Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AustralianThreston/Archive

29 July 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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The aforementioned accounts have all created or edited a walled garden consisting of the following articles: Herzog Bernhard Zoransky, Herzog Martin V. Zoransky, Sofia Rodrigues Braganza, John Duncan (attorney), John P. Fitzpatrick, Jane Pullman Standish, New York Travel Writers Society, Sir Edward Threston, Sir John Threston, Sir Richard Threston, John J. Threston, T.R. Threston, and Joseph C. Zoransky. They frequently "substantiate" one another's edits, and those with user pages are suspiciously formulaic. A number of the sources on Google Books cited on the first two articles are self-published with faked dates to make them look older, which first drew my attention. The others are not necessarily hoaxes, but most appear to be non-notable. In short, there appears to be a concerted campaign to promote non-notable relatives and professional connections of a single person. Given the prolific use of accounts, I would like to request a checkuser to be sure I have not missed additional articles and/or users, as there is grave doubt about the notability and reliability of these contributions. Choess (talk) 22:58, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * also created a duplicate of one of these articles in his sandbox in 2013, which was deleted as a stale AFC draft. Account is presumably stale for checkuser. Choess (talk) 00:44, 30 July 2014 (UTC)


 * and created similar content in 2012; also presumed stale. Choess (talk) 02:37, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

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


 * Articles for deletion/Herzog Martin V. Zoransky is relevant.— S Marshall T/C 23:22, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Whether it is possible to also check a German user? I am surprised that almost the same time to the activities in the English Wikipedia German translations have appeared, all of users: de:Benutzer:NearEMPTiness were performed. It seems to be a system behind. Really wondering … Clausthal (talk) 09:40, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * NearEMPTiness seems to have a history here of several years and his behavior doesn't match the other accounts. It looks like he just translated a new article here that looked relevant to German Wikipedia and didn't examine it very closely. Choess (talk) 10:14, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * NearEMPTiness is translating A LOT of enWP-articles for deWP. And he did that in this case as well, no doubt in good faith. And in a way he triggered the German Afd-Discussion which brought out the hoax. So his well intended work was not useless in the end, otherwise we could not know, how long this fake articles would have been in enWP and spread to other medias. And how many other articles like them would have been written.--Susumu at (talk) 20:16, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I concur with Choess. is an established user who has been contributing both here and on deWiki since 2010. At User talk:NearEMPTiness he told me that he contributed to the articles in good faith before realising that the sources were no good. JohnCD (talk) 20:20, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree on NearEMPTiness. You can not blame him for acting in good faith and without him transferring the Article to German Wikipedia we might never have started things. So in the end it turned out for the best. However, I was checking some more articles now, those of the Zoransky-Clan as well as on the Threston-Clan as the sockpuppets mentioned above were all involved in those aricles too. They all lead to the article on "T.R.Threston", claiming hier ancestry to be noble from both, Zoransky (deleted now) and Threston side. According to her Facebook-Page she is currently writing a fictional novel based on her allegedly family history, that apparently two genealogist had dug up for her. The book is supposed to be due in Summer 2014 (what a coincidence), those characters it deals with ended up as Wikipedia articles (see links on her site) and the research results of her two genealogists were published the same way the fake reference of the Zoransky articles was published. This is all incredibly dodgy! I do not want to be too elaborate on this topic here, since I believe this question might not belong here, but I suppose if T.R. Threston actually exists and at least she is not just another incredible hoax, she might try to use Wikipedia for PR reasons to back up her claim that her book is based on real historical characters. I suppose all those Threston articles might have to go to AfD as well, especially because apparent sockpuppets have started the "T.R. Threston" article too. I will start to list my findings on my Talk page in case you are intersted and know how to deal with this. LagondaDK (talk) 23:02, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Viral marketing, that's what I think about this now. Not, that the lady whant the world permanently make belive she descendet from nobel family, just for now in the hope, that the medias pick up the story, how she fooled wikipedia to get her novel better known. But this is just my opinion on that.--Susumu at (talk) 08:23, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * NiceGuy4Never should also be checked, as he is backing up the articles of those suspicious accounts mentioned above, only just joined Wikipedia and only contributed to one questionable article, initiated by questionable accounts that are eventually sockpuppets the same way other sockpuppets did. LagondaDK (talk) 11:08, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Would it be possible to block those users resp. sockpuppets mentioned on this site at least preliminary until the case is settled? Until we made up our mind on them and their articles? They seem to interfere with the inquiry and those comments against John Pack Lambert ... well ... we should take means against it. LagondaDK (talk) 21:09, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Let's wait to see what the Checkuser turns up. Any confirmed socks can be blocked, which may help to limit sockpuppet infestation of the various AfDs that have been started; but closing admins will know what to do about socks anyway, and comments like those made to JPL will not help their case one bit. JohnCD (talk) 22:08, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I've speedied Andre d' Orleans (athlete) and Andrew Michaels. Like the other non-genealogical articles, these seem to rely entirely on social media and sites using user-submitted content. I think there's good reason to believe that none of these people exist--they're all a hoax perpetrated on social media, albeit with more effort that I would have expected to see put into this. I'll let AfD take care of the rest. Choess (talk) 12:10, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * After the recent update of LagondaDK on his Talk page I think ALL of this pages should be speedy-deleted. I think, this is proof enough, that there is not a single one, which is NOT a fake.--Susumu (talk) 20:51, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Yunshui 雲 水  14:18, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment I have nominated some of the listed articles for deletion. This has lead to what I would call ugly and combative comments from Australian Threston. I was considering nominating the rest of the indicated articles, but I am not sure I want to appear as the person who can be beat up on. I'm thinking I will sit back and let others deal with this mess, at least to take the initial step and nominate articles for deletion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:40, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have checked over the articles listed on this page and nominated some for AFD and speedy-deleted two of them. -- Diannaa (talk) 01:23, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The following accounts are :
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * All of the above accounts are blocked and tagged. All of the articles created by the above are either deleted or at Articles for Deletion. PhilKnight (talk) 13:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)