Comments on: Rep. Dan Branch Has a Sock Puppet in His Office

By: Cornhusker No 5

Cornhusker No 5 — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:35:37 +0000

Tim,

Prior to making the original post on this issue, did you call Branch’s office for a comment or explanation or was the intent of the post to embarrass Rep. Branch from the beginning? If you are going to post stories such as this while having a policy of anonymous comments, then you shouldn’t engage in a witchhunt on those that leave them, especially those that take issue with the content of the post itself. Since you have decided to make issue with the identity of someone that reads and participates in your blog, I wonder if you will also uncover the identity of the “alert, iPhone-wielding FrontBurnervian”?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:31:00 +0000

That’s not sock puppetry — it’s a loose use of the term, or a subset of it at best. Sock puppetry is posting by different names, giving the impression of more than one identity in the same thread/community. For instance, if “Bethany” and “Rawlins in Blunderland” were actually the same individual — there would be the earliest known or primary identity … in our example, let’s say that’s Rawlins. Bethany would be his sock puppet. (Thus elucidated, the humorous analogy becomes clear.) The site administrators, of course, would be able to discern this, but only if they were exceptionally vigilant or became suspicious enough to investigate.

A real-life example: Many people have voiced suspicions that Marty Cortland is, in fact, the sock puppet of one of the D crew (the most common guess being Tim).

[/didacticism]

By: Tim Rogers

Tim Rogers — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:59:56 +0000

Honestly, Neal, we don’t have the time to look at IP addresses in a systematic way like that. It’s tough enough just reading the comments, much less trying to figure out who wrote them.

By: Neal

Neal — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:58:39 +0000

Tim, I think you could derive a lot of amusement – and occasionally break some news – if you double checked the IP addresses of your various commenters to the more controversial posts on this blog (think Trey’s Neil Emmons-related posts or your Dan Branch story). I’m actually surprised you don’t already do this and that you apparently needed a 3rd party to do the legwork (and that it took a month to figure out!). Presumably, your ISP logs the IP address of every visitor (not just commenter) and you should have access to this information in real time. A simple whois.com search would confirm the owner of the IP address. Sock puppetry is pretty common and the only way to stop it is to call out those who do it. But who says you can’t have some fun and embarrass a few people along the way?

By: Doyle King

Doyle King — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:36:49 +0000

I thought a sock puppet covers Elliot Smith.

By: LoC

LoC — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:05:57 +0000

My head is spinning trying to figure out who’s whose sock puppet in the comments.

By: Buck

Buck — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:18:12 +0000

Why not send an FOI request and see what else came from that IP address?

By: BLM

BLM — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:08:27 +0000

Jack,

Not touchy. Actually, I was amused by your logic — “How dare someone try and find out who sent a ludicrous email to their own blog?!?!”

oxox

By: Don

Don — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:04:50 +0000

I heard Dan Branch once was engaged to Don Henley. Dan apparently parked illegally at the Hell Freezes Over concert stop in Dallas.

By: YoYo

YoYo — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:17:26 +0000

I know this is just a blog, but even by blog standards this seems like poor reporting:

“A tipster told me that the post was made by a senior Branch staff member. The IP address of the computer used to make the post appears to confirm it. The post definitely came from a Texas Lege computer.”

How does that confirm anything? There are 150 members of the Texas House, and literally thousands of staff and computers. Just because it came from a computer within the Capitol, how does that “confirm” that it came from Branch’s office? For example, you can go “big brother” on me and see that I am typing from a Lege computer, but I assure you I am not typing from Branch’s office.

Weak, weak.