Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-9062114-20151024212230/@comment-26896471-20151031184357

Wulfharth wrote: ShawnCognitionCP wrote: We've had far stranger happen here. We had a user make upwards of 40 socks, to further damage the reputation of one user, whom made about 20. Want to know the weird part? Checkuser said they were the same. They had the same IP. They were not the same person. Of course, talking about Lyra/Tsu and Jyggalag. See, this is a different argument now. This is arguing Wikia's CheckUser is not reliable, and nothing to do with us uneducated plebs not understanding what dynamic IPs are.

My point is, why are people all of a sudden questioning the reliability of CheckUser, when it has served this wiki in the past and has been used to identify and ban a ton of other socks. And not one has ever said a word.

Because I don't see any CTs or banners of support for all those other poor bastards in the block log that got banned because of it. I am questioning CheckUser because, just as you doubt the IPs to be coincidence, I find it just as unlikely that a former chat Mod, with such huge experience on this Wiki would be stupid enough to go on chat:

a) knowing full well it would get him banned,

and

b) be stupid enough to give away that it was him while he was there.

I also find it unlikely that all of this would happen at 3am GMT, especially as this user couldn't make the Moots when they were at midnight because that was too late.

I also find it just as unlikely that if the account in question was a sock, this account would have been so highly active for a number of months on another Wiki. If these edits were simply to give the account validity, boy has SS gone through a lot of trouble to do it.

I also find it unlikely, while possible, that Saj has arranged a correspondence with himself on that Users talkpage. One which is full of conversations with other users, further validifying the independence of the account.

Wulf, you correctly point out that many of us have spoken with him on Steam. If he still corresponds with people on the Wiki, how surreal to go on to Chat and start asking about himself?

Speaking to Saj about his initial Chat ban, and before his Wiki block, I was speaking to someone who had very much taken on board the messages left to him by BlueSonic, and who had every intention of just avoiding chat and the forums in their entirety. Judging by the success of his last CT, this is understandable.

Now of course, this could all be part of some great deceptive plan by SS. Maybe he's been planning this for months and has built up a credible alt profile. Maybe he's been brainwashing people on Steam for weeks. And maybe he just forgot that this would get him a very substantial wiki ban.

Wulf, you've been talking in terms of probability, "how likely is it, given the circumstances that those IPs were coincidence?" Well here I respond in terms of probability, too. With such an insanely unlikely scenarion, frankly the IPs do not prove anywhere near enough to justify a ban from all editing, including his right to defend himself, for an entire year.

From the evidence we have, some kind of ban does need to remain in place, but in the interest of integrity we must consider lowering it. Perhaps extend the Chat ban, and limit the editing ban? But that's just a suggestion.