User:TenOfAllTrades/Shustov

While this individual's contributions to Wikipedia are in desperate need of attention and cleanup, I don't wish to taint his professional reputation – whatever it might be – by having this page appear in Google searches. Consequently, I have NOINDEXed this page.

Please do not remove the tag without contacting me first. When the cleanup process is complete, I will blank or delete this temporary page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Description of the problem


The user account Shustov appears to be closely related to the earthquake engineering researcher V. Shustov. He has been creating a series of articles related to that topic. While normally the participation of subject matter experts is valuable and strongly encouraged, Shustov's contributions to Wikipedia have been problematic.

The serious problems fall into roughly two categories. In many cases, Shustov has added substantial amounts of material to Wikipedia which has been plagiarized from other sources. Verbatim copies of both copyrighted and public domain materials have been added, in some cases making up the bulk of entire articles. He has also violated Wikipedia copyright policy on a number of images, including by adding false public-domain tags to copyrighted images. Text was also often copied from other Wikipedia articles without acknowledgement in edit summaries.

A failure to recognize the problematic nature of this type of editing – up to and including edit warring to preserve plagiarized content – has led to an indefinite block of this user.

The second major area of concern is related to self-citation, -quotation, and -promotion. In the area of earthquake engineering, he has added direct copies of material from his own web pages, along with frequent citations of his own publications, YouTube videos, and websites. References to non-Shustov publications or web resources are few and far between &mdash; if present at all.

Sockpuppetry
Rather than acknowledge or attempt to resolve the issues which have led to his indefinite (not necessarily permanent) block (not necessarily a ban), Shustov has now resorted to sockpuppetry in order to push his agenda. Instead of stopping the sockpuppetry and responding to the concerns about his conduct, he has raised accusations of "paranoia", and seeks to have me "neutralize[d]".

The following sockpuppets have been identified so far.

enwiki only socks

 * - removing a PROD tag, adding additional information about his patents to Earthquake Protector. Identified as likely sockpuppet by Checkuser: .  (Similar geographic location).
 * - removing a PROD tag, restoring plagiarized content to George W. Housner. Identified via WP:DUCK: restored same edit as Lhosuna, and then went to another Shustov article.
 * - reverting (as usual) at George Housner and Earthquake Protector.

Crosswiki socks and accounts

 * (Global contribs) Blocked on de, en.
 * - Block evasion to restore links to his own web pages to Earthquake engineering; uploading File:Fluid viscous damper.jpg with false CC license tag. A few minor edits on Commons.  Blocked on en.
 * (Global contribs) Blocked on en.

IP addresses
Logged out edits by Shustov have come from the following IP addresses:
 * (edit warring)
 * (edit warring)
 * (to his own talk page during block)
 * (block evasion to make attacks at Talk:Earthquake engineering)*

Meatpuppet recruitment
Using deceptive messages, he has attempted to recruit meatpuppets from Structural Engineers Association - International. (Message archive by author, denial of plagiarism, request for meatpuppetry.)
 * - Meatpuppet (now unblocked in good faith) recruited to restore plagiarized material.

Checklist for cleanup
enwiki articles: 14 articles, 4 redirects.

Entries in italic have been examined and (to the best of my ability) fixed.

Articles



 * While this article was not created by Shustov, many of the serious problems with this article were added by him. Substantial cleanup required.  (See Talk:Earthquake engineering.)  Cleanup in progress.
 * While this article was not created by Shustov, many of the serious problems with this article were added by him. Substantial cleanup required.  (See Talk:Earthquake engineering.)  Cleanup in progress.

Resolved enwiki articles

 * Done. Contains virtually the same text and other content as Earthquake engineering.  Redirect.
 * Done. Contains virtually the same text and other content as Earthquake engineering.  Redirect.


 * Done. Looks okay.
 * Done. Looks okay.


 * Done. Portions of the article (including figure) describing a "Damage Ratio Charts Method" are copied directly from Shustov's web page .  This method appears to be unique to Shustov.  Google searches on that term and on "Damage ratio chart(s)" come up empty, save for Shustov's work and Wikipedia mirrors.
 * Absent any indication that this method (presented, apparently, by Shustov in 1997) is recognized, recommended, or used, it should be removed from the article.
 * Absent any indication that this method (presented, apparently, by Shustov in 1997) is recognized, recommended, or used, it should be removed from the article.


 * Done. Contains merged information copied from original, now-redirected article at Earthquake Performance Evaluation Tool. Bulk of article is about Shustov's own EPET software.  Needs judicious trimming.  Is this software notable? Trimmed out EPET-specific material; toned down number of images; cleaned up prose; removed way-excessive wikilinking.  Next thought &mdash; merge and redirect to Earthquake simulation.
 * Done. Contains merged information copied from original, now-redirected article at Earthquake Performance Evaluation Tool. Bulk of article is about Shustov's own EPET software.  Needs judicious trimming.  Is this software notable? Trimmed out EPET-specific material; toned down number of images; cleaned up prose; removed way-excessive wikilinking.  Next thought &mdash; merge and redirect to Earthquake simulation.


 * Article deleted. Device/concept designed/patented by V. Shustov.  No obvious Google hits for non-Shustov web sites, documents, or engineering projects; article appears to be self-promotion only.  Recommend deletion.  (PRODded on 00:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)).  NB: Shustov's sockpuppets keep returning to this article.
 * Article deleted. Device/concept designed/patented by V. Shustov.  No obvious Google hits for non-Shustov web sites, documents, or engineering projects; article appears to be self-promotion only.  Recommend deletion.  (PRODded on 00:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)).  NB: Shustov's sockpuppets keep returning to this article.


 * Done. Cleaned up prose; removed Shustov promo links; merged content from Earthquake performance evaluation.
 * Done. Cleaned up prose; removed Shustov promo links; merged content from Earthquake performance evaluation.


 * Done. A made-up term of art that Shustov tried and failed to patent.  Redirected to Base isolation.
 * Done. A made-up term of art that Shustov tried and failed to patent.  Redirected to Base isolation.


 * Done. Almost entirely plagiarised from a pair of obituaries.  Needs to be stubbed.  NB: Sockpuppets have returned to restore plagiarism - watch closely.
 * Done. Almost entirely plagiarised from a pair of obituaries.  Needs to be stubbed.  NB: Sockpuppets have returned to restore plagiarism - watch closely.


 * Done. While not created by Shustov, his major additions to this article were to add links to his own publications, websites, and/or devices.  Links removed.  (Total reduction was one figure, half of one sentence, and three external links: .)
 * Done. While not created by Shustov, his major additions to this article were to add links to his own publications, websites, and/or devices.  Links removed.  (Total reduction was one figure, half of one sentence, and three external links: .)


 * Done. Removed gratuitous references to Shustov's publications, cleaned up some phrasing.
 * Done. Removed gratuitous references to Shustov's publications, cleaned up some phrasing.


 * Done. Looks okay.
 * Done. Looks okay.


 * Done. Apparently a content fork of existing article on seismic analysis. Article has few non-Shustov contributions and no non-Shustov sources.  Should probably be redirected without merge, but merge tags added pending further review.
 * Done. Apparently a content fork of existing article on seismic analysis. Article has few non-Shustov contributions and no non-Shustov sources.  Should probably be redirected without merge, but merge tags added pending further review.


 * Done. Implicitly a subarticle of the equally-stubby seismic performance.  Explicitly synonymous with our preexisting (and more-detailed) article on seismic analysis.  Should be redirected there, after mergeable material (if any) is transferred.  Merge tags added.
 * Done. Implicitly a subarticle of the equally-stubby seismic performance.  Explicitly synonymous with our preexisting (and more-detailed) article on seismic analysis.  Should be redirected there, after mergeable material (if any) is transferred.  Merge tags added.


 * Done. Should be merged-redirected to Earthquake shaking table.
 * Done. Should be merged-redirected to Earthquake shaking table.


 * Done. Removed links to Shustov's web site, self-promotional references to EBF (elevated building foundation; a Shustov patent that no one else refers to: Google).
 * Done. Removed links to Shustov's web site, self-promotional references to EBF (elevated building foundation; a Shustov patent that no one else refers to: Google).


 * Done. This article was not created by Shustov, but most of its references were added by him.  The bulk of new text is aimed at promoting his 'sails-rigging blast protective structural shield'. Removed text specific to his structural shield; there are no apparent installations of this technology, and the link seems to be simple self-promotion by the patent holder.
 * Done. This article was not created by Shustov, but most of its references were added by him.  The bulk of new text is aimed at promoting his 'sails-rigging blast protective structural shield'. Removed text specific to his structural shield; there are no apparent installations of this technology, and the link seems to be simple self-promotion by the patent holder.

Redirects

 * Crash testing &rarr; Destructive testing
 * Earthquake Performance Evaluation Tool &rarr; Earthquake performance evaluation
 * EERI &rarr; Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
 * EPET &rarr; Earthquake performance evaluation

Other language Wikipedias

 * frwiki articles: 2 articles, 1 redirect.
 * eswiki articles: 1 article.

Non-engineering issues
Shustov appears to be persistently promoting his 'Upstream Fitness' exercise program. There appears to be no online recognition of this program – Google search – save for his own web site and some promotional content he has added to various Wikimedia projects.
 * Shustov's Upstream Fitness page:

December 2009
And self-promotion of Upstream Fitness on ruwiki.

Other notes

 * The history of User:Epic1218/Practice page shows the evolution from copy-paste to badly-concealed plagiarism on John Blume. This isn't Shustov's fault, but I needed to keep a note of this somewhere.