Wikivoyage talk:User ban nominations Voyage Tips and guide

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TLDR: The user was blocked for being a LibMod sock, but I think there's scant evidence of this. Shall we do a Checkuser?

This user was indefblocked by SelfieCity in August 2020, with the reasoning that the user was a sock of long-term vandal and globally-banned user Libertarianmoderate. Talk page access wasn't revoked.

The user first asked on their talk page for the ban to be lifted in January 2022: this can be seen in the user's deleted contributions. The request was seemingly missed by WV sysops (including me).

This week, on 29th May, the user added a follow up to their unblock request, adding the reason that they want access to the Wikipedia Library. The user talk page was then deleted by Ikan Kekek.

Both SHB2000 and I separately noticed this (in my case, for the first time; I've never come across this user before to my knowledge) and raised the issue on Ikan's talk page of whether this user really was a sock puppet. SHB pointed out that the user is in seemingly good standing elsewhere, and particularly on WP, whereas User:Libertarianmoderate and several of his socks are globally locked. I remarked that I can't see any evidence in the user's edit history here on Wikivoyage or on WP for the suggestion that they were a sock of Libmod.

Selfie City appears to be unavailable right now, so we can't establish what his thought process behind the original indefblock was. Ikan Kekek has declined to take part in any further discussion (you can see his talk page for his two earlier comments, indicating his belief that the links between the two users is obvious, based on their usernames and AppalachianCentrist's appeals to be unblocked).

I stand by my opinion that there is little to no evidence that this user is a sock puppet of the banned user. That they both have political user names (which are not even similar) could easily be a coincidence. I disagree with Ikan that the user requesting to be unblocked twice is evidence of guilt, rather it's simply evidence that they wish to be unblocked. I think anybody who found themselves blocked from any website that they cared about having access to, for whatever reason, would do the same. There is nothing within the unblock requests themselves that suggests LibMod. The user's brief edit history on WV and much longer list of contributions to Wikipedia suggest they're a native resident of Tennessee, contrary to LibMod's location in Illinois. I can't see any evidence of politically-motivated edits, much less any links to the extreme right.

I respect Ikan's wish that this not be drawn out into a long, painful discussion, however I don't share his belief that this is an open and shut case of guilt and think it is important that we establish whether a mistake has been made and, if so, attempt to put it right.

In the (hopefully temporary) absence of Selfie City, who as the blocking admin may well have additional information or evidence, I propose that we/I request a Checkuser on AppalachianCentrist. If it comes back positive, I will of course apologise for wasting all of your time and will request the global blocking of the user myself. However, if no Checkuser connection is established, in the absence of any other compelling evidence, we should unblock the user on WV and let them apply for access to the Library.

Does anybody object to this proposal or have a better idea of how to constructively handle this? Thank you for your time reading this. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:27, 31 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

The more I look into this, the two accounts have almost nothing similar apart from username (but big disclaimer that I want to re-emphasise: I don't know much about LibMod; AppalachianCentrist's area of specialty on Wikipedia, however, seems to be the inverse of LibMod's).

I will say that being spuriously accused of something hurts – in this case, especially when no compelling evidence was given apart from username, I feel for AppalachianCentrist, provided that they're genuinely a good-faith user (also noting that WP does not ban political usernames and having "Centrist" in a username is nothing out of the ordinary when there's hundreds of thousands of Wikimedia accounts).

A while back, I was told on Commons that the data is only kept for 6 months and since LibMod is globally locked, a checkuser unfortunately won't yield us the answer we're looking for. However, this case fails the duck test (from my limited knowledge of LibMod), but at the very least, can we unprotect their talk page and allow them to respond in this thread (possible through partial blocks, if anyone's wondering)? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

In saying all that, I understand Ikan Kekek's concerns too (and I'm sorry for the hurt caused by the bigots who rightfully deserve global bans/locks); however, no-one but trolls would be insane enough to even consider unbanning LibMod. This, however, could be an innocent user who shares almost no traits with LibMod. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:43, 31 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

One other thing regarding their x-wiki contributions: the files and their contributions on Commons have only been useful – I'm nigh certain that this is not LibMod. Unless there are any objections, I will unprotect their talk page and change their block settings so they can comment on this page by tomorrow afternoon. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:35, 1 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for clarifying on the Checkuser thing; that's annoying because it would have been the best solution, but I suppose IP address only last so long and Wikimedia can't hold onto personal data indefinitely.

With some reluctance, I agree with changing the block settings. As someone who has often spotted and blocked LibMod socks earlier than others, I'm still confident that the edit history of this user doesn't match (LibMod does sometimes put on a mask, but only for a few days, never for literal years), my only concern being SelfieCity knows/knew something we don't.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:05, 1 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@ThunderingTyphoons!: Done – I have unprotected + restored their talk page and changed their block settings so they cannot edit any namespace apart from the Wikivoyage talk: namespace (namespace 5) since it isn't yet possible to partially block a user from editing every page except for some specified pages (in this case, this one). Would be good if they could comment. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:00, 2 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000 and @ThunderingTyphoons!,

I have been an active contributor to Wikipedia since roughly early 2020. The "LibMod" user some of the administrators have accused me of being dates back to roughly 2018 after seeing it for myself. I was never active on Wikipedia during that time and prior to that. The only political material on any Wiki-platform that I have ever contributed to was this local politician article on Wikipedia, this local immigration raid, and this controversial hydroelectric dam project.

I can state that I have never used the accounts Libertarianmoderate or LibMod. I didn't start using WikiVoyage until 2020, as I was trying to add material from my area, and then I saw the ban that I received with the tag "LibMod" as the sole reason for it here. I figured that it was a lost cause to edit here, so I focused on contributing to en.wiki, Wikimedia, and in the last two years OpenStreetMap (OSM). Most of my edits on OSM have been in the area I am from. Almost all of my contributions on these platforms are focused on East Tennessee, aside from rock/punk and country music content on en.wikipedia.org.

Feel free to perform CheckUser. I have never used the accounts mentioned in this chat, hope this helps and this issue can be resolved and corrected. Feel free to reach out to me for any additional information you need from me.

AppalachianCentrist (talk) 23:32, 2 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

What I thought from the start – @ThunderingTyphoons!:, time to unblock this account? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:30, 3 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Given the above statement, I think it makes sense to give the user the benefit of the doubt, unless there is new evidence presented promptly. Ground Zero (talk) 02:42, 3 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

I support unblocking, and have just done so. AppalachianCentrist: thank you for your statement and for staying magnanimous during what must have been a surprising and unpleasant experience. I'm sorry it took us so long to listen to you and do the right thing. Hopefully, you'll be able to access the Wikipedia Library soon. ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:12, 3 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

I was just going to do the same, but TT! beat me to it – I don't have anything else to add. But to @Ikan Kekek, SelfieCity:, I know you both didn't have bad intentions, but can you not jump to conclusions that an account is a LibMod sock purely off username and actually check a user's x-wiki contributions before blocking? SC, you should probably also give AppalachianCentrist an apology, too (Ikan already did). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:49, 3 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry that I only just saw this thread. After a year of being logged in, Wiki automatically logs out one's account, for good reason. As I hadn't specifically used Wikivoyage for a couple weeks, I didn't receive notifications as I normally do. When I needed to make an edit on Wikipedia, I logged in and discovered this discussion.

As for LibMod, I believe this was during the time LibMod was using sock accounts extensively, almost every day. As administrators we were struggling with the intensity of the sockpuppetry at the time and speaking for myself, I may have been overzealous in our actions due to the intensity of his sockpuppetry. I cannot specifically remember AppalachianCentrist as an account I blocked given there were so many blocked at the time, but I know we were searching for new accounts in the Appalachian/Midwest region given this was that user's area of interest. I probably tied together the time the account emerged on Wikivoyage, the geographical region, and the unusual political (I assumed) reference and jumped to the conclusion this was LibMod, who had attempted to paint a picture of himself as a political moderate as part of his sockpuppetry - creating different identities through accounts with different POVs. I have no reservations now with unbanning this account. The comment above by AppalachianCentrist doesn't remotely resemble a long-time problematic user like LibMod.

I'll note that unlike some communities such as Wikipedia, we 1) have relatively few new accounts created and 2) have few public political involvements here. If I were to take a guess into my thinking at the time, I would say I was slightly suspicious of all new accounts given we typically receive only a few new enthusiastic and permanent contributors each month. Most of the editors here have been around for a while. Additionally, while on other sites including WP and some smaller wikis, accounts with political descriptors in the username are common, here almost every politically involved account has been a malicious one. In fact, three of the most problematic editors we've had here in recent years are entirely involved in political trolling to various degrees. Your account name might not be a reference to anything political, but because of that background, I was more suspicious than I normally would've been. To be clear, we are not against people being politically involved in any way and if people want to identify with a political opinion that is not against our rules; it's merely something that I've noticed as an admin and definitely something we were aware of at the time.

@AppalachianCentrist: you're welcome here. I'm sorry this happened to you. It also upsets me that LibMod's activities have contributed to preventing your participation here. You're obviously a good contributor with an excellent track record on the sister sites, so you're welcome in the Wikivoyage community. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 15:18, 4 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Ah, I've now gone into the contribution history. I can see exactly why I made the ban. I won't get into specifics in case any of our copycat trolls are reading this discussion, but the two edits you made included characteristic choices LibMod would make. There are a couple formatting and article choices that combined I would've given a 90% chance (a low estimate) of being LibMod based on how he was behaving at the time. With the more recent information, I know my assumption was incorrect, but I can see that your first edits by total coincidence strikingly resembled those of that user. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 15:30, 4 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

I hope no one minds me creating this template to be placed on the top of every archive page of Wikivoyage:User ban nominations. Its usage is very similar to that of {{URNArchive}} (approved template). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:30, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply