User:Fuzheado/Sleeper sockpuppets

There are many indications Wikipedia is rife with sleeper sock puppet accounts. Many usernames are created daily, but only a fraction of them have any contributions in the hour after they are created. Actually, most have no contributons even after days. Anyone doing RC patrol since Septemer knows many vandal accounts are of these type.

There are several reasons for this:

• New semi-protection (Nov 2006) - prevents editing by IP accounts and "new" accounts (usually < 3 day sold), so sock puppet accounts are "aging in the barrel"
• New throttling of creating accounts (Dec-Jan 2006) - since it's harder to create a flood of accounts, they are being created slowly over time

Main sources:

• Willy on Wheels

Evidence

Consider a recent spurt of vandal edits to the article Wikipedia (January 12, 2006) [1]

• 04:10, 12 January 2006 User:The Unstoppable
• 04:09, 12 January 2006 Curps m (Reverted edits by Will Hunting (talk | block) to last version by PlasticMan)
• 04:08, 12 January 2006 User:Will Hunting (§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§g§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§)
• 04:04, 12 January 2006 PlasticMan (revert from vandalism)
• 04:04, 12 January 2006 User:MilkySmooooth (~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@@@@@@@@@@@@@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
• 04:02, 12 January 2006 Bcorr m (Reverted edits by Dan "The Beast" Severn (talk | block) to last version by RunOrDie)
• 04:01, 12 January 2006 User:Dan "The Beast" Severn

Each time, the whole article text was replaced with "Jumbo Wheeels!!!!", a reference to a famous troll.

Looking at the creation dates of these accounts, we find:

• 04:09, 12 January 2006 The Unstoppable [2]
• 04:03, 12 January 2006 MilkySmooooth [3]
• 04:06, 12 January 2006 Will Hunting [4]
• 04:00, 12 January 2006 Dan "The Beast" Severn [5]

Work needed

There is not a good understanding of this phenomena. User:Fuzheado believes there are tens of thousands of sleeper accounts on en:, and likely more than 100,000. The problem is that official statistics do not help in tracking this.

Looking at the new users log, at 14:34 pm (UTC+8), 15 Jan 2006, going back 20,000 entries gets you

• 14:55, 10 January 2006 AkshatJain

Some analysis:

• That means 20,000 accounts were created in five days.
• That's 120,000 per month, given a 30 day month
• This is verified if you do offset 120,000 into the list:
  • 12:16, 12 December 2005 Mistrrie

20,000

2.78 accounts per minute, which is about what Less then three days ago

Solutions

No easy solutions to this phenomena. Here are some suggestions:

Account aging

Delete all accounts older than "n" days and have no edits. Ideal number for "n" is perhaps 2 days. It's not obvious whether there is a legitimate reason to have accounts created, but not used, for so long.

• Pros - Does not burden legit registrants
• Cons - escalates the battle. Vandal may write script to make small dummy edits right after creation, just to not be an empty account

CAPTCHA or some type of Turing test

• Pros -
• Cons - one more step in registration, historic resistance to this "anti-wiki" concept

E-mail activiation code to user

• Pros -
• Cons - one more step in registration, requires e-mail address

Account creation throttling

• Pros - Does not require additional registration info
• Cons - may be legitimate reasons (ie. school exercise, high profile event)