User:Shock Brigade Harvester Boris/Scibaby: Extended dub version

Many Wikipedians have made comments about "Scibaby" and his (or her) socking without knowing the background. Here is a summary of the origins of Scibaby.

Sequence of accounts

• The first known account was User:Slaphappie, registered on 19 July 2006.

• User:Obedium was the second account, registered a week and a half later on 29 July 2006.

• About a month later Scibaby registered his third account, User:Scibaby, on 2 September 2006.

Start of global warming edits

• The Scibaby group made its first global warming related edit on 23 September 2007[1] by User:Scibaby to the article James Hansen. Notice that Scibaby already had been sockpuppeting for over a year before editing in the global warming area.

• Obedium made its first global warming related edit the next day, 24 September 2007,[2] also to James Hansen.

• Slaphappie then edited the same article (James Hansen) on the following day, 25 September 2007 [3].

Blocking

• Scibaby's first edit to a global warming related article was an edit of James Hansen at 23:14, 23 September 2007.[4] This was a contentious edit claiming that in 1971 Hansen had predicted a new ice age.

• The edit was reverted 20 minutes later by User:Hal peridol with a suggestion that the matter be discussed on the article talk page.[5]

• The sockpuppeting was obvious on behavioral evidence. Obedium's edit noted above was reverted by User:KimDabelsteinPetersen whose edit summary included the parenthetical note (please see WP:SOCK btw.)[6]

• Obedium then reinstated his edit at 01:53, 25 September 2007 with a summary citing an absurd Wikrules WYTU457.[7].

• After a few rounds of revert warring, User:Stephan Schulz included in his edit summary Please note WP:3RR.[8]

• Stephan Schulz's revert then was undone by IP 128.241.46.1.[9] From behavioral evidence this is almost certainly Scibaby editing as an IP. The behavioral evidence is corroborated to some extent in that an IP in this /16 range (128.241.107.27) was later blocked as a Scibaby sockpuppet based on checkuser evidence.

• At 02:16, 25 September User:Stephan Schulz filed a sockpuppet report citing User:Scibaby and User:Obedium[10]

• Admin User:Madman blocked Obedium for 3RR at 02:49, 25 September 2007.[11]

• Admin User:Lar acted on the sockpuppet report mentioned above with the conclusion "Is a check actually needed here? Per WP:DUCK  Declined as obvious."[12]

• Admin User:William M. Connolley indefinitely blocked Slaphappie for sockpuppetry at 19:59, 25 September 2007.[13]

• Admin User:William M. Connolley indefinitely blocked Scibaby for sockpuppetry at 20:02, 25 September 2007.[14]

Observations and musings

• It is sometimes said that Scibaby was driven to socking due to mistreatment or erroneous blocking over his editing of climate change related articles. This is incorrect. Socks were set up about a year before Scibaby began editing in the climate change topic area.

• The history shows one of Scibaby's tactics: create an inventory of sockpuppet accounts so they will be available as and when they are needed.

• In general Scibaby has made only token efforts to cover his tracks. One might consider that his goal isn't really to influence content on the climate change articles and that it's all a game to him, or that just likes stirring things up. Or maybe it is an odd form of performance art and we are part of the installation.