User talk:Dominic

Hi. According to Kimberly Ashton's homepage, InsertNameHere was her brother, which mught explain why they look like sockpuppets. Could you give me a link to what they did that was disruptive? Thanks Blockinblox 00:37, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, it took me a while, but I did my own detective work and finally found the story here: en:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Editor who self-identifies as 14 with massive amounts of personal data

There should have been a link to this discussion instead of simply appearing out of the blue and blocking... I take it the consensus over there, is that anyone who claims to be a minor and gives out that much personal information is really an agent deliberately trying to make trouble...... Blockinblox 01:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I meant to come back to this. The problem is not that it was a minor (though that could be a problem). We were initially concerned that there was a minor giving out very much personal information—full name, location, pictures, etc.—but it quickly became apparent that this person was not who she claimed she was. CheckUser showed that she was the same as at least five distinct accounts of supposedly minor girls (and a "brother") giving out personal information. All different personal information. They were all being used for social networking. They're all fabricated identities and it is very possible we were being malicious intentions. I think the userpage of Kimberly Ashton should be blanked as well (do you have a standard template for blocked users? I couldn't find one) but it was protected so I couldn't do it myself. Thanks. Dmcdevit 02:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you need to explain how you came to this conclusion via CheckUser. Was this simply an IP match? Why couldn't 5 different young adults all edit fromt he same IP, such as a library, school, or home? I do not like that this decision was forced on us here at Simple, where these accounts have done nothing overtly disruptive (though I agree there were not very contributory). Who authorized your temporary sysop privileges for this purpose? Why did you not contact one of our Administrators? -- Netoholic @ 02:48, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you know that it is customary to give out as little infomation as possible when making CheckUser judgments, so as to avoid releasing personally identifiable information. I am guaranteeing you, based on the clear IP evidence, and the evidence of the disruption on the IP across multiple projects, that this was no innocent group of young people; it is one person. Simple doesn't have a checkuser, and any IP checking needs to be done by an temporary permissions change, which only a steward can perform. I'm not sure why you ask me that. Contacting an admin was not a possibility, there are no local CheckUsers. And in any case, I'm not sure what the problem is. Nothing was forced upon you; rather, after this was uncovered, people were sought out to help root it out of Commons and Simple as well. It feels like I just spent a lot of time sorting this out and helping out for the good of the project just to be met with the hostility of territorial local users, and not the troll itself. How sad. Dmcdevit 06:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was asking why you didn't seek out an admin here for the blocks, not the CheckUser. I still find the evidence inconclusive with respect to Simple, as we have only two users (and their IP) and neither have been obviously disruptive on this project. -- Netoholic @

Actually if you check out the associated IP's edits, someone using that IP was mostly disruptive, mainly vandalising pages that were then reverted by Kimberly Ashton. And looking at all of the user pages on en: that were apparently tracked to this IP, one claimed to be in Toronto, one in Texas, and one in California, which doesn't seem like an above-board group of kids sharing a computer. They almost all were posing as waifs who speak either Croatian, Spanish or French as a first language, and most of their edits were talk page messages of the type "Oh thank you so much for welcoming me! I am a lonely 14 year old waif with personality problems, who speaks English as a second language! Here is my picture! Is there anything you would like me to "do" for you in gratitude?" If you ask me, this has no more place here than on en: and the block was probably for the best... Blockinblox 15:55, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]