In addition to Kerry's excellent examples there are users editing wikipedia though TOR, the anonymity and censorship circumvention network. These users face extra scrutiny.
cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky On Tue, 19 Mar 2019 at 13:04, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raym...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Apart from the legitimate alternate accounts and the illegitimate sockpuppet > accounts, there are other ways that alternate accounts exist. > > Occasional contributors often forget their username and/or password. Password > recovery isn't possible unless you provide an email address at sign-up (it's > optional, but you can add it later). So what such people then do is just > create a new user account (I'm not sure there is anything else they can do). > I see this sort of behaviour a lot at events. The other variation of the > problem is that they did provide an email address but it is one not easily > accessible to them at the event (i.e. a librarian who signed up with a work > email address that cannot be accessed outside of the organisation). > > The other group of people with multiple accounts are those who edit > anonymously as serial IPs. The same person can use a number of IP numbers > over time. Often you don't realise it is the same person unless you see a lot > of their work and can see a pattern in it. For example, at the moment, there > is a person with a series of IP accounts that is changing a common section > of a Queensland place article to be a subsection of another, who I notice on > my watchlist . This person appears to acquire a new IP address every week or > so, but the pattern of editing makes it obvious it's the same person behind > it. Whether or not an IP address can be considered "an account" depends on > your purposes. The one IP address can also be used by multiple people (e.g. > coming through a shared organisational network in a library or school). It is > claimed by some people that many new users do their first edits anonymously, > so if you are serious about studying "new contributors", then maybe you have > to look at anonymous editing. And also even regular contributors may > sometimes choose to edit anonymously, e.g. being in an unsecure IT > environment and reluctant to use their username/password in that situation > (particularly people with administrator or other significant access rights). > > Because I do outreach, I look for new accounts that turn up on my watchlist > and send them welcome messages etc. Because I also do training, I see a lot > of genuinely new people in action where I can observe their edits. So when I > see new accounts or IPs doing far more "sophisticated" edits than I see new > users do, I tend to suspect they are not genuinely new contributors. > > I think the best you can do is look for new accounts and be prepared to omit > any that show signs of sophisticated editing (either in terms of they are > doing technically or what they say on Talk pages or in edit summaries). For > example, no genuine new user will mention a policy (they don't know they > exist). Also genuine new users don't tend to edit that quickly, so any rapid > fire series of successful edits is unlikely to be a genuine new user. I > think this inability to know if a new account represents a genuinely new user > is an inherent limitation for your research and should be documented as such > explaining the many circumstances in which new accounts might belong to > non-new users. > > Kerry > > -----Original Message----- > From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On > Behalf Of Pine W > Sent: Tuesday, 19 March 2019 5:27 AM > To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities > <wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Sampling new editors in English Wikipedia > > Hi Haifeng, > > Some users will state on user pages that an account is an alternate account. > However, this practice is not followed by everyone, and those who do follow > this practice aren't required to so in a uniform way. > > Alternate accounts which are not labeled as such, and which are used for > illegitimate purposes such as double voting, are an ongoing problem. You > might be interested in the English Wikipedia page > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry. > > Alternate accounts can also be used for legitimate purposes, such as people > who have one account for their professional or academic activities and > another account for their personal use. > > Good luck with your project. > > Pine > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) > > > On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 1:30 PM Haifeng Zhang <haife...@andrew.cmu.edu> > wrote: > > > Stuart, > > > > I'm building an agent-based simulation of Wikipedia collaboration. > > > > I would like my model to be empirically grounded, so I need to collect > > data for new editors. > > > > Alternative accounts can be an issue, but I wonder is there a way to > > identify editors who have multiple account? > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > Haifeng Zhang > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
