Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:44, 30 August 2010

– This SPI case is closed and will be archived shortly by an SPI clerk or checkuser.

Captain Occam

Captain Occam (talk · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

For archived investigations, see Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Captain Occam/Archive.

29 August 2010

Suspected sockpuppets

• Ferahgo the Assassin (talk · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

Evidence submitted by Muntuwandi

Captain Occam recently received a topic ban from Arbcom. Immediately after the topic ban was issued, Ferhago the Assassin, an account who is apparently known to Captain Occam in real life, took an interest in editing race and intelligence articles. Ferhago the Assassin has since engaged in a pattern of editing that is very similar to Captain Occam's. Discussions with much of the evidence can be found at Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Proposed_decision#Meat and Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Captain_Occam. Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin have claimed to edit independently, a checkuser may be useful in determining the degree of independence of these two editors. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam states "Ferahgo has been registered at Misplaced Pages since 2008". According to Captain Occam's log, he registered his account on 11 November 2006 at 05:18. According to Ferhago the Assassin's log, the user registered their account on 11 November 2006 at 06:01. Wapondaponda (talk) 01:01, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

@Occam, too much information, we don't need to know all your personal details. The arbcom enforcement case only needs to establish whether Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin should be treated as a single entity. Behaviorally it has already been established that the two accounts are highly coordinated. What we don't know is whether this coordination is due to meatpuppetry, sockpuppetry or some combination of meatpuppetry and sockpuppetry. The decision of whether or not to consider the two accounts as one is indeed a big one, I believe that even the behavioral evidence alone is sufficient to make a decision. But maybe the arbiters would require more certainty, and a checkuser can provide some information that could assist the arbiters make their decision. Wapondaponda (talk) 07:26, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties   

See Defending yourself against claims.

This is bordering on harassment. Less than a day ago, Muntuwandi posted an arbitration enforcement request stating that he believes it to be a violation of my topic ban for Ferahgo the Assassin to edit race-related articles, and this SPI is being requested before the arbitration enforcement request has received any response from an administrator. As Ferahgo stated in their evidence for the arbitration case here, over the past several months they’ve several times expressed interest in participating in these articles, but have been repeatedly driven off by accusations of being a sockpuppet or meatpuppet. A large portion of this behavior originally came from Mathsci, who’s now been topic banned for this and other personal attacks. I think it’s understandable that Ferahgo would be more interested in editing these articles in Mathsci’s absence than they had been previously, but in response to this other editors seem to be stepping up their attempts to drive Ferahgo off.

Ferahgo has been registered at Misplaced Pages since 2008 2006, which was before either they or I had any involvement in race-related articles, and during the time since then the vast majority of their edits have had nothing to do with the topics that I’ve been involved in. If you compare their editing history to mine, the only article on which they’ve overlapped is Marquand Park, which can be explained by the fact that we’re both familiar with this park because we live in the same area. If Ferahgo and I had not been honest about knowing each other off-Wiki for the sake of full disclosure, there would not be any evidence of them being a sockpuppet or meatpuppet other than the fact that they’ve expressed some interest in editing race-related articles and have a viewpoint similar to mine, which is also true of at least six other users. (None of which have been accused or suspected of being socks.)

Another problem with Checkuser being used here is that since this user and I live in the same area and know each other in real life, there have almost certainly been examples of us participating in Misplaced Pages from computers in the same network. In other words, this is a situation where checkuser probably will not be useful in determining whether this user is a sockpuppet, because there is likely to be some overlap between the IP addresses from which they and I have edited regardless of whether or not sockpuppetry has actually occurred. In order for administrators to evaluate whether this is a case of sockpuppetry, they should consider some of the other criteria listed in this essay. As far as I know, Ferahgo and I meet almost none of these criteria. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:16, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Note to patrolling admin: if the “duck test” is going to be applied to this case, I think Ferahgo’s and my editing histories deserve attention here. If this user really is a sockpuppet, it’s a sockpuppet that’s being used to edit almost none of the same articles as me.

I also should mention something that maybe I should have mentioned before, which is that each of us also has separate accounts at other websites, and had them a long time before joining Misplaced Pages. Ferahgo’s userpage links to her DeviantArt account, which her profile there states that she’s had since 2004, and mine is here, also registered since 2004. If someone needs confirmation that these accounts actually belong to us, both of them contain artwork that we’ve also uploaded at Misplaced Pages: and in my case, as well as and in hers. Her username at DeviantArt is identical to the one she uses at Misplaced Pages, while the comics in my DeviantArt account show where my own Misplaced Pages username comes from. If admins are going to consider blocking both of us based on circumstantial evidence that we’re the same person, it would be nice if they could glance over the six years of artwork and biographical information in both of these accounts, and see whether it looks like the same person really is responsible for the art and writing in both of them.

I wish I’d known that Ferahgo joined Misplaced Pages on the same day as me, because I understand why that looks suspicious. Before today, I really was under the impression that she hadn’t joined until 2008. But if administrators are willing to consider the off-Wiki evidence about our interactions at other websites, they might be able to understand the reason for this. I’ve been reluctant to actually state this before now, because users who’ve figured it out for themselves have frequently used it as ammunition for personal attacks, but when I’m faced with the prospect of being blocked on suspicion for sockpuppetry I may as well say it: Ferahgo is my girlfriend, and we’ve been living together since 2007. And if anyone suspects that I’m making this up now in order to cover my tracks, there are photographs of us dating back to 2007 in my DeviantArt account which state this: For most things that we participate in online, we participate in them together, even though we don’t always agree or have the same goals. And as can be seen in our DeviantArt accounts, this began before either of us joined Misplaced Pages, let alone began participating here. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:22, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

If checkuser is going to be used here, I’d like to clarify what you should expect to see if what I’ve said about this accurate. As I stated, Ferahgo and I live together, and our house has only one internet connection. Therefore, you should expect to see examples of her and me going online from the same network. However, since we did not start living together until 2007, there shouldn’t be any overlap in the IP addresses we were using at Misplaced Pages prior to that point, and neither of us will have used the IP that the other registered under. In addition to the IPs that we registered under, there also probably will be some North Carolina and/or Ohio IP addresses Ferahgo has edited under but that I’ve never used. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:12, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Comments by other users

@Wapondaponda: Occam assumed I registered in 2008 because that's the first time I used the account to edit. I don't remember this for sure, but I think I probably registered as a result of discussing his own interest in Misplaced Pages, which gave me the idea that I might enjoy editing here too. I don't think I even told him that I registered. We were both registered for around three years before we started interacting with each other on-site. It seems pretty implausible that he would register a sock account and then not use it for the next three years.

If someone really does bother running a checkuser, you will see that the accounts were registered under different IP addresses, since he lived in New Jersey at the time and I lived in Ohio. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:39, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments

•  Clerk declined -  Looks like a duck to me Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:55, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Clerk endorsed - If what Captain Occam says is true a CU should be able to verify it. Personally, I find the idea that someone who did not start editing in earnest until 2009 maintaining a sock from 2006 to be rather unlikely. Timotheus Canens (talk) 05:45, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I see no reason to doubt it, and I wouldn't be able to tell who sat behind whose PC when a particular edit was made.
    Which of course is part of the reason behind WP:SHARE: "Closely connected users may be considered a single user for Misplaced Pages's purposes if they edit with the same objectives." Ferahgo, you are essentially topic-banned from "race and intelligence related articles, broadly construed" along with Captain Occam. I would very strongly advise you to respect it, and to completely avoid getting into related same discussions or arguments. Amalthea 09:44, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

• Open SPI cases
• SPI cases awaiting archive