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Requests for comment/Blatant sockpuppetry in good faith - Meta

The following request for comments is closed. This is an issue specific to one wiki - Meta is not an appeals court for decisions the Commons community has made that you disagree with. In other words as a Meta admin I agree with Jmabel below and am closing this accordingly. * Pppery * it has begun 03:17, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the past few years on Commons an unknown user living in Hong Kong created a large number of accounts that only upload its own photos to the project (known somewhat as Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1). They all used strange names such as EHALAM BorG 600M and HisuwME Rewpaei 78M (more of these here), and all file names would start with "HK", plus these user pages contained a gallery of the photos the user uploaded for that account. Other problems such as non-concise (for example Category:place name - elements) and bilingual category names, which I fixed a lot of these. The problem is that the user use these sockpuppets only to upload high quality photos, mostly geocoded, and with systematic description (although strange) and categorization that are not considered a reason for a ban (discussion). The current action is that when a new account was created for purpose, anyone would tag them with [[Category:Sockpuppets of Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1]] without blanking these accounts or deleting their contributions.

This goes over and over again, and this is how: when that user have new photos to upload to Commons, he will create a new account and uploads his photos, add descriptions and categorize them. When the photos of him that he intends to upload is done, he then creates a user page of that account as a gallery that displays the photos that were associated with the account. After this the account is abandoned and then a new account was created if more photos of him came along. Overall there was less than 500 edits for each of these accounts, and they are only active for about less than a day (aka non-confirmed). I checked back the sockpuppet category above to find that the creation date of the category to be 2019, which is a long history of sockpuppetry.

According to the policy concerning sockpuppetry, where a user has multiple accounts it is an expectation that they publicly disclose those accounts, usually on each of the relevant user pages providing links to each other. These accounts did not, and can only be identified with the filenames and strange account names. (That is why there is a Commons category mentioned above) The policy did list out the downsides of sockpuppetry as abusing multiple accounts to do vandalism, but that was not the case.

I am thinking that the whole ecosystem of Wikimedia is probably damaged, that anyone can hide their identity completely to make contributions (no matter good or bad), and also hardly or even cannot contact the user if there is problems with contributions such as privacy and copyright issues (as in this case, the accounts were quickly abandoned). That is why I am asking what kind of action to deal with that constructive sockpuppetry. I have discussed this long-standing problem on Commons but there is no consensus over possible ban of the user. Then a global lock request was made, but rejected. My intention is that he would use a constant account to upload his photos, but NOT taking excessive effort to create a new account to just uploading his photos and use the account's own user page as a gallery for the photos (In my opinion subpages can be created for his uploads). What I mean is that he should stop using disposable accounts to make permanent contributions as the word disposable may be regarded as do stuff to fulfill his own personal interests only, if applied to Wikimedia projects.

I am also concerned that the current process of creating new accounts poses a loophole for massive sockpuppetry (both positive and negative), as a new account only requires a username and a password (email is optional, it is for emailing to other users privately or used to change the account password if forgotten), and a basic captcha without extra verification (such as sending an email with a confirmation link to confirm that the account was not created by robots). Maybe there should be a restriction for account creation for each IP address? Recently I joined a course that, during the first lesson, a lecturer instructs me to create a temporary Google account for the course only, but I refused to do so as the procedures required submitting a local phone number for confirmation to prevent robots and malicious use of accounts (that worked well to tackle any means of sockpuppetry if this practice was applied to all projects of Wikimedia). The lecturer still forces me to do so, and I finally realized that as my phone number was used in my existing Google account, it says that my number was used too many times and the account creation cannot go through.

In a nutshell my request is to find ways to inform him to stop this deceptive practice of making one account + one gallery in that account = that day of uploads and contributions only; as well as to seek a change to ban any means of sockpuppetry, regardless it is good or not, to happen on any Wikimedia projects. Human names, after assignment, will never change unless wanted; this applies to the entire Wikimedia community; his actions is equal to changing how he was called every single day. I hope this message would be acknowledged by anyone who are specialized in coordination of how the world works and also to clearly emphasize what is the rule in Wikimedia and in sister projects. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 06:28, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I hope T&S team will look up into your reports. Ahri Boy (talk) 02:14, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are again talking nonsense. I am also concerned that the current process of creating new accounts poses a loophole for massive sockpuppetry is a result of WMF clear goal of minimising collection of private user data and not some faulty technical implementation. IP restrictions are already in place as one can make only 6 accounts from a single IP. How other platforms handle their account management is out of our jurisdiction. A09|(pogovor) 19:42, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And that means in that case he far exceed the restrictions of using his IP to create accounts. As I know that wikis can't be edited in proxies (such as a VPN), I wonder how he would manage to do so. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 03:14, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
IP hopping and ISP IP switching are a thing, so it's not that hard to evade. At least when done impartially. A09|(pogovor) 22:59, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly hope something can be done about this user. See also Steward requests/Global/2024-w23#Global lock for MOHLEAOSONDWN 2300 et al and Steward requests/Global/2025-w04#Global lock for Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1 et al. -- Jeff G. ツ (please ping or talk to me) 14:28, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  1. This page sock puppetry is not "policy".
  2. if there is no misuse then it's not "sock puppetry".--RoyZuo (talk) 15:12, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as I know Hong Kong is a puppet "state" of the dictatorship of the PR China. People believing in the goals of WM like free knowledge are sent to prison there on a regular basis. @HingWahStreet have you researched if this user is doing the way them does (you use the pronoun "he/him". Does that mean you know who them is? If not, how got you the information on them gender? Them might be a native speaker of chinese and as far as i know that language does mostly not use gender markers) to avoid geting found out by PR China authorities? C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 21:56, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Please don't do this. This discussion is about a user's idiosyncratic editing and uploading habits, bringing in assumptions about the politics of Hong Kong and China just because that's where these people are from is neither relevant nor helpful. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Misuse is a broad term, and why would you refer to Meta policy about socking in this Commons-related case? A09|(pogovor) 23:02, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    1. as i said, "this page sock puppetry is not "policy"".
    2. you should read the original post, "According to [[Sock puppetry|the policy concerning sockpuppetry]]..."--RoyZuo (talk) 12:04, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      But there is abuse. LuciferianThomas wrote in this Edit Summary: "Intentional wrong-naming files and incorrectly categorising files is clearly abusive behaviour; in scale it is even clearly vandalism". -- Jeff G. ツ (please ping or talk to me) 11:34, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A sockpuppet account again: ApMalResbmou Tonuyz (contributions) 〈興華街〉📅❓ 06:16, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I don't want to pose every new account of a sockpuppet here when it came along. I have already notified the user on his talk page, hoping that he will give a response. I hope any admin here can take any action against this kind of behavior. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 06:32, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
People should stop pestering a long-term contributor.--RoyZuo (talk) 12:04, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know that this user did have long-term positive contributions, but if this culture continues then this may be a bad example for the entire Commons community, just because we did not get a response of reason why this user makes multiple accounts for just a single purpose. By the way, this is not pestering, this is a concern. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 07:25, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK the only rule that the anonymous photographer breaks is the failure to disclose their numerous other accounts. This issue is dealt with on Commons by adding their accounts to Commons:Category:Sockpuppets of Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1. Previous attempts on Commons to have the user blocked were unsuccessful, mainly because no other issues (such as block evasion, interaction between the accounts) could be found. So I suggest that some evidence for real damage should be presented instead of just reopening the same discussion over and over again. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 15:43, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
See this comment by Jeff G. – there is a clear pattern of disruptive editing to the extent of possibly vandalism. LuciferianThomas 14:25, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
O.k., but where is the evidence for the claim? I can just see that Jeff G. cited your edit summary. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 18:03, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Robert Flogaus-Faust and also @RoyZuo The actual thing is that LuciferianThomas reverted RoyZuo's renaming request because the renamed category would mislead everyone about the user's habits in contributing to Commons. In Category:Sockpuppeteers there is a list of sockpuppets made by numerous users, and among the 2,450 sockpuppets' lists the largest are being created by Russavia (667 socks before global lock), followed by "Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1" (at this point, 657 socks regarding this user). No one has created this kind of amount of sock because this is an illusion that no one wanted to see. (I've seen that the socks uploaded 113,161 files of 115,042,139 total files of Commons at the time of writing, which is roughly 0.1% of all files, but that's just a quote.) 〈興華街〉📅❓ 03:49, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And please have a look at the notice attached at the top of Category:Sockpuppeteers, it clearly said:
This category is for the blocked sock puppets of sockpuppeteers who evidently have contravened against one or more of the following rules:
"The general rule is one editor, one account. Do not use multiple accounts to mislead, deceive, or disrupt; to create the illusion of greater support for a position; to stir up controversy; or to circumvent a block, ban, or sanction. Do not ask your friends to create accounts to support you. Do not revive old unused accounts and use them as different users, or use another person's account. Do not log out just to vandalise as an IP address editor." 〈興華街〉📅❓ 04:38, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LuciferianThomas RFCUed. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:43, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Robert Flogaus-Faust: At least one effort was successful: MOHLEAOSONDWN 2300 was globally locked 13:58, 3 June 2024 (UTC) by EPIC. That makes the rest of the reported accounts (that aren't already locked) lock evaders. -- Jeff G. ツ (please ping or talk to me) 16:26, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@EPIC making one erroneous lock [1] (which he previously declined [2]) doesn't make this an actual steward issue. c:Category:Sockpuppets of Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1 states "Please do not block users in the category (...) as this user has never been blocked for misconduct" and I don't see a reason why this has ever ended up at SRG, it's entirely a local Commons issue. If Commons admins & CU decide to tolerate the new accounts, there's no point in sanctioning lock evasion (and in my opinion the lock should be removed). Johannnes89 (talk) 22:09, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But it happened that the category is a member of Category:Sockpuppeteers, which falls into the spamming category. Please do not block users in the category is because the user abandoned each sockpuppet after the user is done with that account, and blocking them would have no use. What I mean is to completely block new accounts from creating by this user until a reasonable reason was given. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 02:06, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And if it's entirely a local Commons issue, then there is no such RfC like that from happening. Efforts of dealing with it in Commons failed, so this was dealt with in SRG, and as SRG has no use then that's why there is this RfC. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 02:24, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As the lock in question was a mistake, I've went ahead and reversed it. EPIC (talk) 13:32, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jeff G. EPIC had just reversed that lock you've mentioned. As I said here, and as SRG has no use then that's why there is this RfC. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 14:39, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've found new evidence that the user did abuse accounts: he uploaded tons of FoP-violating stuff and indirectly disclosing some of his personal details through the photos and their included location data. I've described more in this comment and hopefully someone would take action with it. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 03:20, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is general advice for global RfC without commenting on the details of this specific RfC:
When local admins and/or local communities decide that certain behaviour isn't sanctionable (or not worth blocking), turning to meta has never worked in the past (except in extreme cases, e.g. systemic failure of a project). Neither stewards nor the global community have the authority to circumvent local community procedures (except in cases of systemic failure as already mentioned). If you disagree with the outcome of a single community discussion, the way forward is to find better arguments and initiate a new local discussion at some point in the future where you try to convince others that you are right. Johannnes89 (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoyZuo, @Johannnes89, and @Robert Flogaus-Faust, I don't want to repeat my rationale for this concern many times, this is what the problem is:
  1. Intentionally creating a new account with a strange user name when he decided to upload at some point.
  2. Uploading files with filenames starting with (English first, then Chinese) city code, then the place name, followed by the element name, and finally the month and the year and the photo number.
  3. Categorizing his own uploaded files in a subcategory he created, as well as its parent category. For example, this photo was categorized into Category:2025 in Shatoujiao Subdistrict as well as the parent category Category:Shatoujiao Subdistrict, over-populating the latter category over-time. When a user searches for that kind of category they found that most of the contributions is from a user called ******* (a sockpuppet of "Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1"), making other obsolete (but sometimes useful) files difficult to find. (This is over-categorization)
  4. Occasional creation of bilingual category names such as "Shenyan Road, Shenzhen 深圳 深鹽路" or inconsistent names such as "Shenyan Road, Shenzhen - Buildings" (as mentioned in my main content).
  5. Occasionally editing related files after uploading his own files and sometimes added non-existent categories to the files themselves.
  6. Occasionally uploading photos without considering freedom of panorama in their respective countries or regions, for instance uploading 2D artworks (including posters) photographed directly in front. (This is derivative works, and can constitute a copyright violation)
  7. Ignoring any means of talk page messages regarding anything, including the requests of why uploading photos under different user names without giving a reason.
  8. Seldom incidentally disclosed his own personal information without processing it, like this photo that included the text "Dear Mr Leung," on the TV screen.
  9. Only created his sockpuppet user page as a gallery with headers, mainly and repeatedly, the month of photography (like "in February 2025") for multiple chapters. Photos were listed with similar names grouped in one chapter, without a single description about the photos themselves. (User pages are intended to introduce about a user's existence, not to share photos)
  10. At one point removed the sockpuppetry category tag that I added when he put more photos to the "gallery", also without giving a reason – his actions is equal to treating himself that his accounts created are not related to other sockpuppets that he previously created.
And clearly as the user uses Commons just for uploading photos and getting his actions almost incognito, I think that the user is abusing the account creation process for Wikimedia. Multiple accounts with different user names are normally treated as different users, but as the behavior of these accounts are extremely similar (similar file naming conventions, galleries in user pages instead of introductions), they are already seemed suspicious. The accounts were placed in the category named Sockpuppets of Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1 just because of this. Blocking the user has no use, just as because 1) no misconduct, 2) no warnings to the user were ever made, and 3) the accounts were never used when the user is done with that account. Category:Sockpuppeteers clearly states that the category is for the blocked sock puppets made by other malicious users, but as "Sockpuppets of Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1" were also belong to that category, it should be treated as spamming or abusing multiple accounts. In my opinion sockpuppetry is the action to quickly regain edit rights when being prohibited to do any edits to Wikimedia projects; but as the actions done by the user he should fall into the sockpuppetry category as he is misleading everybody his existence.
Right now, the sockpuppet category of "Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1" contained 661 accounts, and Russavia have 667 accounts created as sockpuppets prior to its global lock; and I expected that "Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1" would become the largest sockfarm ever created in any Wikimedia projects. Also treating this behavior as not abusive but blocking other users creating socks except "Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1" is completely unfair for me and also for the whole community as sockpuppetry was treated in two different ways, without a general rule on how to deal with sockpuppetry. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 10:00, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest to turn down this request, as it is mainly an issue on Wikimedia Commons. And the admins there decided twice not to block the user. Carrying this to Meta is and was entirely unnecessary. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 10:20, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Robert Flogaus-Faust There is no use just to treat this exclusively on Commons. The mechanisms of treating the problem on Commons did not work, but I am here asking ways to deal with the problem, not just solely asking to block or ban the user. Robert Flogaus-Faust, your responses are disappointing me and also Jeff G., LuciferianThomas, ReneeWrites and others who don't want to see such a strange and unfair situation to continue for many years to go. You are treating their efforts as waste. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 12:00, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, I still cannot see any reason why this should be on Meta except that you might not like that the Commons admins prefer a solution different from what you expected. I am sorry that my opinion is disappointing for you, but it is as it is. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 13:16, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason that this should be on Meta is because there is no use to deal with it both in ANU and RFCU on Commons (the admins preferred nothing to do with that user). You should read from the first word one by one from the beginning of this RfC followed by every comment that others made in this discussion. I don't want to ask for office actions to intervene with this long-term problem as you are making this problem worse over time, if this RfC was closed without a consent or solution. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 14:12, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am a Commons admin. I see nothing wrong with this serially pseudonymous Hong Kong user's multi-account use on Commons. They may or may not have a good reason for changing accounts this often, but have not done so in a deceptive way or in a way that creates any problem for Commons. Unless there are issues here on sister projects other than Commons that raise issues that their conduct on Commons does not, I oppose anything being done at the meta level.

It seems to me that HingWahStreet brought the issue here to meta simply because virtually no one else on Commons seemed to view this user as a problem, and certainly no admin did. As far as I can see, HingWahStreet is trying to "appeal" a decision on Commons about an internal Commons matter (please correct me if I am misunderstanding). Also unless I am very mistaken, that sort of appeal should only happen for things like violation of Trust and Safety, or of the Terms of Use or such. If there is a claim of such a violation, I for one don't see it.

Am I missing something, or should this simply be closed here? - Jmabel (talk) 21:48, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]