Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Absakomal/Archive

08 January 2015

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.
 * Editor interaction utility

A large number of editors promoting Punjab-region schools, colleges and technical institutions, many of which are listed as "private" and otherwise appear of very dubious nature (nonfunctional websites, websites with phony CGI campus buildings, apparent diploma and visa-fraud mills, or religious madrassas seeking secular accolades), etc.

Absakomal created his account Dec 20 and immediately began creating articles (such as this one, his second edit) with an advanced knowledge of Wikipedia templates, which leads me to assume that Absakomal is either the sockpuppet of a banned user or a "mule" following a check-list. (Two on the list, TJ47 and WaleedIjaz83, are already banned for sockpuppety. Side-note: WaleedIjaz83 is banned for being a sockpuppet of Taimurijaz97, but Taimurijaz97 does not appear to have been blocked...oversight?)

None of the editors above appear to have any "human interaction" with other Wikipedians: they create and edit articles in the same subjects but do not edit subjects outside of Punjab institution articles, they do not create and maintain their user and talk pages, do not respond on their talk pages, or seem to notice when AfD candidates are deleted - those articles are simply recreated, sometime multiple times, as in the ongoing "Swedish" college saga.

I do not expect that all of these persons are the same user (although I would guess there are a few sockpuppet pairs); the larger concern is that they are acting in a coordinated manner as a multi-SPA meatpuppet nest.  Pax 06:47, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * See also Sockpuppet investigations/Taimurijaz97 who appears to be the sockmaster by date so far. I added one of the below there yesterday, along with some behavioral analysis. Crow  Caw  17:05, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * I'm going to decline this as it stands now. Meatpuppetry cases cannot be proved or disproved by checkuser, and the reporting party even states "I do not expect that all of these persons are the same user". Checkusers are also unable to act on the large number of IPs presented in the report. Perhaps a Clerk could review the evidence and, if there is evidence of sockpuppetry between any of the named accounts, they can reset the case status to CU at that time if necessary? -- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots  19:22, 8 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Question: by clicking the Checkuser box during submission, have I made it less likely that this nest will be investigated? If so, I'd rather request close and start over from scratch (unless that's even worse). Pax 00:55, 9 January 2015 (UTC)


 * A number of the accounts have been blocked as socks in the case mentioned above. The IPs all geolocate to the same country, with a majority locating to the same city, so I think it's reasonable to assume that they are operated by the same person/organization. To help combat that, I've semi-protected Army Public College of Management Sciences for 6 months. When the checks were run Usamahaq and Salar.Khalid.89 did not come up, despite having edited prior to the other case. Thus I think it's fair to assume they are technically unrelated. Mike V • Talk 22:20, 5 February 2015 (UTC)