Forum:Sock puppet contributions

In the past few weeks we've had several "new" contributors that behaved strangely. I took the liberty to have one of them checked, and it turned out that at least six accounts are linked to a known contributor.

The accounts in question are:
 * Vedek Dukat (main account)
 * Dumar
 * Ferenginar
 * Halali
 * Holdun
 * Makon
 * Spaceballstheuser

I banned the six "sock puppet" accounts permanently, and blocked the main account for one week because of the overall disruption. Should anyone disagree with that decision, please bring it up here for discussion.

Also, while not all of the contributions made by these accounts are disrupting or vandalistic, all of them should still be checked for validity, and eventually be edited, rephrased or reverted if they turn out to not be... please help with that task. -- Cid Highwind 23:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I've finished going through Dumar, Halali, Holdun, and Spaceballstheuser looking for vandalistic edits, and think I have them all there. Some of the edits made by these accounts (such as jingle) may still need to be looked at/re-written, but don't seem vandalistic outright. I also looked at Makon, but that is a far older account (with edits back to 2005), so I only looked at the recent 2007 edits. I haven't looked at either Vedek Dukat or Ferenginar, but at least with the latter case I had been monitoring many of his edits already as many of them were questionable the entire time.
 * These accounts still need to be looked at, I only went through for the obvious stuff. Less obvious stuff, like jingle, may still be vandalistic, but especially if it is from Voyager (which I still have not seen much of), I may not catch it. --OuroborosCobra talk 00:05, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I checked the jingle page. It, at least, seems accurate. B'Elanna did make a comment about finding jingles (and indeed, TV advertising) confusing. She said some words to this effect after giving Tom the antique TV in their quarters. She had found some cartoons in the database to program into the set and had included authentic ads as well. - Bridge 01:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * "I took the liberty to have one of them checked" - how does that work? What was checked? Did you have to ask Wikia for the check? What was the evidence linking those accounts? Thanks, Cid 76.254.85.135 02:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)


 * As a bureaucrat, Cid is in close contact with the Wikia staff. They informed him that these accounts were most likely all being used by the same user. -- Sulfur 02:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe they do it by a checkuser, which tells them the IP address being used by the various accounts. --OuroborosCobra talk 02:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

What they said. It's a tool available to Wikia staff, which checks for potential relations between different accounts. It checks for more than just the same IP address. What exactly, I don't know - but to be honest, if I knew I surely wouldn't tell. I think it is enough to know that it is reliable, that it worked here, and that it hopefully will work again in similar cases in the future. -- Cid Highwind 13:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)


 * this individuals a known vandal --Chip2007


 * That would tend to be the jist of the above discussion from 2 months ago... --OuroborosCobra talk 20:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)