User talk:Mosasauroides

July 2022

 * (Am I allowed to respond to this?) Sorry in advance for the length of this response. Even if every single one of my edits had been based on unreliable sources that would not in my opinion (obviously Wikipedia administrators know more about policy than I do, but I want to understand what is going on here) warrant a block for being a sockpuppet - this is what I meant by a baseless accusation since no evidence was presented and (as I mentioned) no investigation appears to have been conducted. If my conduct, edits and editing patterns had been properly investigated beyond the observation that I created an article that happened to have been created previously by a banned user I think it would be obvious that I am not a sockpuppet of said user. I.e. even if my edits had been low quality or unsourced that is not enough to block me based on something completely different, surely?
 * I also find it rude that call my edits "idiotic attempts to vandalise Wikipedia". Was adding in the list of extinct species of Panthera (sourced in the article itself) to the infobox idiotic vandalism? Was expanding the short article on Amphekepubis with more reliable sources idiotic vandalism? Was adding in information on the classification of Xenodens based on what the paper says idiotic vandalism? Was expanding the timeline of mosasaur research to cover research conducted since the time the timeline was last updated (2019) idiotic vandalism? Was editing the article on Liodon to be more in-line with what has been going on with the genus since 2008 idiotic vandalism? The Liodon article now falsely ascribes the genus species that have been classified as Prognathodon since 2008 and falsely includes L. asiaticum as a species with a source that states it is in fact not valid. I am curious as to which edit you are referring to with Somehow, however, you managed to overlook a few little details such as your citing as a reference a paper which doesn't even mention the subject for which you gave it as a reference. (Did you think nobody would check?). Check any of the edits I mentioned and you'll see that they hold up.
 * Re: Harranasaurus: as I pointed out in the (now deleted without responding to my objections) talk page of the article - Kaddumi (2009) named many new genera and species in the same publication; Wikipedia already accepted some of them as valid before I began editing (see his Carinodens palistinicus being mentioned in the article on Carinodens). Here are two later papers (no chance these can be classed as unreliable) that view his C. palistinicus as valid: 1, 2 and one that views his Tenerasaurus hashimi as valid (reassigning the species to Prognathodon): 3. The conclusion one has to draw is that the publication is a source of valid taxonomic descriptions. Since I do not have access to A new durophagous mosasaur (Squamata: Mosasauridae) from the Maastrichtian Muwaqqar Chalk Marl Formation of the Harrana Fauna I got the information from the Italian Wikipedia, which does keep an article on Harranasaurus (link) not from a "children's fantasy site". The paper is a real paper (see the table of contents of the book it is from here, image 2) and it does name the new genus and species Harranasaurus khuludae (this other paper from the same publication explicitly mentions this).
 * I would contend that describing the creation of a Harranasaurus page, and all my other edits, as "idiotic attempts to vandalise Wikipedia" hardly abides by WP:AGF. If I am not getting unblocked (even if I were to this situation doesn't exactly inspire one to help contribute to the encyclopedia) I at least ask that my edits (I did not make that many) are reviewed for their merit individually - I don't think you can seriously contend that none of them were improvements. Mosasauroides (talk) 14:42, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, it looks as though you may have been editing in good faith after all. It is unfortunate that you took information for an article you created from Wikipedia, rather than from reliable sources, and that you posted material closely related to material previously posted on numerous even less reliable sources, such as Fandom, and that a substantial part of what you posted was very similar to material previously posted to Wikipedia by an editor who performed unambiguous vandalism, using numerous accounts. Several other features of your editing also made it look as though you were likely to be that editor. Unfortunately, the fact that many of your edits did seem to have been constructive did not contradict the appearance that your purpose here was vandalism, as it is a very common trick for vandals who have a prolonged history of blocked accounts to start out with some "good" edits in order to camouflage the destructive edits which are their real purpose on Wikipedia. However, thanks to links you have provided above, I see that there is at least one apparently reliable source for Harranasaurus, and I no longer see the evidende of vandalism as persuasive. Nor do I see any compelling evidence of sockpuppetry, though that does not, of course, rule out the possibility that there may be such compelling evidence, if I were to look in the right place.  are you willing to look again at the evidence, and consider whether the evidence is still compelling, or whether you and I may both have been mistaken on the basis of initial impressions? JBW (talk) 15:58, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I blocked the user for socking, not for "vandalism". The article the user created has been created multiple times by socks, and the versions are similar enough, regardless of whether it is a hoax or vandalism or a distortion or whatever. AFAIK, the data on the sockmaster is stale. However, the CU log data may be useful - hence .--Bbb23 (talk) 16:08, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry,, re-reading my post above I realise that I missed out a significant part of what I was thinking. I too saw the similarity of the article to earlier versions as convincing evidence of sockpuppetry, but I have now seen that there are other possible explanations for the similarity, such as copying from unreliable sources, such as Italian Wikipedia and other user-edited websites. I meant to mention that, and forgot. Nevertheless, I have thought again about the relevant editing history, and there are certainly features which are surprising if this really is a new editor. I'm really unsure. JBW (talk) 17:28, 15 July 2022 (UTC)


 * There's a little bit of data in the CU logs, and a bit more in cuwki. Both of those say Mosasauroides is ❌ to Lapitavenator. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:35, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Given that socking is, as I said above, the principal reason for my block, I've unblocked the user and removed the sock tag from their userpage.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:46, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I have reinstated my edits (presuming that is okay since the excuse for reverting all of them was the accusation against me) and have recreated the Harranasaurus page in a much shorter version sourced to a more accessible reliable source. Sorry if you got a lot of notifications from this. Mosasauroides (talk) 11:46, 17 July 2022 (UTC)