Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Adamsandle/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Full disclosure: I once again received invaluable help with this case by an off-wiki friend. This case is closely related to a recent investigation on the French Wikipedia which uncovered large-scale undisclosed paid editing by multiple PR companies. Specifically, this is about a cluster of sockpuppets that are likely being run by Reputation Squad, a PR firm which bills itself as an "augmented influence company" (website, frwiki documentation, initial case, related SPIs at and ). Reputation Squad's activities span across multiple Wikis (mostly en/fr); many of the Reputation Squad sockpuppets were therefore blocked on enwiki by shortly after the revelations on frwiki. This case is mostly about, the only account of the ones reported here that is still active. The other two are very stale and filed mostly for documentation purposes, although they should probably still be indeffed as a preventative measure. There is also an active sock on the French Wikipedia of which I have privately alerted  (sysop and 'crat on frwiki), who has indicated that the account is indeed linked to Reputation Squad and that frwiki checkusers will take action after the publishing of our findings here. Hence, I am requesting CU for Coffeedrinker115 mainly for the purposes of an enwiki sleeper-check and in the hopes that collaboration between frwiki and enwiki checkusers might lead to the uncovering of more accounts. It is being filed with Adamsandle as the master because that account was identified as such by our colleagues on frwiki. I plan on doing a more extensive write-up about this farms behaviour at COIN, but it seems prudent to check for other accounts before that. With that out of the way, let's get to the evidence.


 * We encountered Coffeedrinker115 in examining the enwiki equivalents of pages edited by Reputation Squad sockpuppets on frwiki. Coffeedrinker115 created the enwiki page for Cnova 4 days before a near-identical page in French was created there by, a confirmed sockpuppet of Reputation Squad. Coffeedrinker also shares an interesting but nonconclusive linguistic quirk with Le Georgie; namely that Coffeedrinker likes to say "expanded on [X]", while Le Georgie uses "ajoute [X]" (to add, to expand). Coffeedrinker is also how we found Le Georgie; Coffeedrinker created and substantially expanded Foundation for Political Innovation, which was substantially expanded by Le Georgie on frwiki.
 * Chewbakadog is interested in Stéphane Courbit, which was edited on fr by Rouxcool, blocked as a Reputation Squad sock on frwiki.
 * Mario-Tiv has been blocked as a Reputation Squad sock on frwiki.

Best, Blablubbs (talk • contribs) 18:43, 26 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Update: An RCU has now been filed. Blablubbs (talk • contribs) 11:53, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Group 2: Thanks for the hold,. We have found two new and non-stale accounts that are highly likely linked to Reputation Squad, namely

We believe that Thevictorator is linked because the account shows substantial cross-wiki overlap on multiple pages:
 * Thevictorator is particularly interested in Altran, a French consulting firm. On the French side, Bo'RaiCho, a confirmed RS-sock (see ), also heavily edited the article over a period of multiple years (fr hist).
 * They have further overlap with Bo'Raicho on Dominique Cerutti (fr hist).
 * They have also edited Air Liquide (Diff), an article which was edited by two sockpuppets on frwiki, namely ColCarrillo and Amira.Zara; fr hist). ColCarrillo is confirmed to Reputation Squad, while Amira.Zara is listed as belonging to an unknown agency. The enwiki-article was also edited by Generallu2, a confirmed RS-sockpuppet.

For Croskyit, the evidence is a little less clear-cut. They show overlap with Roy la poutre on François Pinault (fr hist) and Pinault Collection (fr hist), which was created by Roy la poutre on frwiki. While Roy la pautre, like Amira.Zara, was classified as belonging to an unknown agency on frwiki, believes that they may be part of the Reputation Squad sockfarm, since they also have cross-wiki overlap with Coffeedrinker.

I think this should be enough to justify a check for both of them. Best, Blablubbs (talk • contribs) 19:21, 27 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree that there are some behavioural differences here. But my CU request isn't (just) about whether these accounts are the same person – in my opinion, the sockpuppetry in itself, whether present or not, isn't the essential policy violation here. I am 100% confident that this is UPE, and I am 90% confident that they all belong to the same company. In the past, this group has used proxies shared between multiple accounts (I'm aware of two specific ranges, I can give share that information to interested parties if it makes a difference). Even if this is technically meatpuppetry, there's a decent chance that CU will lead to more accounts on the same proxy, or at least to a proxy block. The company behind this farm has engaged in large-scale paid editing on two major Wikipedias for at least 6 years now. On frwiki, CU-investigations have contributed to combating that abuse. This is similar to e.g. the Yoodaba, Changingguardsatbuckinghampalace or Jaktheladz farms in that there are almost definitely multiple people at play here (some of whom may be running multiple accounts in parallel), but CU may well still be effective in finding those meatpuppets. Best, Blablubbs (talk • contribs) 20:02, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Messed up the ping. Here I go again: Blablubbs (talk • contribs) 20:03, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , As far as deciding whether to run CU to hunt for sleepers, has already made it clear that's not going to happen given the existing evidence.  I you want to argue CU policy, that's above my pay grade. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:08, 25 November 2020 (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

 * - (full disclosure - Blablubbs did ask for my opinion on this SPI prior to filing) I believe the overlap between Coffeedrinker115 and Chris-Wrl is more than sufficient to tie Coffeedrinker to the Reputation Squad farm. Since CU appears to have been effective on frwiki, endorse for sleeper check. CU: I recommend contacting the frwiki checkusers involved in the Reputation Squad case to cross-reference your findings with them since this is a cross-wiki problem. Not much we can do about the two stale socks; neither has edited in years, best approach there is to tag the pages they've contributed to as UPE and/or go to COIN. GeneralNotability (talk) 19:00, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * - per private message from, he might have found a couple more socks he'd like to add before this is checked. GeneralNotability (talk) 17:07, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Moving back to endorsed. Thoughts on the latest group:
 * Thevictorater does line up with Bo'RaiCho; compare, for example, Special:Diff/954046276 with w:fr:Special:Diff/169872067. The edits aren't as similar to each other as Coffeedrinker / Chris-Wrl, suggesting these might be separate people, but their behavior (trivial corporate updates, especially relating to mergers & acquisitions) is pretty normal for UPE farms.
 * Crosykit does look similar to some cross-wiki UPEs (and looks like UPE in general); they have some cross-wiki overlap with, blocked on frwiki for UPE, at Groupe Artémis/fr:Groupe Artémis - Crosykit has added several bits of history to the enwiki article that Wiquebekia added to the frwiki article, but their actions don't suggest that they're translating. I'm not certain they're this farm, but I'm pretty confident they're part of some UPE farm.
 * My earlier endorsement stands, and I endorse checking these latest accounts against each other/for sleepers as well. GeneralNotability (talk) 19:55, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I have to clarify as I did at frwiki that the data that was expected to exist on CheckUser wiki does not seem to exist. This is going to make this case very difficult to process. The only non-stale user on the frwiki investigation, which is on the verge of being stale is Le Georgie and it's only going to have 2 edits. Given the only non-stale on enwiki is Coffeedrinker115, Thevictorator95, and Croskyit. Given these three users have been around for 3-7 years, this makes this seem even more like a UPE investigtation. We need to focus down on why sockpuppetry is expected between these users, and if we aren't expecting that, the investigation needs to split. If we are going on the basis of these are not new users - and not socks, then that needs to gain additional clarity. I admit I have not reviewed all the evidence suggested here, as it's quite overwhelming and hitting on a lot of stale users that may not have previous connection. I would like to point that the use of frwiki evidence should be used very sparingly. The policies and practices of frwiki are very different than what they are here, and their checkusers will have very much different type of CU data to look at. Given this, the appropriateness of a check can change by just a cultural understanding. I'll leave it there for now, but you can reach out to me if you need further clarification on what we should be looking for to justify a CU on these three users. For now, I'll put this on hold until you clarify the position moving forward. -- Amanda  (aka DQ) 06:49, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , all right, I'll focus on Coffeedrinker for now. They are extremely similar to frwiki-blocked Chris-Wrl (comparing Chris-Wrl's frwiki edits to Cnova to Coffeedrinker's enwiki edits to Cnova, I would block them as a DUCK on behavioral evidence). Chris-Wrl was part of a larger farm busted on frwiki in 2014, and CU was used against some parts of the farm (though I am unclear whether that specific user was checkusered). I know there are culture differences between CU usage here, but I think that there is a solid connection between Coffeedrinker and a known (large) sock group, and so I think a sleeper check is justifiable. GeneralNotability (talk) 15:15, 4 November 2020 (UTC)


 * This has been sitting near the bottom of the oldest cases pile, so I dove in. Looking at the three active users (Coffeedrinker115, Thevictorator95, Croskyit), I found two three different behavioral differences between the three of them which make me think they're three distinct people.  I can share the details off-wiki.   I'll leave the decision on how to proceed to you, but my suggestion is to assume these are not socks.  I specifically only looked at socking per-se; if there's other kinds of UPE, meat, etc going on, that's a different question. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:23, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming nothing more is happening here, so closing. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:48, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't investigate people and use checkuser as a means of political control (directly in CheckUser policy. Using CU to potentially expose multiple people behind editing (even if it's a company) is and to potentially block them because we don't like what they are posting is use for political control. Therefore the onus is on those requesting to provide evidence of how multiple accounts are being abused by one person. A blanket check because someone is engaging in UPE or others have engaged in it is WP:NOTFISHING. Given what is presented, I am not willing to run these checks as I feel it would violate policy without further evidence. GeneralNotability, even reading your reply, I still find myself at the position above Thanks for the ping back, I don't see any further action I'm willing to take at this point. --  Amanda  (aka DQ) 19:51, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , I can't say I agree that "investigating an apparent connection to a known sock/UPE farm" is "political control," but you're the checkuser. I will block Coffeedrinker based on behavioral evidence alone. GeneralNotability (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2020 (UTC)