Sock Puppet Theatre

John Lott keeps trying to use sock puppets to scrub his wikipedia page of criticism. Unfortunately other wikipedia users undo his changes, he makes them again and he gets into an edit war. He’s used his socks to try to alter the page many many times. (See round 1 round 2 round 3).

This weekend there was another edit war. One anonymous user changed the page to Lott’s preferred version. Just six minutes later a user with IP address 69.141.3.180 changed it back. Three minutes later it was changed back to Lott’s version. Battle was joined with edits coming every three or four minutes, ending with an edit by 69.141.3.180 described like this:

Stop these reverts back and forth. Keep the version that Rory096, Pearle, and Lambert had.

Except that he hadn’t restored Rory096′s version. It was almost the same, but most of the material about John Lott’s use of sock puppets was removed (see diff). And 69.141.3.180 tracks to Swarthmore, PA, which is where Lott lives.

Yes, both of the sides in this little edit war were sock puppets operated by Lott, all so he could sneak in a change. Alas, his trick didn’t work and the page was fixed within a couple of hours.

I bet his next cunning plan will involve putting some fake ghosts on the page to scare everybody else off so he can edit it in peace.

Comments

#1 coby
March 20, 2006

You’re good (was it your catch?). You must have alot of enemies.
#2 Danny Yee
March 21, 2006

I picked that one up… something about the series of anon IP edits set off warning bells.
#3 Mark Frank
March 21, 2006

A question – I notice that John Lott has a blog with virtually no comments on it. This suggests that if he was totally ignored he might just disappear from public view to the benefit of mankind in general. I know it is difficult – but might it be best to reduce all mentions of him to the absolute minimum?
#4 J F Beck
March 21, 2006

might it be best to reduce all mentions of him [Lott] to the absolute minimum?

Nah, then Lambert would have to consider changing his Site Meter: http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s15lott98
#5 Nabakov
March 21, 2006

And if you stopped mentioned Tim Lambert, where would that leave your site visit count remora boy?
#6 z
March 21, 2006

The mind boggles. I stand in awe of such creativity in the service of altering reality. If we could only harness him away from the Dark Side….
#7 david tiley
March 24, 2006

Pretty good stats. Comes with an intelligent blog, about important things, read around the world.
#8 huxley
March 24, 2006

I stand in awe of such creativity in the service of altering reality. If we could only harness him away from the Dark Side….

Well, his apologists do spin pretty well, so we might benefit from hooking them up to dynamos …
#9 Paul Crowley
March 26, 2006

‘cos we’d fall for that. I always diff a controversial article I’m watching back at least to the last editor I trust.