If you've been directed here, you're probably a well-meaning editor trying to explain why a new editor can't edit some article with the word "Pioneer" in the title. That new editor is a sock ofPioneercourthouse (talk ·contribs) trying to work around an abuse filter and/or semi-protection. Stop explaining and block. Thank you. (For the full history, seehere.)Wknight94^talk12:46, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ThePioneer Courthouse Square article has been subjected to a multi-year effort to add irrelevant, non-encyclopedic, and unsourced facts. The human behind it has useddozens of sockpuppets to edit the article. Tactics include misdirection, confusion, and/or lies about their intent, in order to get the article protection reduced so they can edit it.

Pioneer Courthouse Square is a place in downtownPortland, Oregon affectionately referred to as "Portland's Living Room".

In October 2006, an IP editor,144.142.21.6 (talk ·contribs),added the following phrase: "The square has a somewhat negative reputation because of the many homeless persons who congregate there." The IP had made previous edits, and made subsequent edits, but tailed off by mid-2007.

This quickly turned into an edit war from multiple IPs: many times in October 2006 from68.50.73.179, then in December from67.189.121.234,68.50.73.179,141.161.12.144, and70.58.51.131.

Finally,Pioneercourthouse (talk ·contribs) (aka PCH) showed up and made the same "mostly harmless" edit on24 December 2006. PCH and70.58.51.131 (talk ·contribs) traded edits over the next few days, andsockpuppets began in January 2007 withPioneeramerica (talk ·contribs)making the same edit.

Since then, there have beendozens of confirmed or suspected sockpuppets with one or more aspects of the followingmodus operandi:

• adding a variation of the same text:Pioneer Courthouse square is known to be popular among homeless. Most commit no crimes although there have occasionally been murders.
• Posting to talk pages, asking why they are protected and claiming to have important information to add, but never sharing what the information is. Rather than going into a long explanation, this page should be given as rationale.
• Creatinglarge numbers of sleeper sockpuppet accounts, making small edits, and using them months later.

He has inspired many discussions onTalk:Pioneer Courthouse Square,checkuser efforts, reports toWP:ANI, and so on. The page has been permanently protected, and as of May 2009, the sock farm branched out to similarly-named articles, such asPioneer Place (example),Pioneer Square, Seattle (example), andPioneer Courthouse (example). These pages have been fully protected also.

He is community banned andshould be blocked on sight.Abusefilter 175 was created byEncMstr (talk ·contribs); it is kept private (administrator-only) to keep the sockpuppets from discovering ways around it.

The indefinite semi-protection ofPioneer Courthouse Square waslifted in December 2022. Anew sockpuppet appeared in June 2023 to resume vandalism of the article in the same manner as past practice. The article was protected in January 2024 after continued vandalism.

In July 2025, the "mostly harmless" vandalism resumed and the article wassemi-protected again. This time, the account names begin with "Bo" (such as Boocher1994 and Bobob20094567; edits were also made in 2024 by accounts named Boofyog and Bobibyu).

The goal of this page is to reduce time explaining the PCH sockpuppet saga to editors who haven't heard of it. While it initially appears to failWP:DENY, the sock has been able to pull in the unfamiliar editors, causing a lot of time to be wasted. Some of PCH's socks will evenwrite on ANI threads,troll ANI,troll the Pioneer Courthouse talk page, andclaim to be a coworker and use blackmail in the trolls.

• Mediation Cabal from 2006
• Talk:Pioneer_Courthouse_Square/Archive_1,Talk:Pioneer_Courthouse_Square/Archive_2
• Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets/Pioneercourthouse
• Sockpuppets:confirmed,suspected,investigation archive
• Checkuser
• ANI:481,494,496,530,"coworker"

• Wikipedia long-term abuse – Active