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In the past few years on Commons an unknown user living in Hong Kong created a large number of accounts that only upload its own photos to the project (known somewhat as Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1). They all used strange names such as EHALAM BorG 600M and HisuwME Rewpaei 78M (more of these here), and all file names would start with "HK", plus these user pages contained a gallery of the photos the user uploaded for that account. Other problems such as non-concise (for example Category:place name - elements) and bilingual category names, which I fixed a lot of these. The problem is that the user use these sockpuppets only to upload high quality photos, mostly geocoded, and with systematic description (although strange) and categorization that are not considered a reason for a ban (discussion). The current action is that when a new account was created for purpose, anyone would tag them with [[Category:Sockpuppets of Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1]] without blanking these accounts or deleting their contributions.

This goes over and over again, and this is how: when that user have new photos to upload to Commons, he will create a new account and uploads his photos, add descriptions and categorize them. When the photos of him that he intends to upload is done, he then creates a user page of that account as a gallery that displays the photos that were associated with the account. After this the account is abandoned and then a new account was created if more photos of him came along. Overall there was less than 500 edits for each of these accounts, and they are only active for about less than a day (aka non-confirmed). I checked back the sockpuppet category above to find that the creation date of the category to be 2019, which is a long history of sockpuppetry.

According to the policy concerning sockpuppetry, where a user has multiple accounts it is an expectation that they publicly disclose those accounts, usually on each of the relevant user pages providing links to each other. These accounts did not, and can only be identified with the filenames and strange account names. (That is why there is a Commons category mentioned above) The policy did list out the downsides of sockpuppetry as abusing multiple accounts to do vandalism, but that was not the case.

I am thinking that the whole ecosystem of Wikimedia is probably damaged, that anyone can hide their identity completely to make contributions (no matter good or bad), and also hardly or even cannot contact the user if there is problems with contributions such as privacy and copyright issues (as in this case, the accounts were quickly abandoned). That is why I am asking what kind of action to deal with that constructive sockpuppetry. I have discussed this long-standing problem on Commons but there is no consensus over possible ban of the user. Then a global lock request was made, but rejected. My intention is that he would use a constant account to upload his photos, but NOT taking excessive effort to create a new account to just uploading his photos and use the account's own user page as a gallery for the photos (In my opinion subpages can be created for his uploads). What I mean is that he should stop using disposable accounts to make permanent contributions as the word disposable may be regarded as do stuff to fulfill his own personal interests only, if applied to Wikimedia projects.

I am also concerned that the current process of creating new accounts poses a loophole for massive sockpuppetry (both positive and negative), as a new account only requires a username and a password (email is optional, it is for emailing to other users privately or used to change the account password if forgotten), and a basic captcha without extra verification (such as sending an email with a confirmation link to confirm that the account was not created by robots). Maybe there should be a restriction for account creation for each IP address? Recently I joined a course that, during the first lesson, a lecturer instructs me to create a temporary Google account for the course only, but I refused to do so as the procedures required submitting a local phone number for confirmation to prevent robots and malicious use of accounts (that worked well to tackle any means of sockpuppetry if this practice was applied to all projects of Wikimedia). The lecturer still forces me to do so, and I finally realized that as my phone number was used in my existing Google account, it says that my number was used too many times and the account creation cannot go through.

In a nutshell my request is to find ways to inform him to stop this deceptive practice of making one account + one gallery in that account = that day of uploads and contributions only; as well as to seek a change to ban any means of sockpuppetry, regardless it is good or not, to happen on any Wikimedia projects. Human names, after assignment, will never change unless wanted; this applies to the entire Wikimedia community; his actions is equal to changing how he was called every single day. I hope this message would be acknowledged by anyone who are specialized in coordination of how the world works and also to clearly emphasize what is the rule in Wikimedia and in sister projects. 興華街 (Hing Wah Street) - 💬 - 📝 06:28, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I hope T&S team will look up into your reports. Ahri Boy (talk) 02:14, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are again talking nonsense. I am also concerned that the current process of creating new accounts poses a loophole for massive sockpuppetry is a result of WMF clear goal of minimising collection of private user data and not some faulty technical implementation. IP restrictions are already in place as one can make only 6 accounts from a single IP. How other platforms handle their account management is out of our jurisdiction. A09|(pogovor) 19:42, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And that means in that case he far exceed the restrictions of using his IP to create accounts. As I know that wikis can't be edited in proxies (such as a VPN), I wonder how he would manage to do so. 興華街 (Hing Wah Street) - 💬 - 📝 03:14, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

IP hopping and ISP IP switching are a thing, so it's not that hard to evade. At least when done impartially. A09|(pogovor) 22:59, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly hope something can be done about this user. See also Steward requests/Global/2024-w23#Global lock for MOHLEAOSONDWN 2300 et al and Steward requests/Global/2025-w04#Global lock for Anonymous Hong Kong Photographer 1 et al. -- Jeff G. ツ (please ping or talk to me) 14:28, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This page sock puppetry is not "policy".
if there is no misuse then it's not "sock puppetry".--RoyZuo (talk) 15:12, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know Hong Kong is a puppet "state" of the dictatorship of the PR China. People believing in the goals of WM like free knowledge are sent to prison there on a regular basis. @HingWahStreet have you researched if this user is doing the way them does (you use the pronoun "he/him". Does that mean you know who them is? If not, how got you the information on them gender? Them might be a native speaker of chinese and as far as i know that language does mostly not use gender markers) to avoid geting found out by PR China authorities? C.Suthorn (@Life_is@no-pony.farm - p7.ee/p) (talk) 21:56, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't do this. This discussion is about a user's idiosyncratic editing and uploading habits, bringing in assumptions about the politics of Hong Kong and China just because that's where these people are from is neither relevant nor helpful. ReneeWrites (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Misuse is a broad term, and why would you refer to Meta policy about socking in this Commons-related case? A09|(pogovor) 23:02, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requests for comment/Blatant sockpuppetry in good faith

Discussion