Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/FarmSanctuary

''The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a Request for checkuser. Please do not modify it .''

Farm Sanctuary, et al



 * Code letter: A, C, D, E
 * Code A, this is a mess of socks intent on disrupting normal editors
 * Code C, same as above
 * Code D, socks vote on AfDs Articles_for_deletion/Gene_Baur
 * Code E, socks intent on forcing other users into 3RR situations
 * Code letter: A, C, D, E
 * Code A, this is a mess of socks intent on disrupting normal editors
 * Code C, same as above
 * Code D, socks vote on AfDs Articles_for_deletion/Gene_Baur
 * Code E, socks intent on forcing other users into 3RR situations
 * Code letter: A, C, D, E
 * Code A, this is a mess of socks intent on disrupting normal editors
 * Code C, same as above
 * Code D, socks vote on AfDs Articles_for_deletion/Gene_Baur
 * Code E, socks intent on forcing other users into 3RR situations
 * Code C, same as above
 * Code D, socks vote on AfDs Articles_for_deletion/Gene_Baur
 * Code E, socks intent on forcing other users into 3RR situations

Please see the request at the Conflict of Interest noticeboard. It's a sock army. SchmuckyTheCat 23:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Moved request from Requests for checkuser/FarmSanctuary et al/. Copied list of users mentioned in that thread, replaced userlinks with checkuser templates. – Luna Santin  (talk) 01:36, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Added 2 more new editors who showed up today to complain how lame it is that the page is locked.--Isotope23 01:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

It's your job to pick the most relevant code letter and provide the necesary diffs. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 19:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not D, as the sockpuppet votes do not affect the outcome of the !vote at Articles for deletion/Gene Baur. I've copied and pasted the diffs from the 3RR archive below:


 * 1st revert: user:FarmSanctuary
 * 2nd revert: user:FarmSanctuary
 * 3rd revert: user:Brooklyn5
 * 4th revert: user:Brooklyn5
 * user:FarmSanctuary
 * user:IP Address, same as FarmSanctuary
 * user:Brooklyn5
 * user:Brooklyn5, reverting and vandalizing by putting the protected tag up.

I've asked the filer to provide some more evidence. MER-C 09:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you MER-C. I might not be able to go back and fill in as much of this as I'd like but I'm taking a stab. Some of it has been deleted and I can't view it. Primarily, this is a problem conflict of interest using [[WP:SOCK|sockpuppets/meatpuppets. Farm Sanctuary is a political lobbying group. They can, and I believe they have, asked many of their employees and volunteers to come to Wikipedia.
 * More information than you want.

At first there would be pairs of editors editing animal rights pages (I edit Foie gras, Farm Sanctuary runs nofoiegras.com). These pairs would mysteriously appear together, edit in tandem, cause disruption and edit wars, start a MedCab request, then move on, and a month or so later it would occur again with a different pair.

When some of those editors admitted being from Farm Sanctuary, I took a look at their Wikipedia pages for Gene Baur and Farm Sanctuary. They were written by Farm Sanctuary staff. First, I, and other editors before me, removed some public relations fluffy language. Nobody objected. Lastly, I inserted things which could only be termed negative - but it was absolutely notable and true. The United States Department of Justice connected Farm Sanctuary to animal rights terrorists in the early 1990s and publicized that in a report to the United States Congress. Inserting that in the article has caused them to go to extreme lengths to remove it - to the point they are creating multiple accounts, and I believe asking their volunteers and employees to remove it. All of the action indicating sockpuppetry occurred over only a few days time, indicating the franticness of it and inducement to others to go over 3RR.

The CheckUser verification here is actually secondary to the real issue. Even if all of these users and IP addresses are single and individual people, they are acting in tandem at the request of a mutli-million dollar activist corporation.

In the 3rr request above (thanks again for the cut and paste MER-C) Brooklyn5, FarmSanctuary, and an IP address all ganged up to remove information from the article. They were blocked. Later, Brooklyn5 requested admins to delete their user pages AND to delete the FarmSanctuary user pages. Deletion of the FarmSanctuary page was not done until Brooklyn5 straight up said this was a corporate role account. These pages have been deleted, admins can see the old edits, I cannot, so sorry for no diffs.
 * Connecting some dots

On some edits of FarmSanctuary, you see a curious relic of what is probably an external editor: multiple line breaks after each paragraph. Later we see this same relic from user Winchester 1962,.

Vladivostock showed up as a brand new account, and their edits amounted to single purpose editing of Gene Baur], [[Farm Sanctuary and their user pages. When I posted a welcome template, and a request to use talk pages rather than engage in revert warring, they removed it and said they have been here for three years.

Sieveking also showed up as a brand new account, single purposefully edited Gene Baur by removing negative information using a bogus edit summary. Sieveking also claimed to have been on Wikipedia since 2005 and made two minor edits to a different article. But what do the minor edits show? The same editing relic of inserting tons of whitespace.

Brooklyn5 = FarmSanctuary = Sieveking = Winchester1962. Vladivostock isn't directly linked by admittance or editing relic, but is obviously working in tandem.

Isotope23 added two brand new users whose only edits were to the Farm Santuary talk page AFTER the main article was protected. One of them also inserted Farm Sanctuary as an external link into foie gras. It's obvious NYMuckraker and Zachetti  were the latest incarnation of the socks.

That takes care of all of the named users from Farm Sanctuary. Now, the IPs
 * 71.245.131.170, Removes negative information, only edit, six minutes before Sieveking.
 * 12.214.99.47, removes negative information, two edits
 * 70.18.107.221, removes negative information, reverting to same edit made by Vladivostock, similar bogus edit summary
 * 67.101.76.50, puts animal rights spin on foie gras intro, then  two reverts of Gene Baur, removing negative information.
 * 70.18.106.16   3 edits, removing information.  Reverted at the same time (within minutes) as FarmSanctuary and Brooklyn5 were doing so, this is the IP directly involved in the 3RR report.

GingerGin came to us from the foie gras page and was mostly a single purpose editor there, she arrived as a pair with MichaelBrock just a few weeks after the exit of two other editors who edit-warred and admitted to being a live-in couple. Ginger moved to protect the Farm Sanctuary page as well, like the above through simple removal. Ginger shows an obvious failure to use Google, on the talk page after she removed easily found information. Ginger also admits to revert counting "I'm not going to revert it though because I'm not wasting a revert" which makes the use of socks under suspicion.
 * Part2, connecting GingerGin

Ginger strangely talks to herself in the 3rd person. Then an IP (66.74.212.163) shows up to insult her, and the same IP does a revert  of material GingerGin wanted earlier, note the edit summary of that last diff by the IP with this one  by Ginger.

Again an IP (70.109.119.191) shows up and talks to her and the IP also removes negative material from Farm Sanctuary   and this IP also apparently cant find [] the DOJ report that Ginger also said she cannot find.

Per WP:SOCK: when there is uncertainty whether a party is one user with sock puppets, or several users acting as meatpuppets, they may be treated as one individual. Also per SOCK, it is inappropriate to solicit people with known bias to come and edit articles, including friends and family members.
 * Policy issues

To that friends and family members business quoted from the policy page, I'd also add co-workers. This huge list of users and IPs might be independent groups, or it might be all an employee or two at Farm Sanctuary. From the WP point-of-view, we should have none of it when they are obviously disruptive.


 * Yes, this whole thing is tl;dr. SchmuckyTheCat 22:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Moved discussion regarding User:GingerGin to talk. Also removed struck-out usernames from list of users to be checked (my impression is that those requests have been withdrawn by the request submitter; feel free to replace them if I'm in error). In addition, please consider shortening this request to cover the key points more briefly. Either way, thank you. – Luna Santin  (talk) 05:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You may re-file the request if you wish, with a single code letter and the necessary diffs. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 23:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the Request for checkuser. Please do not modify it. Subsequent requests related to this user should be made above, in a new section.''