User talk:Gavin M

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Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~.

Be Bold!

Sam [Spade] 06:17, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sockpuppets

Are you the "creator" of the sockpuppets used in the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/The Sandkings discussion? (The arguments certainly sound the same.)

If so:

Shame on you!
I cannot understand the argument that sockpuppets were needed to make or strengthen the argument for deletion. If anything, it has fatally weakened it.
At least two people (me included) have now actually voted to keep this article at least partially because sockpuppets were used. Which just proves how counterproductive this whole exercise has been for the sockpuppet creator.

Experiment Thanks

Thank you very much for helping me with the recent experiment on The Sandkings article. It provided me some data that voting manipulation is possible through sockpuppetry. In my Lois Banner experiment, I only saw one person vote solely based on one piece of misinformation with no regard to the rest of the article's content. I had to throw that out since I inadvertently exposed the experiment. However, the Sandkings experiment was more fruitful. A few voted with no regard to the article's content and solely on the opposite vote of the obvious sockpuppets. Some things to consider when trying this experiment again is to increase the frequency of comments. Rather than daily, maybe twice a day? Well, any refinements you can think of the better. After the creation of the dividing line in the vfd vote, there were only a handful of votes casted before the nomination was shipped to the /old section of vfd. Next time, a bigger sample size would be better. Again, thank you very much for the data, which backs up some of my theories on voting psychology. LipChick01 08:15, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Also, next time please do not make edit summaries such as " (i'd like to see how many keep votes this would get with just my proof for delete)". This looks like it tainted the experiment. :sigh: But, judging from the comments of the voters, it looks like they didn't read it. I'll just footnote it. Just be careful next time about possibly exposing the experiment. Good luck. LipChick01 08:32, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)