Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bosozoku/Archive

22 August 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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This has all of the hallmarks of one puppet-master employing multiple sock puppets to skew the vote in this AfD, including the following:
 * 1. User talk:8110charlie: contributions - no edits from January 2014 until August 20, 2014
 * 2. User:Mohfinite: contribution - three total edits, and none since December 2013 until August 21, 2014
 * 3. User:Bosozoku: contributions - five total edits, and none since April 2013 until August 21, 2014
 * 4. User:Soupy sautoy: contributions - no edits from January 2013 until August 21, 2014
 * 5. User:Mimiru123: contributions - newly registered account, all edits to the list or this AfD, August 20 and 21, 2014
 * 6. User:Reiro: contributions - three edits since January 2014
 * 7. User:117.192.170.214: contributions - IP user, only edit is this AfD

All of the foregoing have mysteriously appeared from nowhere to support keeping a newly created list article nominated for AfD: Articles for deletion/List of Ice Bucket Challenge participants. Despite the age of these accounts (all were registered in 2010, 2012, 2013 or 2014), none have extensive editing histories, although several have participated in one or more AfDs (not normal rookie editing behavior). Several of the users have vaguely Asian sounding names. All have voted "keep" in the present AfD, within the same 16-hour period. All have made supporting comments in similarly sounding English that reads as if English is not the first language of the user:


 * 1. User talk:8110charlie: diff;
 * 2. User:Mohfinite: diff;
 * 3. User:Bosozoku: diff;
 * 4. User:Soupy sautoy: diff;
 * 5. User:Mimiru123: diff;
 * 6. User:Reiro: diff; and
 * 7. User:117.192.170.214: diff.

There are an awful lot of coincidences that you would have to believe for many if not all of the foregoing users not to be sockpuppets: (1) seven long inactive or newly created accounts, (2) find newly created list article (created August 20, 2014) and clearly not on anyone's watch list, (3) which was nominated for AfD yesterday (August 20, 2014), (4) and all decide to comment in support of keeping the AfD-nominated article, (5) four of the seven have vaguely Asian-sounding user names, and a fifth has an Asian IP address, and (6) most if not all of them write as if English is not their first language. It appears that several, if not all of the above identified users are trying to game an AfD !vote, which is pretty much the definition of malicious sock-puppetry. I request an immediate check-user on the seven users identified above. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:34, 22 August 2014 (UTC) Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:34, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

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

You are an idiot, people have found this article because it is a very current craze and have logged in to vote. i tried to log in too, but have forgot my details. It doesn't matter if they are on the watch list or not or how new the article is because of how popular it is! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.223.64.38 (talk) 00:50, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Please feel free to explain how you knew about a list article that was created yesterday, and was nominated for deletion within hours of its creation. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:03, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The article is linked to from Ice Bucket Challenge, a page which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in the past day. It's not surprising that several new or inexperienced editors are participating in the deletion discussion. —Mr. Granger (talk · contribs) 01:35, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Quite a coincidence that these same accounts have not been active for 6 to 18 months, don't you think? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:41, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * No, not all. I believe that they're WP:SPA, but the fact they existed for months makes it extremely unlikely that they're socks. I doubt that any editor creates a bunch of socks over a period of a couple of months, but then waits a couple more months before suddenly they use them all at once. JDDJS (talk) 02:28, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, JDDJS, experience has shown that Wikipedia is plagued with sock puppets and sock masters who create multiple sock accounts known as "sleepers" that sometime go dormant for months or even years. It's all really quite bizarre.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems unlikely that they'll all activate over an issue like this. It seems far more believable that they are just single purpose accounts (which should be noted in the AFD). JDDJS (talk) 03:01, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

No, its not a coincidence, the page has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, a lot of those people will have accounts who may want to express their opinion even if they haven't been active for a long time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.223.64.38 (talk) 02:05, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment I'm embarrassed by nominated sock puppet, but I'm not sock puppet. I practice in Korean Wikipedia for 5 years, and have not active additional wiki accounts. --Reiro (talk) 05:45, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I do think that there are signs of Sockpuppetry in that AfD, based on having dealt with a similar situation before. But I doubt all of them are socks, the case that the article is a hot recent event which has brought out some infrequent users seems about right to me.  A checkuser should sort out who is and is not a sock here... if there's enough evidence to justify the check.LM2000 (talk) 07:28, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Confirm: I can confirm that 8110charlie is not a sockpuppet; I work with him and he use mostly spanish Wikipedia but we were talking about this matter and I myself suggest him to give his opinion... Please don't count him as a sockpuppet. Thanks! Arussom (talk) 14:42, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Why?: Today I were surprised that Dirtlawyer1 add me in this investigation list. I live in Caracas Venezuela and I speak latin american spanish, obviously english is my second language. I'm still thinking why I am on this list. I use the Wikipedia everyday but doesn't mean that I edit it. 8110charlie (talk) 18:24, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
. I do not see sufficient evidence of socking. The main argument is anyone who hasn't edited in a while or hasn't edited much and who voted delete must be a sock. I agree with the others that this material has received a lot of attention, and it's therefore not surprising that many editors will come out of the woodwork to vote. At least some of these alleged socks seem quite reputable, in terms of their user pages and their global history. As for the point about non-English speaking, that is inaccurate. Some of the keep votes were written just fine. Some were not written by English speakers, but so what? For example, the user who is from Venezuela doesn't speak English that well. He acknowledges it on his user page. He has contributed to the Spanish wiki and his user page there is not inconsistent with the one here, although the one here has more userboxes. The reporter has not identified any other behavioral similarities, and in glancing at the contributions (some have very few), I haven't noticed any.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:06, 31 August 2014 (UTC)