infamous anti-Israel enforcer Nableezy, advocates for terrorism on his "user page" and is believed to be an employee of the pro-Hamas Electronic Intifada online organ.
My advice is this: the less said the better on the principle that qui s'excuse, s'accuse and leave the whole discussion up to arbitrators. This is the fourth or fifth time just this year that I, for one, have been haplessly dragged into this nonsensical or piddling suspicion-mongering, some of it by direct pressure from beyond wiki, and at this point, one should desist from being sucked into a game which looks like it can be indefinitely repeated through attrition. If even a simple diff cannot be construed correctly, then defending oneself is pointless. Nishidani (talk) 22:15, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
Part of the problem is that many of the admins who go up in the ranks, or try to play SuperCop across a range of the most difficult areas to actually edit in, have never edited such a difficult place to edit in. This is the obvious consequence of choosing referees based on how few fouls they've received during their playing career. It might seem like a wise criterion, but you end up choosing referees who've barely played the sport. Levivich (talk) 19:18, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Waiting for my admin nom from you. Any day now. nableezy - 21:16, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm saving it for our next dispute: "Either self-revert or swear to God I'll nominate you for RFA!" Levivich (talk) 15:59, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
You don’t exactly have the best track record at RFA though. nableezy - 16:24, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Um..., aah. . .I think I'm going to be sleepless tonight over this penultimate remark. Since, uh, 'swear' lacks a personal pronoun, it becomes an imperative. Given the lack of the personal pronoun expected by the context (I swear) the sentence must be construed to mean that on the next occasion, you, Lev, will give the Nab an option between self-reverting or (his) swearing to God that you will nominate him for administership. Aside from the theological crux of having Mr.Nableezy swear by God rather than Allah, -which might, since he is rumoured to be a paid-up spokesman for Hamas, expose him to serious Islamicist threats to his safety (:),- it proposes, rather anomalously in the long history of oath-taking, that someone can make a promise binding on themselves that only a complete stranger must perform. I know you will now be utterly, reasonably confused, but what else can you expect from an oaf-talker like myself, with my hair-splitting. bludgeoning, battle-ground mentality? Seriously, Lev, if you are going to stay on in this sad and bewildered world of wiki, there is no one more qualified than yourself for taking on that role. You have a combination of all the gifts,- neutrality, technical mastery and above all, fluency in the history or, when lacking, painstaking conscientiousness in doing the detail background research - which most admins lack because their expertise is in '(bad)behaviour', not content). Ah God, that sounds like brownnosing and coming from me, since it's now on the record, probably citable as one reason any such application would be turned down.* Best regards to you both.
(I think that was the only time, at least that I can remember? I hope so. In my defense, I would characterize that as reporting a comment, not you, as my goal was to remove the comment, not sanction its author. Funny how time changes things, though: due to recent events, I no longer believe that comment is as radical as I once thought.)
I appreciate the vote of confidence, but even in the unlikely events that I ever became interested or my chances ever rose above zero, I wouldn't be able to do anything in almost any of the topic areas where there are problems, due to Wikipedia's rule prohibiting referees from refereeing any sport they've previously played. Levivich (talk) 17:12, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Hahaha, true, but then I'm not alone. ;-) Levivich (talk) 17:05, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Seasons change mad things rearrange but it all stays the same like the love dr, strange. nableezy - 17:17, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
And even after all my logic and my theory, I add a "motherfucker" so you ign'ant [people] hear me. Levivich (talk) 17:24, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
She would have gotten banned here too smh. nableezy - 19:28, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
yall don’t know when the mic drops the show is over
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I think it would be a great loss to editing the I/P area were you to become an admin, because of the rule you mention. But I don't think you should consider that if you entertain an aspiration to be an admin. The I/P area would lose a voice of great equilibrium that is badly needed, but overall, the encyclopedia would gain. I and a few others might feel like Ben Affleck and the lads in the second last scene of Good Will Hunting, were you to choose that option, but, as they too understood, Will finally chose the path that best rewarded his talents. (Mind you, life comes before wikipedia, and ultimately nothing counts here compared to the life we lead beyond it). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
I might entertain an aspiration to be an admin when the WMF starts paying admins, if it pays well enough. Levivich (talk) 20:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Being an admin doesn't prohibit me from editing in the I/P area. It only prohibits me from wielding my admin superpowers there. To become an admin, any of you would need to swear on the hitchhiker's guide that you understand "involved" and will only use your superpowers in unrelated topics. Zerotalk 00:24, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
I hope my reply isn’t unwelcome here, but I would actually support all three of you at an RFA, per both my standard vote of WP:NOBIGDEAL and because despite everything you are all genuinely good editors.
Levivich is obviously an easy support, and the issues I see with Nishidani and Nableezy don’t extend outside the topic area - considering you wouldn’t be able to use your superpowers in the topic area anyway, I don’t think that should matter.
If any of you do ever consider running, I’d even be willing to co-nominate you, if you wanted to demonstrate that the issues in the topic area won’t extend outside it. BilledMammal (talk) 01:56, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
No one is unwelcome, when there is dialogue. Speaking for myself, you'd certainly be making a serious misjudgment however were you to consider someone like myself as worthy of adminship. I admire the overwhelming majority of admins (only 1 exception in 18 years), even when I strongly disagree with their judgment precisely because I recognize they manage to entertain an intererst in, and display a notably capacity for mastering, things that I know are beyond me. In any case I could never temperamentally sit in potentially longterm punitive judgment on other people's behaviour, though it is necessary and I have always thought any perceived abuse if recurrent should just lead to successive weeklong blocks, until the abusive editor stopped, or stopped wasting their time on wikipedia. Nishidani (talk) 05:44, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Since I now have the attention of three technically very able editors, I note that at that, is it, ARCA proposal page, a notable number of established editors, whom I've never noticed contributing to the IP areas, are hammering away, piling on the page a boilerplate complaint of the type: the 'there is a gaggle of domineering bludgeoning uncivil longterm editors who drive out prospective editors by intimidation and harassment and they are all untouchable'. I've heard that same lament hundreds of times for aboutr 14 years. This is the meme/tripe we get on off-wiki political hate sites, and inverts, by an extreme caricatural dumbingdown of the area's inevitable complexities the paranoid hypothesis-of-the-Protocols-of-Zion type. Put bluntly, the 'Jew(i)s(h elders) control the media' crap has become a 'pro-Palestinian gang of longterm editors have taken over wikipedia to smear Israel/Jews' claim. No evidence is given: it is just being repeated as though it were an established truth, which even some admins accept. The ARCA stuff is about some ostensible new crisis in the I/P editing area since October 7 deserving one more Arbcom case.

Now there is one empirical way to test this hypothesis. Since 7 October, literally dozens of articles have been created to cover its various angles in the I/P area. I've edited very few, but I bookmark them, and have noted that the number of editors is dauntingly large, almost all new to the area. My impression is that ANI/AE has very few reports of misbehaviour for these scores and scores of new editors, probably because there's nothing to report. I would very much doubt, also, whether the named mafia of domineering IP pro Pal pricks has had any notable presence throughout the creation and editing of those pages. So .. . it would be interesting for those of you who have mastered the technical wikitools to (a) see if one can list the new IP articles created from 7 October down to today (b) count the number of editors and the respective number of their edits working those pages (c) so that one can get a picture of whether this standard complaint applies there. (d) and determine what relation the lie/meme being bruited about, of a hostile mob of oldies intimidating newbies holds water anywhere in those articles- To that end I'll post a collection of 100 articles on my page, if anyone cares to use the wikitooks to extract whatever patterns relevant to this case may emerge.Nishidani (talk) 14:43, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

That should be a simple quarry query; if someone else doesn't beat me to it, I should be able to get that for you in the next couple of days. BilledMammal (talk) 14:48, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, here's the minimum list rounded off to 100. Good luck with it. Nishidani (talk) 14:58, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

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)
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)
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