Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bporter28/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Bporter28 was indef blocked on Wikimedia Commons on April 21, 2016, for uploading non-free photos after repeated warnings. His primary area of interest is Las Vegas. Six days later, Rmvisuals was created, and started uploading images of Las Vegas. Both editors have been concerned with, which was placed in several articles by Rmvisuals. During a discussion about copyright concerns with the photo, which was said to have been copied from eBay, Rmvisuals said "Bill Porter was my grandfather," and that the photo was in the family collection, and also on eBay. The photo was nominated for deletion but. Rather than Rmvisuals bringing the photo back into the articles, Bporter28 did the work. I find it interesting that Bporter28 is helping another editor who is descended from Bill Porter. Binksternet (talk) 04:07, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Checkuser requested to make sure of assertion of socking.

Rmvisuals uploaded a few images of Las Vegas, adding them to various Wikipedia articles on April 27 and May 9, 2016. One of the edit summaries by Rmvisuals said "There was an image here previously posted by another user, which was deleted. I am replacing that image with one of my own." It's unusual that a new user would know of a previous deletion, one that happened before they registered their account. Also, after Rmvisuals has uploaded some photos to Commons, the very next action taken by Bporter28 was a few minutes later on May 9 to add two of these photos by Rmvisuals to the Las Vegas article. The editing activity of the two accounts may be seen in the intertwined contributions tool here. It shows that the two editors take turns editing, as if there were one person doing the work. Binksternet (talk) 04:17, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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User:Rmvisuals and I are not sock puppets. After being blocked from Commons over a year ago because I did not have my own images, I contacted him because we are good friends and he is a local photographer. We both grew up in Las Vegas and have known each other for many years. I convinced Rmvisuals to make an account and join Wikipedia to support our hometown, and suggested that we use his photos that he owns to avoid any infringement of copyright violations. Every photo that Rmvisuals has ever uploaded has been his own work, or within public domain (referring to the Elvis/Bill Porter/Paul Anka photo), which was shared with him recently by a family member. He added the photo in support of his grandfather, Bill, whom I have also met in the past. We frequently edit together and contact each other to maintain the Las Vegas pages, which has become a hobby for us that we enjoy. It has never been our intention to misuse Wikipedia in any way, and as you can see, all of our edit collaborations have been thought out and discussed in detail. All edits made to the Las Vegas pages have helped to expand the information of the city pages, and have been nothing but constructive. I was unaware that collaborating with other users was not allowed on Wikipedia, in fact, I thought it was encouraged as a global community to work alongside other users and friends. Bporter28 (talk) 09:31, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Wikipedia does indeed encourage collaborations among editors familiar with a topic. What goes against our policy is when you are doing things that you're not supposed to do (like uploading images with incompatible copyrights) and you ask a friend to help you do those things; this is called meatpuppetry. I don't think that's what you intended, and since it seems that  has provided sufficient copyright information for the images to be approved, I'm declining to take any action here. If anything, please treat this as a reminder that we have to take copyright very seriously, so please always provide enough information to support a copyright claim if you're uploading your own work, and ask questions if you're not sure.
 * pinging you in case you have anything to add, since you were involved with the deletion discussion at Commons. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:14, 10 October 2017 (UTC)