{"id":3352,"date":"2015-04-23T10:50:29","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T09:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk\/policy\/?p=3352"},"modified":"2020-12-07T14:25:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T14:25:30","slug":"wikipedia-sockpuppetry-linking-accounts-to-real-people-is-pure-speculation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wikipedia-sockpuppetry-linking-accounts-to-real-people-is-pure-speculation\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia sockpuppetry: linking accounts to real people is pure speculation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conservative chairman Grant Shapps is accused of sockpuppetry on Wikipedia, but this former Wikipedia admin isn’t so sure the evidence stands up. Reposted from The Conversation<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wikipedia has become one of the most highly linked-to websites on the internet, with countless others using it as a reference. But it can be edited by anyone, and this has led to occasions where errors have been widely repeated \u2013 or where facts have been distorted to fit an agenda.<\/p>\n

The chairman of the UK\u2019s Conservative Party, Grant Shapps, has\u00a0been accused<\/a>\u00a0of editing Wikipedia pages related to him and his rivals within the party. The Guardian newspaper claims Wikipedia administrators blocked an account on suspicions that it was being used by Shapps, or someone in his employ.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia accounts are anonymous, so what is the support for these claims? Is it a case of fair cop or, as Shapps says in his defence, a smear campaign in the run-up to the election?<\/p>\n

Edits examined<\/h2>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time The Guardian has directed similar accusations against Shapps around edits to Wikipedia, with similar claims emerging in\u00a0September 2012<\/a>. The investigation examines a list of edits by three Wikipedia user accounts:\u00a0Hackneymarsh<\/a>,\u00a0Historyset<\/a>, and\u00a0Contribsx<\/a>, and several other edits from users without accounts, recorded only as their IP addresses \u2013 which the article claimed to be \u201clinked\u201d to Shapps.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"
Are you pointing at me? Grant Shapps.\u00a0Hannah McKay\/PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Hackneymarsh account made 12 edits in a short period in May 2010. The Historyset account made five edits in a similar period. All the edits recorded by IP addresses date to between 2008 and 2010. Most recently, the\u00a0Contribsx<\/a>\u00a0account has been active from August 2013 to April 2015.<\/p>\n

First of all, it is technically impossible to conclusively link any of those accounts or IP addresses to a real person. Of course you can speculate \u2013 and in this case it\u2019s clear that these accounts seem to demonstrate great sympathy with Shapps based on the edits they\u2019ve made. But no further information about the three usernames can be made public by the Wikimedia Foundation, as per its privacy policies.<\/p>\n

However, the case is different for the IP addresses. Using\u00a0GeoIP<\/a>\u00a0or similar tools it\u2019s possible to look up the IP addresses and locate them with a fair degree of accuracy to some region of the world. In this case London, Cleethorpes, and in the region of Manchester.<\/p>\n

So, based on the publicly available information from ordinary channels, there is not much technical evidence to support The Guardian\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

Putting a sock in sockpuppets<\/h2>\n

Even if it was possible to demonstrate that Schapps was editing his own Wikipedia page to make himself look good, this sort of self-promotion, while frowned upon, is not sufficient to result in a ban. A\u00a0Wikipedia admin<\/a>\u00a0blocked\u00a0Contribsx<\/a>\u00a0for a different reason regarded far more seriously:\u00a0sockpuppetry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The use of multiple Wikipedia user accounts for an improper purpose is called sockpuppetry. Improper purposes include attempts to deceive or mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, evade blocks or otherwise violate community standards and policies \u2026 Wikipedia editors are generally expected to edit using only one (preferably registered) account.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Certain Wikipedia admins called \u201ccheck users\u201d have limited access to the logs of IP addresses and details of users’ computer, operating system and the browser recorded by Wikipedia\u2019s webservers. Check users use this confidential information together with other evidence of user behaviour \u2013 such as similarity of editing interests \u2013 to identify instances of sockpuppetry, and whether the intent has been to mislead.<\/p>\n

As a former check user, I can say for the record it\u2019s difficult to establish with complete accuracy whether two or more accounts are used by the same person. But on occasion there is enough to be drawn from the accounts’ behaviour to warrant accusations of sockpuppetry and so enforce a ban. But this only occurs if the sockpuppet accounts have violated any other rule \u2013 sockpuppetry itself is not prohibited, only when used for nefarious ends.<\/p>\n

Limited technical evidence<\/h2>\n

In this case, the\u00a0check user<\/a>\u00a0has speculated that\u00a0Contribsx<\/a>\u00a0is related to the other users Hackneymarsh and Historyset \u2013 but these users have been inactive for five years, and so by definition cannot have violated any other Wikipedia rule to warrant a ban. More importantly, the technical information available to check users only goes back a couple of months in most cases, so I can\u2019t see the basis for technical evidence that would support the claim these accounts are connected.<\/p>\n

In fact the banning administrator\u00a0admits<\/a>\u00a0that the decision is mainly based on behavioural similarity and not technical evidence available to them as a check user. And this has raised\u00a0criticisms and requests for further investigation<\/a>\u00a0from their fellow editors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservative chairman Grant Shapps is accused of sockpuppetry on Wikipedia, but this former Wikipedia admin isn’t so sure the evidence stands up. Reposted from The Conversation. Wikipedia has become one of the most highly linked-to websites on the internet, with countless others using it as a reference. But it can be edited by anyone, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":3353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3800,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions\/3800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}