Requests for comment/The meatpuppeting attack on LMO wikipedia - Origin (source) of the meatpuppets

It's a couple of month that I'm analyzing a case of meatpuppeting attack. I know that the word "meatpuppet" should be used with great care ([1]), so the word "meatpuppet" will be used according the main definition given in the page ([2]):

Editors of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia use "meat puppet" to deprecate contributions from a new community member if the new member was (allegedly) recruited by an existing member only to back up the recruiting member's position.

I also know that personal attacks must be avoided ([3]). In this analysis there is some nickname, but only because those nicknames were involved in the meatpuppeting attack, as demonstrated by the logs.

On the LMO wikipedia, in the days 2-4-5-6 december 2007, a lot of people accessed for the first time the LMO wiki, immediately or after few minutes voted 5 new administrators [4] and then disappeared. According to the cited definition, these voters should be considered meatpuppets. The 5 admins "elected" in that way were: Fabexplosive, Snowdog, Barbapedana, DracoRoboter and Remulazz: according to the cited definition, they should be considered (allegedly) recruiters (=meatpuppeters). The detailed analysis of the attack is above [5].

It's difficult to find were the meatpuppeting attack was organized, but perhaps the cultural environment origin (source) of the meatpuppeting attack can be found. Let we analyze the following evidences:

  1. the meatpuppets (as definition) DracoRoboter (as Draco), Xaura, Ilario, Marcok, Paginazero, Nemo, Fabexplosive, kiado and M7 (as M/) took part to the organization of the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Italian Wikimedia Association (WMI), as we can see [6]. In the page there are also Nick1915, but see later;
  2. the meatpuppet (as definition) Nemo (first edit on LMO 17:14, 4 dic 2007, voted after 38 minutes for 3 admins [7]) is one of the 5 people in the Board of the Italian Wikimedia Association, as we can see [8];
  3. a steward (Nick1915) backed up metpuppets and meatpuppeters for a longtime, till in the RFC [9] was explicitly requested to stop to backup the attackers and to follow better the Steward_policies, where it says "Stewards should always be neutral";
  4. the meatpuppet (as definition) Remulazz is an active member of the Italian Wikimedia Association, as we can see [10];
  5. the (allegedly) recruiter Snowdog has been vice president of the Italian Wikimedia Association [11].

And so on ... but it could be enough for now.

Yattagat 21:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


The case study above has been published in the Meta-Forum. Continuing to analize the case, it's possible to find other evidences:

6. another member of Italian Wikimedia Association (and steward), (Paginazero) was heavly involved in the attack (maybe naivly): he voted for 3 admins ([12]: only 4 edits in total and then disappeared. Here we can see Paginazero receiving a premium for the Italian Wikimedia Association [13].

Yattagat 21:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]