Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/50mMidas/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets

 * ( original case name)

Memohwiki got into trouble by hijacking the article The Vach (which was later recovered and moved to Vach) which ended in a block after Articles for deletion/The Vach was closed. Tommiyn12 is a new account that recreated The Vach which has led to a second AFD, Articles for deletion/The Vach (2nd nomination). They have been aided by a flurry of new accounts listed here. They are all recently created, most over the past few days, and have focused on this article and AFD discussion. They could be part of a sockpuppet campaign or a paid editing ring but it is unlikely that they are unconnected. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 05:24, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've added above, based on their coordinated edits with the master to try to hijack Dottedline snake eel. Please let me know if you have objection. —  Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 08:25, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * For posterity sake, 2604:3D08:5B84:6D00:C199:BC7:47B6:F4CB appears to have helped with the same sort of pattern on the eel page, but I'm not listing the IP above because it's a likely dynamic IPv6. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 14:45, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've also added, which is a user whose name is the same as the company that operates The Vach. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 16:16, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I've added who is editing suspiciously and admitted on their user page that they had many previous accounts. Nythar (💬-❄️) 07:16, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.

The sockmaster has previously been indef'd by for hijacking a page that was later taken to AfD. That page was The Vach.

It's now several months later, and several editor have popped up that appear to be engaging in suspiciously coordinated editing related to several articles, including The Vach (and its draft), Steve Dubbeldam, and the article that has been moved to Draft:Justin Jin. These edits also include bad-faith usurpations of pages in a similar pattern (as shown below), so I am filing this under the blocked sockmaster even though they are likely stale at this point.

First things first, let's talk about the editing related to The Vach. On 5 March, sockpuppet Tommiyn12 created the page, though it was later draftified by. After the article was draftified, the sockpuppet re-created the article on 6 March, this time in the mainspace rather than in the draftspace. A mere eight minutes later, sockpuppet edited that new mainspace page, despite it being impossible to find via internet search (it had not yet been patrolled). After the article was tagged with A7 by, Thetoktik removed the tag and continued to expand the article that the master had created. After that, a third account came in and began to edit the page (which, again, had not yet been patrolled and was not indexed on search engines) a mere three hours after the page's creation. This was quite a bit odd, especially as the account had been registered mere minutes before making its first edits to that page. After this, the first sock performed a series of three edits, followed by the second sock performing a series of three edits, followed again by the first sock performing a series of three more edits.

After this series above, a CSD tag (db-web) was added to the page by, which was removed by sockpuppet Poabsi in the user's very first edit that was made mere minutes after the user account was created. Aside from the editors who were seeking to delete the article (and Onel, who was running an AWB script to fix typos), the only individuals who edited this page appear to have been sockpuppets due to the suspicious interactions between their edits and the timings of their account registrations.

That brings me to the other article in which this group of socks appears to be coordinating on: attempting to hijack the Steve Dubbeldam article in order to write an article on dubiously notable writer Justin Jin. On the late hours of 8 March 2023, sockpuppet  made the first such edit, changing the nationality used to describe the article subject from "Canadian-American" (Dubbeldam's nationality) to "Canadian" (Jin's nationality). Thetoktik continued the hijacking, changing the birthday listed for the article's subject from that of Dubbeldam to 2006 and changing the location of the birth used in the article (both of which appear to be that of Jin). Assevrob then finished the job of hijacking the article, completely swapping out biographical details from those of Dubbeldam to those of Jin. Even though reverted the edits as having been made in obvious bad faith, sockpuppet Assevrob pushed ahead, moving the page to the target of Justin Jin and name swapping post-move. Shortly thereafter, sockpuppet came to the page two minutes after being created, removing sources that referenced Dubbeldam from the page. Two minutes after ModernSocietyLmAo completed their series of three edits to the page, sockpuppet Assevrob returned to try to complete the hijacking. As such, these accounts coordinated to try to pull this off, acting sequentially in order to change details in the article to try to get the article around review.

These two sorts of socking incidents appear to be related. Aside from accounts being shared between the Justin Jin affair and that of The Vach, the ongoing deletion discussion regarding The Vach has drawn "keep" !votes from many of the sockpuppets here, including Tommiyn12, Thephotography, Poabsi, Assevrob, and ModernSocietyLmAo.

For these reasons, I strongly suspect that sockpuppetry is going on, and I would request checkuser both to confirm technical connections between these various accounts as well as to check for sleepers related to this sockpuppetry network. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 07:15, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Looks like attempted to do the same thing on Earl Barish before  caught it and reverted it, though I am very new to all of this. violetwtf (talk) 19:55, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * All ✅ except Test1592j!, who is . Also found, . . GeneralNotability (talk) 12:52, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Moved case to oldest account, retagged socks, archiving. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 16:24, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
User:Dotdashmeredith autocreated on ENwiki 22 June, following 10 June creation at ESwiki. Global account info is pretty telling - edits to es:Justin Jin, and a speedy at ESwiki for Jin's company es:Poybo Media. They were indeffed on CRwiki by User:WikiBayer, apparently for creating cr:Justin Jin there. Here, their autocreation edit was a preventive AbuseLog FP addition to the edit filter about Me at the zoo 22 June. Second edit, same day, was to add the 50mMidas incident to Me at the zoo, which was reverted with a warning, then a level 3 and level 4 at their user talk. Attempted creation of Poybo Media, which was first moved to draft and then speedied G11. This morning they've created a new version of Justin Jin at Justin Jin (businessman), which appears to use new fake references not used in the last version I can see on the Wayback Machine. Wikishovel (talk) 06:30, 24 September 2023 (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, tagged, closing. Bbb23 (talk) 20:09, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that was renamed to  on Dec 21, 2023. Mentioning here for easier searching. – Novem Linguae  (talk) 02:19, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * adding template for links, thx . firefly  ( t · c ) 09:14, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Similar edits to Justin Jin and Vancouver as confirmed sock User:Dotdashmeredith. Fermiboson (talk) 11:45, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.


 * I'll say something, there's been a sockfarm on simplewiki that's been accusing Dotdash and another user of socking on simplewiki, even getting them blocked for a few hours until the blocking admin saw the mistake and unblocked them. I hope that won't do anything to their unblocking process, they've been a good contributor here at simplewiki. RiggedMint (talk) 18:51, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * They've also been recreating the same articles that dotdash made here and on simplewiki, making them look like they've been socking. RiggedMint (talk) 18:55, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Anwi6644 is ❌ to previous accounts in this case (different continent, no indication of proxy use). However, they're obviously an UPE meatpuppet per their laser focus on promoting the same obscure subjects and other spammy edits, so I will be blocking them as such. The following accounts are ✅ to Dotdashmeredith (who is to the archive based on historical data):


 * There's a couple more things I want to look at, will come back to it later if I can't finish it this morning... Spicy (talk) 12:16, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * is also ✅ to Dotdashmeredith (see edits on Wikidata). I think that's all for now. The archiving clerk may want to see if locks are warranted - I see that this group has been blocked on Simple as well. Spicy (talk) 12:29, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Post-script: also see Anwi6644's user page on simplewiki. Spicy (talk) 13:50, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
New editor that is re-creating articles from this sock farm (see discussion at Draft:Justin_Jin), along with other drafts for fake SEO "newspapers". While there are paid disclosures on the user's talk page, I'm not clear if this is a new paid editor (account was created four days ago), or actually part of this nest just pretending to be a paid editor. Either is bad, as he's proxying for WP:3X banned editor, or actually that editor. The behavior of creating article drafts for other SEO blogs (see Draft:The_UBJ, which mentions Midget Herald and Casey Weekly, known fake sites) is interesting and may indicate other SEO groups (like Draft:Brafton) are involved. Would be helpful to know which is the case. Pinging who is familiar with the farm, and, who approved one of the proxied drafts that had been deleted many times before, for awareness. Sam Kuru (talk) 05:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC) Sam Kuru (talk) 05:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.


 * Just a note: I approved the Poybo Media article because the sourcing looked appropriate to me (Forbes article and such), but if there was consensus against having the article published due to promotion etc, then by all means revert what I did and draftify or delete. Don't really want to get involved in this. Paul Vaurie (talk) 05:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I get it. There's a ton of paid placement and advertorials on historically legit sites these days. Note that both of the Forbes links are to contributor "guest posting" blogs hosted on the site. I'm not knocking your AFC reviews - I know it's a thankless task - just making you aware that this one is complicated. Sam Kuru (talk) 06:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm a paid editor. I want to be transparent here: I try my best to keep the articles neutral based on the content the clients send to me (basic draft + some links). That’s why I included the controversial information RE: the subject. Of course, with the nature of my conflict of interest, I'm benefitting from articles being approved.
 * We have just started this service at Brafton, and so I've looked through a lot of the templates and guidelines on Wikipedia.
 * Here is Mr. Jin's message:
 * "I'm sorry for the sockpuppeting I was involved in with some of my friends in a Discord community. I am young, it was a combination of messing with Wikipedia and self-promotion. I have gotten help from a PR firm that has helped me land some placements like USA Today and Forbes mex, but stopped using them around October. I've done a lot of work since then and so I wanted to make the Wikipedia page about me right and try to follow the rules, so I got the help from other people. I also have some interviews coming up this month."
 * Every "public figure" has some kind of a PR team. I believe the references for Mr. Jin’s article meets notability requirements. Mr. Jin is also a bigger client, which is why there is more effort.
 * I’ll do more due-diligence with Brafton for future creations, so I appreciate the heads-up. Though, I don’t think my account fully counts as a proxy, as we have different goals from the banned user and are trying to be productive by following the rules. Wasn't too clear with this situation either. Thanks. JaunaisG (talk) 07:10, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * JaunaisG is to past accounts in this case because they are proxy hopping. Nonetheless, I can confirm them to


 * These accounts are all transparently gaming ECP (see e.g. JaunaisG's sandbox ) and two of them have already been blocked for it. I'm blocking all of them, this obviously isn't a legit paid editor. to decide how to tag these. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 10:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for working this. I can see that Tester85 was doing undisclosed advocacy work on Simple for the same client. Ugh. Either proxying for a banned editor (at best), or being a sock of a previously blocked account qualifies for G5, so will make remove a few of these articles. Clearly none of this is good faith. Sam Kuru (talk) 13:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Dual tagging and closing. for this case and the archive. Spicy (talk) 10:50, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
They created articles on both Draft:Poybo Media and Justin Jin (entrepreneur) (now deleted) which were favorite target articles for this sockfarm. I'm actually leaning more UPE than sock but it is just too coincidental that their account was registered a week after the last sockpuppet was blocked that I thought I should post this inquiry. They didn't respond to the first paid editing notice they received so I've posted a second. Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 20:45, 6 April 2024 (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

 * Now blocked by Blablubbs as part of a parallel investigation - they may well be related to 50mMidas, or they may be part of a separate group employed to promote the same subject. Ultimately it doesn't matter all that much in the end... firefly  ( t · c ) 17:01, 7 April 2024 (UTC)