Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Artistseries/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Please see this COIN discussion and this deletion discussion for details. In short, there is a lot of suspicious activity going on in several drafts and articles, and despite DiRosa denying it, me and several other editors suspect paid editing and sockpuppetry and/or meatpuppetry. funplussmart (talk) 22:51, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

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I'm confused.. this tool says I have 236 edits and this guy has none. If there are no edits what are you accusing us of?Joedirosa (talk) 23:04, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I also say this is harassment from some of these editors. I was stupid enough to create a user name that was the same as my real name and now I am the subject of keyboard harassment. Many of the pages these guys create and edit are extremely borderline or not qualified pages. Now they think its fun to tag me in every investigation or nonsense they can come up with and it becomes entertaining because they realized I have an identity. Now they are harassing every edit i make while being completely biased. They are quick to point out any flaws in my editing but as soon as any point is made in anyway to retort their accusations, most of which have been unfounded, they decided they should keep harassing. Even this autistic kid seems to think I am in some sort of challenge to who is the more dominant wikipedian. There is not this amount of scrutiny on anyone's unpublished pages anywhere across wikipedia. This is targeting by a bunch of people who have decided to target someone for harassment and since I argued with them and pointed out there nonsense and didn take it like every other person who isnt familiar with the in's and out's of wikipedia, they seem intent on looking into drafts of pages not submitted for publication, reediting of pages that were denied which havent been re-submitted, and targeting my pages for their removal from wikipedia even though its been there 10 years. This is completely against the wikipedia code and several of them should be banned for life for harassment! Joedirosa (talk) 23:19, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think this SPI might have to be deleted once it is closed because of DiRosa's personal attacks above. funplussmart (talk) 13:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
Joedirosa and Doctor DreamY are ✅. . BAYFOG2018 is ❌.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Possible sock/meat puppetry. To begin, Artistseries created New York Artist Series (the suspected sockmaster is closely connected to the company) and Joe DiRosa (the connection is pretty clear), and made no further edits until they began to edit an odd assortment of drafts (with no prompting or mainspace edits, which is incredibly unlikely) created by likely SPA editors; this is in keeping with Joedirosa's MO. What brought the matter to my attention was Artseries copy-pasting Draft:Domestic & General to create Domestic & General despite having no interations with the draft or its creator, Pshorney. Looking into the history of Draft:Domestic & General, Pshorney themselves created  the draft with a single edit, and the only other editor to the draft was  by Joedirosa, who arrived without any sort of prompting. This all seems very suspicious, so I have requested checkuser to sort out all of the SPA's. SamHolt6 (talk) 02:12, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
Artistseries and are ✅. . Please move this case to Artistseries. The other users are ❌.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:30, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:03, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



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Possible return of the Artseries/Joedirosa sockfarm. A new editor, Victordt10, created Draft:Elena Matei with a single edit. An almost (possibly completely) identical version of this draft was created in the past by Artseries; it even includes the same improperly-placed paid disclosure template on the draft, which a "new" editor would have no knowledge of. SamHolt6 (talk) 02:30, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Responding post-checkuser. The lack of technical relation between the editors is unexpected but not unwarranted; I have suspected that this sockfarm edits using different ips in the past. From this SPI's archive at Sockpuppet_investigations/Artistseries/Archive, several SPA's (who have since stopped editing) seemed to be collaborating with Joedirosa and their socks; despite this, checkuser also deemed them to be unrelated. I would still support a block on behavior alone.--SamHolt6 (talk) 14:23, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * , curisorer, there is another, almost exact copy of Draft:Elena Matei on a editor's talkpage at User talk:Trutth563. The story is the same, with a new editor seemingly copying DiRosa's work into a talkpage or sandbox, without editing the mainspace or going through any kind of introduction.--SamHolt6 (talk) 17:15, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * I'd say this is a near-certainty on behaviour alone, per SamHolt6 – previous versions of that draft were edited by Joedirosa and Doctor DreamY, the Flickr-washed image (which I've nominated for deletion on Commons) was uploaded there by Artistseries. Tony, if you have time, could you look at Elitemodeling2018 too (already blocked as spam-only). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:11, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed. And the content of that user talk page was pasted on 3 October into Draft:KOR Water by . Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:02, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I feel that all of these accounts could be another paid editing ring. funplussmart (talk) 21:45, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * There's not much to go on with the new account, but from what we have, I'd say this looks ❌ from a technical perspective. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:01, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * my finding above was purely technical, the behavioral evidence needs to be evaluated. Elitemodeling2018 geolocates to the same area as Victordt10, but all of the other technical details are off (different ISP and UA). I'd also call them ❌ to the named master. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:22, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

More instances of probable sock or meat puppetry. Due to the number of accounts involved in this SPI, I will be listing the "articles" (be they drafts, sandboxes, or talk pages) that the suspected accounts have edited. I have two caveats to my posting above. One is that Trutth563 claims (via an edit summary ) their account is only being used to edit in their sandbox. The second point is that I have not requested checkuser as in the past checkuser has only been able to determine the editors are editing in the same region, and not from the same address. However, in my view the behavioral evidence is overwhelming, and cause for a block. SamHolt6 (talk) 22:18, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Kor Water: Fritzed2themax created Draft:KOR Water, which includes an improperly placed pay disclosure template, much like other socks of Artistseries. A semi-copy of this draft can be seen at this past revision of Trutth563's talk page, despite the two having no previous interactions. Another version (sharing common elements) of this same draft can be seen at, in the sandbox of a confirmed sock of Artistseries.
 * Domestics & General: Draft:Domestic & General was created by Pshorney, a properly disclosed paid editor, but was also edited by both Artistseries and Joedirosa . Like those above, several variations of the draft appear in Trutth563's sandboxes at User:Trutth563/sandbox2 and User:Trutth563/sandbox3. How an ostensibly new editor such as Trutth563 was able to find an obscure draft is not known to me.
 * Elena Matei: Draft:Elena Matei has an interesting history; it was created by User:Joedirosa and then deleted when they were blocked, recreated, deleted again, before being created in a single edit by a new user, User:Victordt10 (who is part of an active SPI thread above). As with the other articles, User:Trutth563 has been editing copies of Draft:Elena Matei in their talkpage  (it even includes maintenance templates from the copied draft), despite having no interactions with the creator of the draft.
 * And recently, User:Pshorney made a comment at Draft:Domestic & General but signed it with User:Trutth563's signature; the comment also copies a comment made (using Truth's own signature this time) at . This is fairly definitive proof of a connection.--SamHolt6 (talk) 13:51, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

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Sitting too long. Closing.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:38, 23 January 2019 (UTC)