Thread:Trent98/@comment-33323958-20190805230850/@comment-37355082-20190806051308

Well, I look up the blocked account's contribution history and then the history of the pages the blocked account contributed (and who likes to contribute).

If I think the blocked account's behavior seems familiar (and seeing the word "BLOCKED" on the profile page of one of the users who contributed a page), then that could be a possible alt/sock of a person whose other accounts were blocked. I change the block expiry from "infinite" to the same expiry the other account got blocked. For example, if someone got blocked for breaking a rule and came back in an alt/sock, I would block them (and have the expiry date the same as the original account who broke the rule).

Also, for some users who don't seem familiar but broke the rules, I wanted to give said users whom WikiExpert thinks he/she is a sock a fair chance and give them a more reasonable punishment if they broke a rule. They don't deserve to get a life sentence those poor innocent people whom WikiExpert thinks their account is a sock! And some users whom WikiExpert thinks he/she is a sock but when I think the user DID follow the rules correctly (as mentioned, but looking through what the user has contributed)), I would unblock them and say "We thought you're a sockpuppet user, but please don't break the rules or else!".

Sometimes a certain word/name can give away who the person I think who really made these accounts. For example, Noah Alexander Johnson (a fellow disrespectful user) likes to use the word "Freakstyle" in every new account he creates and Varga (another troublesome user) uses "Vargalajos" and/or "Vargacsani".

Kristopher Taylor (excuse me for the insulting/roasting/Shrek reference, but he's a dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden) keeps making socks for over a year now and we (including me) block his alt/sock regardless of how many times he comes back.

We don't currently have the tools to look up what user's IP address, but I think that would be a very good idea if we can block a troublesome user's IP address. That way, a troublesome user will still be blocked on this Wiki regardless of when he/she created an alt/sock, and that won't defeat the purpose.

So that's my explaination of how I block users (most of them suspicious).