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Hi NinjaRobotPirate, it's been well over four years since you placed the Vietnam article under extended-confirmed protection due to sockpuppetry. Do you really think the current protection level is still necessary to this day? The Mexico article was also extended-confirmed protected in 2019 for the same reason, but had since been downgraded to semi-protection on December last year. Perhaps it's time to downgrade the protection level of this article to semi as a trial, considering the fact that it has gained just slightly less views than Mexico in the past year (see here)? If you still think extended-confirmed protection is needed specifically for this article, then why aren't the other Southeast Asian country articles seeing the blue lock? For example, Singapore has gained nearly twice as more daily views than Vietnam in the past year (see here), but is only fine with semi-protection. How come Laos completely lacks edit protection altogether? I'm still okay if the blue lock is still necessary here, given the fact the Vietnamese edition of this article is also under its form of extended-confirmed protection. BriDash9000 (talk) 08:00, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like there have been some blanking sprees in Laos, too. It looks like other people are aware of it, so maybe they'll protect the article if it starts up again. Vietnam has been troublesome because blanking sprees happen in it when the protection expires. Thus, it's set to not expire. People can still request edits at Talk:Vietnam. It looks like activity is picking up somewhat on the talk page since the last time I looked, but it's still sparse, and I don't think it would be a good idea to unprotect the article while sock puppets are still active. The last edit to the talk page was reverted for block evasion. Admins who are curious why it's protected can look at my userpage on the private CheckUser Wiki. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 14:05, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you even if there were one. I'm pretty sure that'd run afoul of the privacy policy since that's a CU block. And because of a somewhat recent Ombuds Committee proclamation, I can't even connect IP ranges to each other. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 14:30, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, NinjaRobotPirate. I am rather bewildered by your message about muting. Obviously you don't have to clarify it if you don't wish to, but I would very much like to understand. It must be something to do with my mention of the limitations of CheckUser, but I'm at a loss to understand why that would lead to your choosing not to ever accept pings from me. If you are willing to explain I shall be grateful. JBW (talk) 17:43, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK. Seeing as how an SPI clerk pinged me and pointed me to an SPI case, I posted my thoughts. Seeing the potential for wikidrama, I specifically said that I was not in the mood for that, and I didn't want to debate the results of my CheckUser findings. To support this, I said I would leave the whole thing alone and let other people handle the situation. I was careful to leave no reason for someone to ping me and start up an argument.
I was then pinged by someone who has not seen the CheckUser findings for the sole purpose of starting up drama with me. I don't understand why people who have not seen the CU data feel this overwhelming urge to pick a fight with me and argue that I interpreted the data incorrectly.
The fact that this wasn't enough, and you felt that it was appropriate to explain to me what the CU tool is undeniably ruffled my feathers. I've been a CU for eight years, and you know what I get for that? Nothing but wikidrama started by argumentative drama-mongers, non-CheckUsers pinging me to explain how the CU tool works, death threats in my email, and a load of pings from blocked sock puppets who say "my little brother did it". I'm getting tired of it all. I would copy-paste the most recent email that I received from a Wikipedia user, but it's highly offensive. Suffice to say that it consists mostly of about a hundred uses of a racial slur that would probably start a fistfight if you used it in real life. My mother died recently. My father is getting medical tests. My dog just fell out of a second story window somehow.
I've got enough going on in my life that I don't need shit from random people who want to fuck with me on Wikipedia. If you want to ping some CU and lecture them about how the CU tool works, pick someone else. I'm bipolar, and I think I've hidden it pretty well for the past 10 or 15 years that I've pretty active on Wikipedia. The one fucking time that I request that people just leave me alone and don't start shit with me, you just have ignore it. Because everyone knows that what CUs like most in life is not getting a "thank you" once every 5 years for their service, it's having their interpretation of the CU data challenged for no fucking reason.
Maybe, after 8 years, I've developed an intuition about interpreting CU data. Maybe I've learned to notice patterns that indicate people are editing from a workplace vs editing from their own fucking house using a fucking residential broadband connection. Maybe I can differentiate between two people using the same exact mobile device from the same exact cellular tower vs people editing from a coworking space. Or maybe it's like you've implied, and I'm just some monkey clicking buttons that could be easily replaced by AI.
Thank you for explaining your reasons, which make things much clearer. Unfortunately I have miscommunicated. I was certainly not trying to stir up drama or pick a fight, as you thought. I thought, rightly or wrongly, that there was a limit to CheckUser data, and it couldn't distinguish between two people editing on, for example, the same computer. I thought I was clarifying that fact for people who might be reading the thread who didn't know that. I also thought that, since what I was saying referred to what you had said, it would be a courtesy to let you know what I was saying. I saw your statement that you didn't wish to "feel like debating the CU results or getting involved in block-drama", and wondered about pinging you, but I thought that that I was just letting you know what I said as a courtesy, and you might very well he happy to just see it and leave it. Evidently I was mistaken in one or more of those thoughts, maybe all of them, and misjudged the situation. Possibly my biggest mistake was thinking that what I was saying about the nature of CheckUser was uncontroversial; I thought, evidently completely mistakenly, that what I said was something that any CheckUser would agree with, and, as I said above, my intention was to clarify a point for other people, not to lecture you about how the CU tool works.
I offer you my apology for having seriously misjudged the situation, particularly since it evidently came at a time when you had more than enough to deal with already. What you are going through must be absolutely terrible to endure, and I certainly would not have wished to add to it. JBW (talk) 09:10, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody can know what any of us are going through internally. Yes, the CU tool is very limited, and it's generally useless in establishing anything except that one account is on the same IP address as another. That doesn't mean that CheckUsers are incapable of analyzing data, comparing that to users' explanations, and coming to (possibly incorrect) conclusions on their own, though. It's not video evidence of them engaging in sock puppetry, but that's an ideal that just doesn't exist. Pretty much everything related to sock puppetry is based on a mixture of technical and behavioral evidence. I frequently find many people on the same IP address. If people don't tell me exactly what to look for (eg: "the sock puppeteer always misspells 'millennium' as 'milenium'"), I have to just shrug my shoulders and say, "Can't help you." The reason evidence is required for sock puppetry investigations is not just to rule out spurious cases. It's to make my job possible in the first place. Ten people on the same IP address is expected behavior on some ISPs, and they might not be distinguishable from each other. You either work with good data, spend an hour (minimum, in my case) doing an investigation from scratch yourself, or just give up in annoyance. I take the last option more often than people would probably guess. There are always a few sock puppeteers floating around that I already CUed, but I gave up when the mountain of data returned by the CU tool was impenetrable. I don't actually enjoy going through hundreds of IP address, trying to figure out who's doing what, and which of the guys using an iPhone is making the same exact edits as someone else using the same model iPhone. I don't just click "run a CU on this person", and the tool says, "Okey dokey, that's a confirmed one!" It can take me the better part of an entire evening just for one case. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:29, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that gives me more insight into what CheckUser work is like than anything else I've seen in my 19 years on Wikipedia. Thank you for taking the trouble to explain it to me. JBW (talk) 00:36, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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A UTRS unblock request
An editor by the name Muscovy.iii has posted an appeal at UTRS appeal #104892 for a block that you placed. The editor had been making numerous trivial edits to a sandbox in order to get autonconfirmed. They have now acknowledged that doing so was "stupid", and said that they will not do the same again. I have looked at their editing history, and before they started that nonsense their editing, as far as I can see, was OK. I would like to unblock. Do you wish to express any opinion? (Incidentally, I see that Asilvering has given the account the Extended Confirmed right, and then immediately removed it. I guess that the idea is that if an admin has removed it then it won't be automatically granted when the 500 edits have been done, though I don't actually know whether it works that way.) JBW (talk) 20:12, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If they're not going to make any more useless edits, and their permissions have been appropriated adjusted (it sounds like it would work that way to me, too), unblocking seems fine. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:22, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'll go ahead. (Concerning "If they're not going to make any more useless edits", of course I'll watch them for a while.) JBW (talk) 21:10, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
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I'm not a vandal and I don't plan to vandalize. I'm just a user interested in a topic that I can't mention by the way. There was a discussion and I wanted to participate and express my opinion. Why are you afraid to give me permission? I know the privacy of these topics and that any modification to controversial articles usually requires discussion. جودت (talk) 16:28, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like you made a lot of edits removing potential spam written in Arabic. That's pretty useful, though editing someone else's user page is usually discouraged. Instead, tagging pages for speedy deletion might have been better in some cases. This is the sort of thing that people are supposed to be learning in their time editing Wikipedia. You can't just become informed of how English Wikipedia works overnight. English Wikipedia is bureaucratic and has a lot of rules. Restricting access these articles is done, in part, to force people to get enough experience that we don't need to supervise them. If you're mostly editing user space – your own and other people's – it's hard to tell whether you truly understand our core content policies. If you think on what Yamla and I have said, and you believe that you've satisfied the spirit of the law, you should post a request to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Keep in mind that if you ignore everything that Yamla and I have said, and you just plow ahead regardless, the community will probably decline your request. Plus, topic bans don't usually get lifted days later. This is something that you'd know if you had experience editing English Wikipedia. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:23, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see blanking talk pages that have sat unexamined for 17 years as constructive, especially when it doesn't appear to be spam or anything other than a newbie's attempt at an article from almost two decades ago. This is just further gaming. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:34, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure he'll get bored shortly. If not, I could try doing range blocks. I'm not sure how much that would help, but I think blocks do limit your ability to engage in pointless shenanigans like that. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 13:30, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And I should note that someone tried to reset my password today from 173.173.114.108 -- no other major contretemps going on at the moment, so it seems likely the same individual. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sadly, I think policy restricts me from commenting on this in any meaningful way. But if you come upon any other IP editors who are engaging in related disruption, you can let me know. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:55, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have something to say about LegoCityDude61892, whose talk page you posted on a little over a month ago. Since May 2021 (he has a second account: LegoCityDude92), I've been in mostly silent but tedious disagreement with this stubborn user who won't stop editing the pages of voice actors Michael and Paul Dobson, and removing information I added myself with the proper citations. He won't stop insisting that Paul is older than Michael when our best sources say otherwise (I used interviews with the actors themselves as my sources). Not only does he reject the actors' own words, but he also insists that the flawed Dubbing Wiki (and other related wikis) is reliable, despite he himself utterly dismissing IMDb.
I'm tired of correcting his constant disruptive edits. Could you please help me revert when he edits the pages again and I'm not around? Thank you.
Biographies of living persons are a contentious topic. I posted an alert. I can block them or something next time they're disruptive in a biography. I would block them now, given all the warnings, but they haven't actually done anything disruptive today yet, and I'm listening to comparatively mellow music. Maybe when my playlist gets back to death metal. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:44, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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