Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-12-12/Disinformation report

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Amazing work you have done - thank you! - kosboot (talk) 15:58, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kosboot: - Thank you! A kind word goes a long way in keeping this series going. I'd been planning on doing an update on old stories for a while. Lots of little stuff comes up and I think that I should let readers know that the articles I've written are going out of date. This last month jolted me out of my hesitancy, starting with Lindberg's plea to new charges, and the jolts just continued, until last week with the Bloomberg article about Lindberg I just felt "oh, no, not another one!"

I am getting concerned that we are not enforcing our policy WP:PAID strictly enough and that these types of stories will just keep continuing until everybody is just so sick of reading about them that we'll start doing something about stopping them before they really get going. Perhaps, I'll just have to take a different tack. Thanks again. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:33, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I generally don't work on political articles or "attention-getting" articles where one would be able to detect sockpuppets. I do work a lot on music projects where occasionally a person will edit their own article or have someone do it for them. But I am never able to pick up on these, even though I can easily recognize content that is questionable. Not to add more to your plate, but perhaps at the end of the series, you can create "how to recognize paid editing/sockpuppets" kind of article (unless it's already written). - kosboot (talk) 20:53, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The most important question

Hey @Kosboot:, I think you've asked the most important question, roughly "What can an ordinary editor do about the problem of paid editing?" But there are variants on that question that came to mind when I first read your note above, which I'll address after some simple answers.

User:Bri (IIRC) has an operational answer, or a how-to manual somewhere but I can't find it right now. He should be able to find it, or tell me that I'm misremembering.

Perhaps WP:Identifying PR is what you were thinking of? - Bri

Thanks, that's it - Sb

See WP:REPORTPAID for the very short answer

At first I took your question to be "How do I really know that the people involved above are involved in paid editing?" A journalist should be able to answer that question off the top of his or her head. "What's the simple evidence behind your story (that wasn't actually in the story)?" Off the top of my head, I answered to myself, "Look for the A-holes. You gotta admit that's a pretty good collection of A-holes in this article!" But that's not really correct. Not all jerks are paid editors, and not all paid editors are jerks. Even in the collection above I think there are at least two who are not jerks, but might have just got carried away by a difficult situation. Involved with paid (or at least COI) editing - yes, jerks - maybe not. Please see my talk page for something related.
Maybe you were asking "How do I, Kosboot, know when I run into a paid editor or sockpuppet?" That's actually 2 questions and as you suggest the answers may differ by what part of Wikipedia you edit. My short answer is, is somebody pushing an extreme view that you know is not quite right, but won't give an inch in discussion? Yeah, there are lots of editors who come close to that, but eventually most will at least discuss the issue reasonably. Many paid editors can't or won't do this, because if they do, they won't get paid. Another question you should answer is "Does this sound like an advert?" I think most people know when somebody is trying to sell them something, starting with 5 year-olds or even younger. Just use your common sense here. A related question is why ad writers keep on writing in this special language. Possible answer - they can see it when others write it, but their bosses or the subject insist - that's why they hired he ad writers - not to include objective info. Other questions to ask Cui bono? or Follow the money, and is it just a fan? That last one can be difficult in politics and popular culture, but is not at all difficult if somebody is advertising a new type of mouse trap. More in a bit. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:03, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

3) How did I (Smallbones) find a lot of this info? Where to start? In the article, I included this link [1] (make sure to scroll all the way down). You gotta admit that list of blocked socks is a good place to start an article like this. It may not help you in your particular problem - it just says where the sock puppet investigators and checkusers have found a lot of socks. For your purposes, you might want to know what to do before anybody else has started an investigation. For my purposes, it needs to be checked, e.g. which side are the socks on, did they accidentally leave some other evidence. But for either use, it's not a bad place to start, just takes a minute in many cases to run, but a couple hours to check.

4) What are the checkusers and Sock Puppet investigators looking for? How do ordinary editors convince them? I consider a lot of this just to be "mistakes" (broadly defined) that paid editors make. Sooner or later everybody makes a few mistakes. To learn what others take to SPI, you might follow the WP:COIN noticeboard for awhile. This is already too long, but I hope this will help answer your question(s). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:25, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]