Template talk:Sockpuppet

Do we need this?
Is this really needed, except to spread rumors and paranoia throughout the community? --Gares Redstorm 15:03, 18 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Not at all. We are small enough for talk pages to do fine &mdash; Skuld  15:07, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * Yes it is needed. If the person who received the sockpuppet banner disagrees, he is free to remove it and fight it out in talk. Consensus and AGF is impossible in the presence of sockpuppets, so there has to be a way to flagging them. It is even more important for small wikis because consensus can be swayed easily by even one or two alternate identities. F G 15:15, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * i put one on my page. granted it points to itself, but i think it illustrates the point. this is someones bitter stab at someone else they don't like. a less caustic version would be an AKA tag. "this user is also known as 24.214.53.56" --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 15:47, 18 June 2006 (CDT)

If this will ever be used, it will most certainly NOT be slapped by one user on another user's page. It's like the easiest way to start a war. --Karlos 16:15, 18 June 2006 (CDT)
 * there seems to be very little shortage of that lately :( --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 16:33, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * Haven't you noticed that all these wars have involved Stabber? What was the last war that didn't involve him, hmmm? The adbrite one? The one with the firefox banner? I honestly can't remember another war started by a user on this wiki unless we go all the way back to Talk:Tank. F G 16:38, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * i don't think your war is helping matters, either. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 16:55, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * It is far, far too late for this particular matter to be helped. Give me my victory dance. I warned the wiki about Stabber once, but no one listened. Let there never again be doubt. F G 17:04, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * This wiki, however, is not about your victory dance. So, if your victory dance includes breaking wiki rules/disrupting the wiki yourself, you're just as bad as he other side you are trying to accuse. You seem to be very capable to lurking and stalking yourself, and when capable, you seem quite capable of abuse. Those qualities will not earn you much trust here nor much leeway. --Karlos 18:43, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * I find it a little disturbing that the user who is fighting Stabber and the sockpuppets and is now defeding this template is probably one of the sockpuppets. I also vote no for this template. I hate the warmongering and suspiciousness caused by all this. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] 19:01, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * I refuse to believe that F G is one of Stabbers sockpuppets. If I am wrong, than Karlos is probably right and someone is having a very hard laugh at us right now. --Xeeron 19:11, 18 June 2006 (CDT)

Arguement why this should be deleted
Quite simply, there is no use for it. Socketpuppery is definitly not a widespread phanomena and using a template to point it out invites abuse. Given that the template nesseccarily MUST be accompanied by explanation and prove on the talk page, we can also do away with the template and leave the explanation on the talk page. --Xeeron 19:11, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * I think this is why blatant voting (without rational) in this wiki is a bad idea. We should stick to facts, avoid having a herd mentality and not worry too much whether Stabber is Blabber or whatever. Just stick to the facts. If Stabber in one of his.her million personalities makes a good point (like s/he did with ZBoard) then we stick with the facts, regardless of the account used. --Karlos 21:17, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * In my opinion, this template should not be deleted. I disagree strongly with User:F G's witchhunt (and would support a ban on that user, except it would be pointless at this point), but he has produced at least a few nuggets of good information. In the future, confirmation of sockpuppetry should be left to the system administrators. With regard to the template, there should be a record of who is confirmed to be whose sockpuppet. It doesn't necessarily have to be with this template, though it is a simple and scalable method. I have argued in GuildWiki talk:Community Portal that confirmed sockpuppet accounts should be permanently banned, as they explicitly break community spirit and harm the goals of the GuildWiki project. Until that discussion is resolved, I would recommend the deletion debate be postponed. I would further urge User:Honorable Sarah to not use the template in jest, like she is at the moment. END OF TRANSMISSION Arrowsmith 22:08, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * For non-serious sockpuppeteers, it doesn't matter if we flag them or not. For serious ones, this will just make them hide their trail more carefully, and in cases where there is no hard proof, it will simply turn into a revert war.  Thus I don't see any benefit to come out of this.  I say we completely scrap the vote by numbers idea, and self-moderate on drama.  Confirming A is a sockpuppet of Z just means Z will just create a new sockpuppet B, and self-remind to only use account B on school library computers, account C on the computer from mom's office, nad always preview before saving.  - 22:19, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * I don't disagree with the effect of adding these flags on the flagged users, and I am under no illusion that this flag will end sockpuppetry, but my argument is that these flags serve a documentary purpose. It is not meant to address the flagged user, but instead to point out the confirmed sockpuppetry to everyone else. On which point, I believe this flag should only be added to confirmed sockpuppet accounts after those accounts have been permanently banned or their user pages protected. This concern is independent of building consensus or having straw polls or any other daily activity on the wiki. I would say that it just points out that the flagged user cannot be assumed to have good faith contributions. Arrowsmith 22:28, 18 June 2006 (CDT)
 * If the account is already banned, then I see no point in flagging it, unless you banned my account A and left the sockpuppet note on my Account Z, at which point I'll just go into a revert war with you until Z gets banned, then create a new account J. - 22:30, 18 June 2006 (CDT)


 * At the risk of overrepetition, I am not concerned about what the sockpuppeteer will do as a response to this flag. It is a documentation of a known sockpuppet account. Any future enquiry into an edit made by the sockpuppet account can be easily referenced to the right source. Without any sort of flag, there is no easy way to assign credit (or blame). Take the instance of User:Deldda Kcarc. Should User:Stabber ever return, should we ask questions about the former's edits of the latter, or not? How is a newcomer to the wiki to know that they are the same person? With regard to a puppeteer who explicitly wishes to obscure the trail, the wiki medium will never be able to handle that situation. In my opinion, it is not worth worrying about things we are fundamentally incapable of doing. Arrowsmith 22:38, 18 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Why does it even matter to a new user if DK and Stabber are same or different individuals, when the new user have to actually click on DK's user page (and not stabbers) to find out one is a puppet of the other? And in discussions/situations where it does matter, the sockpuppetry should be pointed out in the relavent discussion so there is no need to check the user page in the first place. - 23:04, 18 June 2006 (CDT)

Alternative...
There should be a template for users blocked on account of being sock puppets. Something like "Template: Blocked Sockpuppet". Its utility is that it flags accounts that have been officially declared sockpuppets, which makes resolving past editorial conflicts easier.

As for suspected sock puppets... change the template, turn it into a Talk page thing: instead of slapping it on a user page like some Scarlet A, turn it into a boilerplate for filing your greivances on the talk page. Or, barring that, remove it altogether. &mdash; 130.58 (talk) ( 23:17, 18 June 2006 (CDT) )
 * We would also need criteria for sockpuppeting. Does any use of multiple accounts count as offense (in which case I should be banned)?  Does only the use of inflating votes count as offense (which wouldn't matter if we are scrapping the Vote idea alltogetheer)? - 23:20, 18 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Having multiple accounts in plain view should be fine. Whether or not just maintaining multiple accounts secretly without using them to trash things is okay or not is really the only sticking point here. It's not a sockpuppet if you never pretend to be different people and slap a big "THIS IS ME" right on the user page for all to admire. &mdash; 130.58 (talk) ( 01:19, 19 June 2006 (CDT) )
 * To repeat a point I made in GuildWiki talk:Community Portal, the wikipedia policy WP:SOCK has a nice and sensible delineation of which situations should count as malicious sockpuppetry, and which situations shouldn't. Arrowsmith 01:25, 19 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Those seem sensible. A lot of the situations for acceptable anonymous puppetry, such as issue segregation, really shouldn't exist on Guildwiki (given that this is a small wiki about a video game, if you need to make a whole new persona to make a controversial edit, it probably doesn't belong here in the first place). I don't really see any reason to limit multiple openly linked accounts, though. &mdash; 130.58 (talk) ( 01:41, 19 June 2006 (CDT) )