The following discussion is an archived debate of the case of suspected sockpuppetry. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page. All edits should go to the talk page of this case. If you are seeing this page as a result of an attempt to open a new case of sockpuppetry of the same user, read this for detailed instructions.

User:Fnagaton[edit]

Suspected sockpuppeteer

Fnagaton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Suspected sockpuppets

DavidPaulHamilton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)


Report submission by

Omegatron (talk) 16:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence

User:Fnagaton is an account used predominantly to argue about a single section of the Manual of Style guidelines on units,[1][2]. This section is heavily disputed, but he uses his own interpretation of it as justification to engage in tendentious editing across many articles, changing all units to his preferred style. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] Other users have been banned for similar behavior.

He has been caught using sockpuppets in the past, and I believe he is continuing to abuse them, both to circumvent WP:3RR and to give the impression of more support for a viewpoint than actually exists. I alluded to this in a previous discussion, but since this user is familiar with the use of Tor and open proxies to evade detection, I doubt there will be any IP evidence, so I have tried to gather a significant amount of circumstantial evidence before bringing this up.

Specifically, I believe User:DavidPaulHamilton is a sock of Fnagaton for the following reasons:

I am not the first to make this accusation.[33][34][35]

Comments
  • Help:CheckUser works on IP addresses. An individual using Tor or another proxy system can defeat checkuser. As Fnagaton himself noted, Dmcdevit apparently indicated to Kwsn that QuinellaAlethea was a sock of Fnagaton. As Kwsn said, "QuinellaAlethea has been blocked indefinitely for being a sock of User:Fnagaton". That is consistent with QuinellaAlethea's edit history, which consists largely of reverting edits by NotSarenne (who was identified as a sock of Sarenne, a long-time enemy of Fnagaton). Most of these reverted edits were replies to comments by Fnagaton. Apparently QuinellaAlethea decided that NotSarenne was "not allowed to reply to" Fnagaton. That sort of thing also seems to be something of a Fnagaton-ism. Additionally, I should note that HyperColony was engaged in essentially identical edits over the same period of time, but (as noted on the linked ANI page) was on Tor. And while I'm here, I should also note that starting a large number of replies with "you are wrong" (and simple permutations thereof) is actually pretty uncommon. It is a factual statement that Fnagaton does so much more frequently than your average editor. You may judge the significance of that as you like. — Aluvus t/c 05:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The evidence that HyperColony was a sock of NotSarenne was that they had edited the same articles, and literally nothing else. That's no surprise, since the only thing HyperColony was doing was reverting edits by NotSarenne. That is spectacularly weak evidence that HyperColony was a sock of NotSarenne (but good evidence that HyperColony was being disruptive). That same test indicated that QuinellaAlethea was also a sock of NotSarenne, but QuinellaAlethea was blocked for being your sock based (apparently) on a checkuser. Kwsn was pretty specific: "QuinellaAlethea has been blocked indefinitely for being a sock of User:Fnagaton". And lastly, 15k instances out of (at a guess) probably 500k or more Talk pages and probably millions (or tens of millions) of edits... is not a high frequency. — Aluvus t/c 01:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fnagaton's behavior is exactly like that of User:Bobblewik and User:Sarenne before they were blocked; a sweeping campaign of edits to change units to his preferred style. He knows very well that his edits are controversial and that there is no consensus for them, but he continues to make them, and even revert war over them, despite being told not to. I honestly don't know how he's lasted this long, considering his editing pattern and attitude.
I've never assumed bad faith on the part of Fnagaton. Assuming good faith is all about motives, and I know that he thinks he's improving the encyclopedia with his edit campaign. But this isn't about motives; it's about actions, and Fnagaton's actions are disruptive and harmful to the project.
I'd also like to see a checkuser, though again, I suspect it won't find anything, which is why I spent a lot of time digging up other forms of evidence. Also, Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser says "Checkuser is a last resort for difficult cases. Whenever possible, use other methods first." So I think we're supposed to try it this way first, anyway. — Omegatron (talk) 22:50, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Attacking Omegatron's motivations does not do anything to indicate you are not operating a sockpuppet. I have privately expressed to Omegatron my concerns that DavidPaulHamilton might be your sockpuppet. The account showed up when you had indicated you were away (but continued to make edits). The account's edits (including that first one) have consistently supported your position. While the account's first edit preceded your first direct comment on that matter, your first comment agreed with his. Even the incident you cite when the account reverted one of your edits, the reverted version of the text agrees with what you had argued on the Talk page and had previously argued for months. The account has edited a number of pages related to binary prefixes but made only trivial changes to articles on other topics (generally linking single words; sometimes linking bare years despite, ironically, what MOSNUM says about that), which sockpuppets sometimes do. There were also IP edits [43] [44] made when you stated you were away that I believe you made (the first calls up obscure details you had previously used to attack Omegatron, the second makes the same nebulous "does not have consensus" claim that you have used repeatedly). In short, the evidence Omegatron has provided is certainly not airtight, but little if anything that you have provided actually suggests that he is wrong. — Aluvus t/c 06:59, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As you say the evidence Omegatron as provided is not airtight, that's why a check user is needed. The first edit you claim was an IP edit is an edit by you and does not "calls up obscure details you had previously used to attack Omegatron" and the second edit doesn't look like my home or work IP address. As for Omegatron's accusations of disruptive editing and "Fnagaton's behavior is exactly like that of User:Bobblewik" this is not the first time he has made bad faith accusations (as can be seen just above the quote I will make below) and in reply I will quote the comments from an uninvolved unbiased editor (SMcCandlish) and someone who attempted to mediate the situation. "The fact that Fnagaton is passionate about this issue, as others have been before (on both sides) has nothing to do with the validity of their arguments either way. Having been accused of WP:DE simply for being passionate and steadfast myself in the past, I sympathize in a Voltaire way - I defend Fnagaton's right to express what he is thinking (civilly), but if I disagree with his logic I'll certainly say so, since that's where the reason in argument is. Debate by flamethrowing is unproductive pen...sword-waving. I.e., everybody please chill"[45]. Since SMcCandish is uninvolved and has pointed out that I am not being disruptive yet Omegatron who disagrees with my work on MOSNUM makes accusations of being disruptive and threats about blocking then on balance who is most likely to be correct? SMcCandish of course, which means Omegatron is demonstrating bad faith bias by continuing with his accusations of disruption and obviously means that my behaviour is not like BobbleWik of Sarenne. Checking Omegatron's edit history, I also note this recent edit by Omegatron to someone elses talk page but Omegatron has still not followed procedure to place accusation warnings on the reported user's talk pages. This means DPH is most likely still unaware of these accusations and that is not following procedure. Not following procedure and placing a comment on an uninvolved editor's talk can be seen as attempts to garner support to unfairly alter the outcome of this report. I feel that the accusations here are nothing more than bad faith personal opinion and what Omegatron cites has been shown to be false, for example the editing times and the banned sock puppet user's accusations. That's why a check user should be used, to avoid the potential for Omegatron's personal feelings to cloud the issue. Fnagaton 08:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I linked to my response to the first IP edit that you presumably made. The original edit was here. The IP editor never responded to my calling him Fnagaton, but you responded in a way that suggests you were that IP editor. I must say that your repeated attacks on Omegatron have utterly no relevance here. The question here is whether you have been operating a sockpuppet. No matter how much you may accuse Omegatron of failing to assume good faith, that does not in any way contradict the evidence that he has presented. You cannot prove yourself innocent by trying to prove someone else guilty. Additionally, you cannot prove yourself innocent through checkuser. Checkuser may prove (or at least very strongly suggest) that one account is tied to another, but it cannot prove that the accounts are unrelated. — Aluvus t/c 02:24, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
At this point, following on from accusations of being disruptive, I'll quote Septentrionalis from here "And yes, Fnagaton is often aggressive; but not as much as you are. Still, you are both more constructive than Omegatron " because the editor is relatively uninvolved and chose to comment, just like Greg did, when he saw an injustice. Fnagaton 09:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]


The evidence may not be airtight, but I think it's more conclusive than most.

And it's not just one phrase. His incessant repetition of "you are wrong" is just the most obvious example for someone who hasn't interacted with him regularly (and these examples only scrape the surface). It's very apparent to me from the writing style of everything he says that these two accounts are controlled by the same person. Please read through their talk page contribs and decide for yourself.


You are wrong. I am not Sarenne. I never was Sarenne. That was just a tactical rumour spread by Fnagaton to destroy my reputation. I'm pleased to hear you're amused about my comments. You know just as well as I do that I've used "You are wrong." and "There is consensus" to make fun of certain people's habits. You recently claimed yourself that it's perfectly fine to ridicule other's positions. I doubt that's the spirit of Wikipedia but if you, as one of the most uncivil editors around, has this right, then everyone is allowed the same including my very self. I also find something "amusing". That is, I am blocked due to false accusations under as much evidence as there is against Fnagaton that is none of any worth. In my case, hearsay and obvious laid out false evidence by Tor-driven sockpuppets lead to an indefinite ban of my previous account - and many other's who were never under my control or anyone person I know. Fnagaton and a few other seem to be immune against any honest accusation like frequent edit warring, uncivil behavior and treating any opposing individual as someone's sockpuppets acting with bad faith - if the circumstances permit. That Fnagaton attracts all these Tor accounts is certainly odd. Even when Fnagaton was caught red-handed using a sockpuppet, there was no block, no follow-up, no nothing whereas the other party (NotSarenne) was banned despite the fact that both of these puppets were actually acting NotSarenne obviously after Fnagaton and his friends had run out of measures and arguments. No matter what side anyone is really on, it is quite clear that some cabals are quite busy and effective. There is consensus. I am not Fnagaton because Fnagaton is ON HOLIDAY! Duh! --217.87.125.197 (talk) 22:45, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very well. This is all getting a bit off the topic Omegatron is complaining about, except that the two of you don’t like Fnagaton one single bit. I accept your most strident point above (Sarenne and NotSarenne are not the same) as being true. As a matter of fact, I received an e-mail on May 2, 2008, 12:53:01 PM PDT, from a dot-France e-mail address from someone identifying himself as the real Sarenne. In part, he wrote as follows:

Please stop mentioning me on Wikipedia. I have not edited en-wikipedia since may 26th 2006 and I've never edited Wikipedia anonymously. The IP "217.87.66.230" (from a german ISP) is the user that was using the account "NotSarenne" and, again, he is not me and i don't know who he is. I don't care if you accuse *him* of being disruptive but stop mentionning me ! I have *nothing* to do with what is going on since may 26th 2007.

So, it appears that Sarenne is from France and was the individual responsible for changing hundreds of Wikipedia articles to Omegatron’s IEC prefixes. It appears also that NotSarenne is “217.87…”, (and his very many socks) is from Hamburg Germany. It is also clear that “217.87…” doesn’t like Fnagaton and bitterly complains of imbalanced treatment. I will remind the IP user from Hamburg that so long as you resort to anonymous, disruptive editing, and continue to flout the rules of Wikipedia, it will always apear—from your perspective—that you are getting the short end of the stick in your battles with registered editors like Fnagaton. Every single time you registered under a new name, you didn’t edit with it for six days to season it so it was no longer a “new” account. And the very first thing you would then do is edit disruptively, get reverted 4+ times, and then go slyly complain on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR about “3RR violations”. You repeatedly made those registered users who reverted you have to jump through administrative hoops to defend themselves. It appears you believe this to be sport. I recently deleted an utterly meaningless and disruptive post from you, and your response was to vandalize Talk:MOSNUM by deleting a perfectly valid post from me. Omegatron needs allies the likes of editors such as yourself like he needs a hole in his head. If you want to have some influence here on Wikipedia and be treated “fairly”, please register and behave yourself. Greg L (talk) 18:22, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, it speaks for you that you believe that I'm not Sarenne. I would have been satisfied with respect to these accusations if the involved people had at least accepted that there was never sufficient evidence to come such a conclusion. It also speaks for you that you consider the mail you apparently received from the real Sarenne as authentic. Last time this was assumed to be a sick joke. It's not true though that I had created sleeper accounts. If I created an account, I made edits right away whether related to MOSNUM or not. I don't accept the accusation of using sockpuppets though because I never used multiple accounts at a time. Any reverts or edit were no more blunt than those of still unblocked editors who frequently reverted my edits just because it was me. Likewise these people have the right to accuse me of whatever they want and then revert my responses to these accusations over and over again as "vandalism" and like-wise incorrect as well as deceptive edit summaries. The sleeper accounts weren't mine and I have nothing to do with them. Neither do I know who controls them. If Sarenne is really as tired of this as the mail implies, I doubt that these accounts were his. Maybe there's some invicible third making fun of both sides by stirring things up or someone's mind is severely twisted. It is also not true that I slyly complained 3RR violations on ANI. I might have complained about 3RR violations once but only have Fnagaton and others had used this policy against me numerous times - usually by teaming up so that every individual reverted only once or twice but I undid their reverts or reverted thrice. Nobody ever cared that they weren't giving reasons at all for their reverts or making invalid accusations of vandalism. Fnagaton frequently uses "rvv" as short for "revert vandalism" where no vandalism is involved in any way whatsoever. It's also funny what you call "utterly meaningless and disruptive". If you didn't understand the meaning, you're free to ask. If someone suggests one thing, everyone may very well suggest the opposite. There's no requirement to log-in or create an account to edit Wikipedia and Tony

provided no arguments for such an requirement for MOSNUM. The toxicity has been severe there ever since mostly due to editors with accounts. Seeing one's IP address might even make it easier to detect sockpuppets, so accounts are rather counter-productive, especially if you consider the existing sleep account. "check user" is apparently mostly IP address based too, so I don't see any point in his suggestion. Last but not least, there have been far more disruptive and uncivil comments from others including you and yes me too. So that's a really poor example. I doubt I'm going to register any account again. I registered NotSarenne on demand by Fnagaton and as you can see it didn't help at all - and no a more neutral username wouldn't have made much of a difference. --217.87.58.139 (talk) 20:52, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Shalom: Omegatron has asked me twice to look at this. I've been busy, but I managed to find an hour on a Sunday afternoon to answer his request.

Unfortunately, I can't firmly determine this case one way or the other. I ran an offdays analysis to see on which days each of the two accounts edited, starting on March 23, 2008, when DavidPaulHamilton first edited. The curious result was that, if the same person is operating both accounts, that person has edited every single day since then. Such consistency is not unheard-of, but it is cause for reasonable doubt. Also, Fnagaton has not edited in the last two weeks since May 12, when he was answering this case. I have no idea why he suddenly took a two-week break (maybe longer if it continues). No doubt his detractors will interpret it as an admission of guilt. The last time Fnagaton took a break of significant length was from March 7 to March 14 (he placed a "wikibreak" template on March 7). The last time before that was between February 22 and March 1, this time unannounced. There was a five-day break in late January and an extended period of light activity in November-December 2007. I won't go back in time further than that. Fnagaton has established, over a long period of time, that he has no interest in editing Wikipedia every single day. I would be surprised if he suddenly changed his habits.

Yet, stranger things have happened. Fnagaton's obsession with the Manual of Style on dates and numbers goes back to November 2007 and possibly earlier. Certainly he had a motive to bring a sockpuppet into the discussion, and he has done so in the past according to Kwsn. That doesn't mean DavidPaulHamilton is a sockpuppet: if we get this wrong, it's unfair to DavidPaulHamilton and to Fnagaton. I looked for instances where both users participated in the same discussion in a close proximity of time. I found these edits on 4 May 2008:

I've never trusted linguistic analysis as a tool for determining sockpuppets, but for whatever it's worth, the congruences of opinion and style might be from the same person. Moreover, it's true that DavidPaulHamilton has devoted a large chunk of his edits, including his first edits from 23 March to 7 April, and all of his edits between 14 May and 25 May (today), to this talk page. I don't lightly say that any pattern of editing by a newbie screams sockpuppet, but this is really odd.

Bottom line: I don't feel there's quite enough evidence to block DavidPaulHamilton as a sockpuppet, but if an administrator who reviews this case thinks there is enough evidence, I will support his or her decision. I'll ask User talk:Rlevse to make a final decision. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 18:38, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Contributions of DavidPaulHamilton and Fnagaton:

Unfortunately the standard of debate about sockpuppets has not been very high recently:

I was active on MOSNUM but I am now staying away. Debate and policy change is now dominated by accounts that are:

If F has now become D, then that is fine but simultaneous lobbying from two accounts is not. Lightmouse (talk) 10:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions

Just looking at DPH's contribs alone is very convincing that he's a sock/SPA. Coupled with the other evidence, I've indef blocked him. That leaves us with the question: Is Fnagaton his master? I think it highly probable. People have been indef blocked with less evidence and had it stick. Here, the solid evidence (I'm ignoring the massive amount of hyperbole herein) is rather convincing, yet there is enough evidence on the "not sock" side to just strongly warn Fnagaton. What happens now could be quite informative. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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