[wp-forums] Putting 2 accounts in the timeout room

[Josh Lobe]

Lol... I even had to look up "sock puppet" in the urban dictionary ;)
Jeez... am I getting too old??

Thanks for the tips.. exactly what I was hoping to hear.
I do see the double IP address.. makes perfect sense now.

Thank you, Mel.
Thank you, Mika.
Thank you, Jan.

*Josh Lobe*
WP Edit Pro <http://wpeditpro.com>
Personal Website <http://www.joshlobe.com>

On 5/20/2014 4:34 PM, esmi at quirm dot net wrote:
> on 20/05/2014 19:56 Josh Lobe said the following:
>> Wow Jan,
>> You're good!
>> Took me a minute to fully understand what you were talking about.
>> Thanks for the lesson :)
>
> Jan is the WPORG Sock Puppet bloodhound. ;-)
>
>> How on earth were you able to put all that together?
>> What 'red flags' do you look for?
>
> In the back end of the forums, there's an option to search by IP. It's 
> slow but effective if you think you're dealing with a sock puppet.
>
> Depending upon your access level, you can also see IPs for every post 
> in a topic,. In the topic that Jan mentioned 
> <https://wordpress.org/support/topic/delete-post-in-forum?replies=13&view=all> 
> we have two puppet accounts posting to the same topic using the same 
> IP address.
>
> Other things to look for:
>
> - a sudden spate of 5 star reviews for a given plugin
> - a sudden spate of 1 star reviews for a given plugin
> - slightly off-key conversations between two posters extolling the 
> virtues of [insert plugin/theme here]*.
> - Poster A adopts a slightly "risky" stance (possibly against 1 or 2 
> mods) & Poster B suddenly appears from nowhere defending A up to the 
> hilt.
>
> Have I missed anything? ;-)
>
> It's actually quite difficult to define what catches the eye. Possibly 
> a certain similarity in posting style? Either way, Jan can spot 'em 
> well before the rest of us do.
>
> Mel
>
> * Double brownie points if the topic was originally about a completely 
> different [insert plugin/theme here].