Then again, apparently the Foundation has a PR team whose only job is to compile the latest marketing buzzwords, and they seem to really love AI. You might get some buy in. Never know.
V/r TJW/GMG On Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 11:23 Kerry Raymond <[email protected]> wrote: > That's why I think we need "signatures" which is my shorthand for things > like a hash function or a bounding box, a means by which many non-matching > accounts can be eliminated at low cost, reserving the high cost comparisons > (machine or human) only for high probability candidates. It is > machine-computed and *stored* on the banning/blocking of a user. When a > suspect user is presented, it calculates their signature and then compares > them against the pre-calculated signatures of the bad users. I don't think > it is too expensive if we can find the right "signature". CPU cycles are > pretty fast. I only have an average laptop CPU-wise but I burn through > loads of comparisons of geographic boundaries (complex polygons with many > points) thanks to bounding boxes which reduce the complex shape to the > smallest rectangle that contains it. Testing intersection of polygons is > expensive, testing the intersection of rectangles is trivial. > > I think we can probably ignore the myriad of trivial bad guys for the > purposes of signature collecting, eg blocked for vandalism after their > first few edits. Sock puppets or their masters don't immediately appear as > bad guys on individual edits. It's often more about long-term behaviours > like POV pushing, refusal to engage in consensus building, slow burning > edit wars, etc, that does not show on individual edits. > > Kerry > > Sent from my iPad > > On 23 Aug 2019, at 11:42 pm, Timothy Wood <[email protected]> > wrote: > > You are correct that in all but the most obvious cases, filing an SPI can > be exceptionally time consuming. I'm afraid there is no obvious technical > solution there that would not involve a complicated AI that is probably > beyond the ability of the foundation to produce. > > There is quite a bit of data available in the form of years of SPIs, but > it seems like you're talking about Facebook or Google levels of machine > learning, and even years of SPIs is tiny compared to the amount of data > they work with. > > On a separate note, frequently changing IP adresses is most often an > indicator of nothing more than someone who is editing on a mobile > connection. This can usually be easily verified with an online IP lookup. > > V/r > TJW/GMG > > > > On Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 02:44 RhinosF1 <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Just a note that you can still go through warnings for vandalism etc. and >> report to AIV. >> >> Or at that edit speed, you may have a chance at AN at reporting for >> bot-like edits which will draw attention to the account. >> >> If you ever need help, things like #wikipedia-en-help on Freenode IRC >> exist >> so you can ask other users. >> >> RhinosF1 >> Miraheze Volunteer >> >> On Fri, 23 Aug 2019 at 06:57, Kerry Raymond <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> > Currently, to open a sockpuppet investigation, you must name the two (or >> > more) accounts that you believe to be sockpuppets with "clear, >> behavioural >> > evidence of sock puppetry" which is typically in the form of pairs of >> edits >> > that demonstrate similar edit behaviours that are unlikely to naturally >> > occur. Now if you spend enough time on-wiki, you develop an intuition >> about >> > behaviours you see on your watchlist and in article edit histories. >> Often I >> > am highly suspicious that an account is a sockpuppet, but I cannot >> report >> > them because I don't know which other account is involved. >> > >> > >> > >> > As a example, I recently encounted User:Shelati an account about 1 day >> old >> > at that time with nearly 100 edits in that day all about 1-2 minutes >> apart, >> > mostly making a similar change to a large number of Australian place >> > infoboxes. >> > >> > >> > >> > >> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Shelati >> > < >> > >> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Shelati&of >> > fset=20190728053057&limit=100&target=Shelati >> > < >> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Shelati&offset=20190728053057&limit=100&target=Shelati >> > >> > > >> > &offset=20190728053057&limit=100&target=Shelati >> > >> > >> > >> > Genuine new users do not edit that quickly, do not use templates and do >> not >> > mess structurally with infoboxes (at most they try to change the >> values). >> > It >> > "smelled" like a sockpuppet. However, as I did not recognise that >> pattern >> > of >> > edit behaviour as being that of any other user I was familiar with, it >> > wasn't something I could report for sockpuppet investigation. Anyhow >> after >> > about 2 weeks, the user was blocked as a sockpuppet. Someone must have >> > noticed and figured out the other account: >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Meganesia/ >> > Archive >> > >> > >> > >> > Two weeks and 1,279 edits later . that's over 1000 possibly problematic >> > edits after I first suspected them. But that's nothing compared with >> > another >> > ongoing situation in which a very large number of different IPs are >> engaged >> > in a pattern of problem edits on mostly Australian articles (a few >> > different >> > types of edits but an obvious "quack like a duck" situation). The IP >> number >> > changes frequently (and one assumes deliberately). The edits >> potentially go >> > back to 2013 but appear to have intensified in 2018/2019. Here's one >> user's >> > summary of all the IP addresses involved, and the extent to which they >> have >> > been cleaned up, given many thousands of edits are involved, see: >> > >> > >> > >> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:IamNotU/History_cleanup >> > >> > >> > >> > As well as the damage done to the content (which harms the readers), >> these >> > IP sockpuppets are consuming enormous amounts of effort to track them >> down >> > and revert them, which could be more productively used to improve the >> > content. We need better tools to foil these pests. So I want to put that >> > challenge out to this list. >> > >> > >> > >> > Kerry >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Wiki-research-l mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >> > >> -- >> RhinosF1 >> Miraheze Volunteer >> _______________________________________________ >> Wiki-research-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >> > _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
