Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Éric Gagnier/Archive

Evidence submitted by Bearcat
These three usernames are all making problematic edits to the same small bunch of articles pertaining to figures primarily but not exclusively from the Canadian territories; their edits revolve around unsourced claims regarding ethnicity. For example, Éric Gagnier created — an unsourced and non-existent term whose meaning appears, from the way they applied it, to be "People from Nunavut whose names aren't obviously Inuit" (a trait which doesn't necessarily mean they aren't; he apparently added five Inuit to the category.) Shortly after that was challenged at CFD, Marc Lafortune came along and created  — a similarly unsourced and non-existent term for the very same thing. ("Nunavummiut" at least has the benefit of being the correct demonym for a person from Nunavut in English; "nunavois" is French.) And, in fact, Éric Gagnier had previously created Anglo-Nunavoise and List of Anglo-Nunavoise as well; the list is up for prod as unsourced BLP, while I speedied the article because it wasn't even minimally coherent English in the first place. ("In Nunavut, no one English in nunavut founded one plebeian of anglo-nunavoise flag, all as the francophones flag of everywhere en provincials and territory of Canada." And that's leaving aside the fact that an article about or list of Anglo-Nunavoise would be, strictly speaking, only about women.)

All three usernames and IP 209.226.116.39, as well, have directly edited Willard Phelps, a former premier of Yukon, to claim him as Franco-Yukonnais — which is also an unsourced claim. IP 209.226.118.7, meanwhile, hasn't made many mainspace edits on en: — but has been heavily involved in making some of the very same unsourced claims about the very same set of people (and even further, claiming Pat Duncan, Danny Williams, Joey Smallwood and Gordon Campbell as French Canadian as well) over on fr: And there may be other IP numbers involved as well that I haven't tracked down yet.

And then, in addition to that, Marc Lafortune subsequently upmerged a random selection of articles from subcategories of back up into the parent category, for no immediately apparent or obviously useful reason. Interestingly, however, he chose some of the same random articles (Yannick Bisson, Wilfrid Laurier, etc.) that were chosen when IP number 209.226.116.130 did the very same thing about four weeks ago. 130 also previously tried to categorize people as — yet another invented word for the same WP:OR concept as the other categories. 130 didn't actually create the category, though; they just filed people in the redlink and then tried to wedge the talk page into the category tree.

Marc also gave Émile Benoît an unsourced sex change on Franco-Newfoundlander (admittedly possibly an accident), and added fr: interlangs to Tony Cornect and Claude Barrat even though there aren't any articles on fr: to link to yet. And Éric Gagnier also created a rather unneeded Categoria:Anglo-nunavoianos on es:, whose only content is a title redirect to their article on Nunavut.

Essentially, it would seem that every time an established editor asks him why he's doing what he's doing, or explains why it's inappropriate, he stops editing under the old username and comes back a few days later with a new one to do the same things again. He certainly hasn't ever given any indication of being willing to engage in actual discussion about any of it.

It's important to note that the terms "anglo-/franco-(Canadian or individual province or territory)" are not purely linguistic in nature; a person is not considered "Franco-Newfoundlander" just on the basis of possessing the ability to speak some French if they don't have actual French ancestry and French isn't their first language. That's why these edits are problematic; while there is obviously some intersection with language, the categories involved are based on ethnicity first and foremost, not language alone. A person is not "Franco-Yukonnais" or "Franco-Columbian" if their name is Phelps or Campbell and they speak French as a second or third language — unless, perhaps, you can properly source that their mother's maiden name was Bourassa or Laurier or, er, Gagnier. Bearcat (talk) 17:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Update: User:No Gagnier subsequently showed up and created the second third most absurd and unsupportable thing I've seen yet in this whole affair: . Like, really now, "Inukophone"? And then he promptly topped himself by adding — er, what the hell now? — to Jack Anawak, too. And then he even outdid that by adding  to Susan Aglukark. (At least there would actually be more than one "Inuko-Tenois", if such a word actually existed.) Dude needs to be stopped pronto. Bearcat (talk) 21:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Update #2: And then IP number 209.226.116.182 removed the CFD template from, recatted Phelps as Franco-Yukonnais again with the explanation "and the premier Franco-yukonnais on being Premier of Yukon pendant" but then reverted himself, and added another nonexistent interlang link to Canadians of Spanish descent. Bearcat (talk) 22:04, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Another issue for M-A: I didn't catch this until now, but he also tried to alter Prescott and Russell United Counties, Ontario, as well as several of its individual municipalities, to change the infoboxes from Infobox Settlement to "Infobox Former Country". An independent Prescott-Russell? When? Bearcat (talk) 22:11, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Comments by other users
Also the following edits to Franco-Yukonnais by Éric Gagnier, M-A Gagnier and Marc Lafortune. The highly esteemed CBW presents the Talk Page! 18:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
All registered accounts indefinitely blocked and tagged. 209.226.116.0/24 blocked 3 days. –MuZemike 18:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by CambridgeBayWeather
The sudden appearance of two editors interested in ethnic/language edits to various people, this time in Ontario rather than the territories. They have both been active in adding the Category:English Ontarian without checking to see if they fit the definition given, "complete or near complete English ethnic or national origins." The main edit that to me indicates sockpuppetry is English-speaking Ontarian. In the box under the section headed "Related ethnic groups" is Anglo-Nunavummiut. While Nunavummiut is the demonym it is never used in the hyphenated form and is a word that I first saw used by the previous editors in this case. Enter CBW, waits for audience applause, not a sausage. 12:22, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
Blocked and tagged.&mdash;Kww(talk) 14:09, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

06 July 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Similar edits. 117Avenue (talk) 00:10, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Um, care to clarify that a bit? It's been a year since we've done any sort of work on this case, so some diffs or explanation or anything would be helpful. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 02:50, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Sure. The user behind Éric Gagnier, using 209.226.116./24, 209.226.118./24 and 209.226.121./24, is indef. blocked on both the french and the english wikipedia. He recently returned under 204.237.12.81 (a static IP this time). This IP is blocked on the french WP. He confesses to be the same user here on my talkpage : . Roughly translated (from his atrocious French... if it sounds like pidgin English, it's not because i can't translate, it's just that i'm trying to reflect in English the quality of his French) : "Hello, since you don't believe me, i would like you to create the new page Sharon Labchuk in the french wikipedia, go on this site Labchuk that i wanted create the page and do you know why i have not create the page Sharon Labchuk of the french wikipedia, because of you to have blocked to modify me from the french-wikipedia since last october. I would like you to will let me modify all the pages of the french-wikipedia please and trust me, i promise not to do mistakes again emphasis addedand i was at the User:209.226.116.75 on april 15, 2011 i didn't do lies nor mistakes, if you don't believe me go and check on this site of my contributions . You can written to me on my email ***@hotmail.ca". --M AURILBERT   (talk)  03:39, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Um.. okay... Well, the 209 IP hasn't been used in like a week, so I'm going to close this without further action. (The 204 IP is currently blocked.) —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 03:28, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

15 July 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Is once again editing 2011 in Canada, adding links to French Wikipedia, where English doesn't have articles, and adding non-free images. Once again communicating in French, and geolocate puts him in Ottawa. 117Avenue (talk) 13:18, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * IP blocked 1 week; I've also protected the article for a few days. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 03:27, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

27 August 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Same name, same edits. 117Avenue (talk) 03:41, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Blocked and tagged per WP:DUCK. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 03:47, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

19 October 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

DUCK, as simple as that. 117Avenue (talk) 04:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
✅, along with. . TN X Man  14:12, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Blocked and tagged. -- DQ  (t)   (e)  16:37, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

26 December 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Duck! 117Avenue (talk) 06:24, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * I've blocked and tagged the sock on behavioral grounds. 117Avenue: going forward, please give more explanation than just a one-word (or one-sentence) comment. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 09:17, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

10 January 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Editing pattern matches that of blocked sockpuppet User:M-A-G gentil et attention including very specific type of edits here and here. Slam dunk per WP:DUCK. Swayback Maru Mufka's alternate account (talk) 13:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Thanks for diffs; it's a ✅ match to a previously blocked sock. I also found a sleeper:.
 * . WilliamH (talk) 14:04, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Socks blocked and tagged, marking for close. TN X Man  16:00, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

24 November 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Similar disruptive edit patterns, IP from the same city. 117Avenue (talk) 03:51, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Blocking the static IP for a year this time. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:39, 25 November 2012 (UTC)