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Forum:Anons and mysteriously appearing voters: help or advice?
Forums > Administrators' noticeboard archive > Anons and mysteriously appearing voters: help or advice?
This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus Track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. jSarek 05:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not an administrator here, and my management of the QOTD section is strictly amateur, so when I occasionally run into an anonymous repeat voter or an identified voter whose only interest seems to be the QOTD thread, I don't really know how to handle it. Is there some way to check on their IP addresses or something to make sure they're not sock puppets? Enochf 23:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
- The only tool that is able to do that is CheckUser, and due to privacy concerns, only Wikia staff have access to it. During similar situations in the past, we have normally considered the votes of single issue voters to be invalid and struck them. StarNeptuneTalk to me! 10:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
- Well, how about this problem? I'd like to keep a prolific voter, but I need to know if the voter is legitimate. Enochf 04:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
- Argh, now there are some quotes that are +10... if you count his votes. That puts us in the uncomfortable position of having to decide the legitimacy of his votes, and quick. Enochf 09:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- Well, I'd give it until March 8 (one month from the day he joined up). If he fails to edit anything other than QOTD by then, we ask Wikia to perform a CheckUser on him to make sure he's not somebody's sockpuppet. Judging by the dates on the contribs, it certainly looks like sockpuppet behavior. StarNeptuneTalk to me! 10:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- EDIT: On closer inspection, it appears that page is rife with single issue voters/possible sockpuppets. I'm not going to bother Wikia for CheckUsers on them all (and there are quite a few), so the only other thing I can think of is maybe propose a new rule stating that unless you have actually made (or are planning to make) contributions to other parts of the site, don't vote as it will be removed? We have a similar rule over on VfD, and it seemed to cut down on single issue voting over there. StarNeptuneTalk to me! 11:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- I dunno about "rife." There are a lot of one-stop folks, and I keep on top of those. Another possible sockpuppet is this one, just judging by the single-mindedness of the voting history. Enochf 11:18, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- I've no objection to running a few checkusers in situations like this, sometimes a bit of a check and a few bans can persuade people to play fair. On the one Enochf mentioned... there's nothing there to suggest sockpuppeting in this case (which doesn't totally rule it out, people can act in ways to make sure it doesn't show, but makes it more unlikely). -- Sannse 12:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, CheckUser is the only way we can be sure, but I suspect a lot of them aren't sockpuppets, just people who have an unhealthy obsession with QotD (no offence, Enochf). If Sannse is willing to run CheckUsers that's great but we probably do need to decide whether to let votes from non-sockpuppets stand or to do what StarNeptune suggested and eliminate votes if you don't contribute elsewhere. Green Tentacle (Talk) 12:26, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- My general attitude is that it doesn't matter if they're sockpuppets or not. If you're not going to contribute to the actual encyclopedia, go home. If they're only here to vote on quotes, they shouldn't count. Same with anyone who just votes on VFDs, or only posts in the Senate Hall, or only makes userpage and usertalk edits. If they're not going to do the work, they don't get the perks. No votes. Havac 19:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- I tend to agree with StarNeptune's suggestion of just putting some kind of notice on the QotD page, and delete votes if the registered user doesn't contribute elsewhere on Wookieepedia. - JMAS 20:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- My general attitude is that it doesn't matter if they're sockpuppets or not. If you're not going to contribute to the actual encyclopedia, go home. If they're only here to vote on quotes, they shouldn't count. Same with anyone who just votes on VFDs, or only posts in the Senate Hall, or only makes userpage and usertalk edits. If they're not going to do the work, they don't get the perks. No votes. Havac 19:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, CheckUser is the only way we can be sure, but I suspect a lot of them aren't sockpuppets, just people who have an unhealthy obsession with QotD (no offence, Enochf). If Sannse is willing to run CheckUsers that's great but we probably do need to decide whether to let votes from non-sockpuppets stand or to do what StarNeptune suggested and eliminate votes if you don't contribute elsewhere. Green Tentacle (Talk) 12:26, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- I've no objection to running a few checkusers in situations like this, sometimes a bit of a check and a few bans can persuade people to play fair. On the one Enochf mentioned... there's nothing there to suggest sockpuppeting in this case (which doesn't totally rule it out, people can act in ways to make sure it doesn't show, but makes it more unlikely). -- Sannse 12:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- I dunno about "rife." There are a lot of one-stop folks, and I keep on top of those. Another possible sockpuppet is this one, just judging by the single-mindedness of the voting history. Enochf 11:18, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- EDIT: On closer inspection, it appears that page is rife with single issue voters/possible sockpuppets. I'm not going to bother Wikia for CheckUsers on them all (and there are quite a few), so the only other thing I can think of is maybe propose a new rule stating that unless you have actually made (or are planning to make) contributions to other parts of the site, don't vote as it will be removed? We have a similar rule over on VfD, and it seemed to cut down on single issue voting over there. StarNeptuneTalk to me! 11:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- Well, I'd give it until March 8 (one month from the day he joined up). If he fails to edit anything other than QOTD by then, we ask Wikia to perform a CheckUser on him to make sure he's not somebody's sockpuppet. Judging by the dates on the contribs, it certainly looks like sockpuppet behavior. StarNeptuneTalk to me! 10:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- Argh, now there are some quotes that are +10... if you count his votes. That puts us in the uncomfortable position of having to decide the legitimacy of his votes, and quick. Enochf 09:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- I'd be up for a reorg of the QOTD section with new rules for participation. In the meantime I'll just count the tagged users normally. They're not disruptive, and it's not like we've got ten suspicious voters successfully getting things like "poopy poopy poopy" on the front page. Enochf 23:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- It's a good thing we've ruled out Wookieepedian quotes for QotD, because I now know what I'd be voting for otherwise, and it isn't pretty. ;-) Seriously, though, I think a rule of "you must be a registered editor BEFORE a given quote/issue/whatever is raised for your vote to count" should cut down on sockpuppets; if that doesn't cut down enough noncontributing voters, then add a contribution requirement, too. jSarek 06:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
