Overleg gebruiker:Vermont

Steward's decision

Dear Vermont,

Recently I proposed to replace an adaptation of a poem in the article Il pleure dans mon coeur by a literal translation as a) the translation is meant to give the reader who cannot read French the literal meaning of the text, and b) the adaptation was not made by a translator who had gained some critical acclaim but by an amateur. Still on the same day, a user working from the IP range 2a02:1810:8c0f:a900::/64 came to protest against my proposition, stating that he had noticed that Wikipedia had an article on that translator. That was a lie. He had not just noticed that; he was the creator of the article and most noticeable contributor. I suspected the IP to be Jules Grandgagnage himself. The latter is active on the Dutch Wikipedia as User:J.G.G.; for a confirmation of that see Grandgagnage's photo on commons and click the link behind 'author'. I compared the edits of J.G.G. with the ones made by the IP, and discovered a lot of common interests. J.G.G. has a history of using sockpuppets on the Dutch Wikipedia to protect and promote his own contributions. So I asked for a CheckUser to check if my suspicion was correct. Protecting someone's privacy cannot mean that we can no longer check if someone is cheating. After I asked for the CU, J.G.G. himself confirmed that he indeed was the person working from that IP. That was also confirmed by one of our checkusers. My plan was now to ask for a block of his account for recidivism of sockpuppetry, and I asked the CU if more Wikipedia-account were working from that IP. Before I could read the answer however, the edit was reverted and made invisible with oversight. I later learned that the answer was: no other sockpuppets.

I fail to see why the edits were reverted and made invisible. The cheating IP is still visible to anyone. It was moreover deliberately used to cheat. The only thing we can no longer see is the confirmation by the checkuser that the IP belongs to J.G.G. and that no other accounts were registered to it. I ask you to undo the oversight as there was, in my opinion, no reason for it. And if you disagree, I would like to here what justification there was for it, because so far I only hear loud silence.

I sent you an e-mail to bring this talk page to your attention. You can use the e-mail for answering me, if you would prefer that. WIKIKLAAS overleg 24 dec 2023 13:47 (CET)

Thanks for your thorough message and clarification. I'll get back to you soon, I'm unfortunately very busy this week. Vermont (overleg) 25 dec 2023 04:38 (CET)

Hi Vermont, it looks like we can take our time here. After blocking the user on my request, the Dutch admin who handled the block removed all the versions of the CU and the request for a block, stating that we cannot be diligent enough when it comes to mentioning an IP and connecting it to a registered user. And I totally agree that we cannot disclose an IP of a blocked user when the IP was still unknown. My point here is that the IP published itself and made the connection with a registered user by obviously abusing the IP for supporting the account. The Dutch Wikipedia is really struggling to find a way to deal with anonymous abuse, complying with the terms set by the WMF but still being able to effectively fight abuse. I would have been unable to ask for measures if I would not have been allowed to make the connection between a user and an IP. So I'd like to here your opinion, and what prompted someone to use oversight for the answer one of our checkusers posted. WIKIKLAAS overleg 26 dec 2023 13:59 (CET)