Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/BullRangifer/Archive

Report date August 1 2009, 19:04 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by Shannon Rose

I have noticed that wherever Ronz goes to make a point, BullRangifer will follow him there and support him, as if they always work in tandem. A while ago Ron posted a comment in my talk page which I removed, after around 20 minutes BullRangifer did his thing. Before Ronz even saw it the suspected alter ego already retaliated. How he managed to do that baffles me, as I never had any interactions with him, I also did not see any communications between them in their respective talk pages about the matter. The telepathic connection between the two is so strong that it's as if they are the same person. I discovered that BullRangifer and Ronz appears to be outspoken anti complementary and alternative medicine editors in the WP community. Doing a little investigation I found THIS again. If ever a checkuser is done on these folks, would you kindly include any socks that you catch along the way as well? I sense the possibility of one person multiplying himself to win the numbers game in a few complementary and alternative medicine articles and issues. Thank you!


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.


 * Comment by BullRangifer. "Absurd" doesn't quite do this SPI justice ;-) This relatively new user is pretty irritated with me and has been rather nasty of late, even though I have been perfectly civil. Look at her talk page history, since she has been deleting uncomfortable items since she got blocked. This situation can be summed up in one word: watchlist. She apparently doesn't understand how a watchlist works. Mine currently has this to say: "You have 3,787 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages)." I suspect that a large number of items on my watchlist are shared with the other two victims of this case. I also follow their edits, and now also those of Shannon Rose. I currently have 23,146 edits since 2005. The other two accused parties have also been here for quite some time and likewise have lots of edits under their belts, many to the same articles. We also share POV when it comes to being skeptical of pseudoscience and other fringe subjects like alternative medicine, and we do watch those articles and their editors. We do share POV and other named characteristics, therefore we must be socks of each other ;-) (Now should I laugh or cry?) -- Brangifer (talk) 22:55, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment by Ronz. Shannon Rose does this immediately after returning from a block and a warning to stop making personal attacks against me. Reminds me of the time another editor accused me of being Stephen Barrett.  Am I overlooking something, or did she not even bother to give any evidence at all for listing Verbal? --Ronz (talk) 01:48, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment by Verbal. I have no idea why I've been named in this, and the evidence above doesn't give any clue either. To suggest that Ronz and BR are the same person is ludicrous. I had no idea who this editor was, and had to look up their edits to find out. What I found was a series of troubling edits that go against wikipedia policy, including advocacy and personal attacks, and a probable conflict of interest. This editor should be investigated further, and suitable action taken to prevent further troubling edits and frivolous SPI reports, which seem to be endemic at the moment! Verbal chat  15:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

By stating that you are now "following" the edits of this user, are you admitting that you are stalking this user? 75.157.217.64 (talk) 23:36, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments by other users
 * By posting here, are you admitting you are stalking Brangifer? Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 00:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If they edit pages I watchlist I will notice them, and more so now that they have been attacking me on my talk page and filed this frivolous SPI. It's pretty hard to avoid doing so. They have placed themselves on my radar, so to speak. When I notice editors who are disruptive and abusive, I watch them. If advice and warnings don't help, then AN/I is a possible venue to legitimately get more eyes on the situation. "Stalking" is something else (and harassment even worse). I am not engaging in the first (and definitely not in the second). Brangifer (talk) 01:27, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Requested by Shannon Rose 19:04, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * CheckUser requests

. Insufficient evidence given as to the connection, between these accounts. I don't see a good reason for why a CU should be run here. -- Kanonkas : Talk  23:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments

Marking as closed. NW ( Talk ) 15:47, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Conclusions

Report date August 17 2009, 01:18 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets
 * (shows up for edit wars right after 3RR, calls reverts vandalism, shows knowledge of wikipedia policies)
 * (shows up for edit wars right after 3RR, calls edits vandalism, uses words like fringe POV pushers, shows knowledge of wikipedia policies)
 * (shows up for edit wars right after 3RR, calls reverts vandalism, shows knowledge of wikipedia policies)
 * (shows up for edit wars right after 3RR, calls edits vandalism, uses words like fringe POV pushers, shows knowledge of wikipedia policies)

QuackGuru has a known pattern of reverting up to 3RR, and would revert my edits even for trivial matters as when I tried to add a search box to enable searching of the many archives   on the Stephen Barrett talk page. The reason QuackGuru gave for the reverts: "unnecessary, archives are mostly nonsense".
 * Evidence submitted by Stmrlbs

So, it was no surprise that Quackguru would revert my edits on the Nguyen review. Since QuackGuru was the one reverting, he would reach 3RR before I would. My version would be the one left standing in a 24 hour period if no other editors showed up. So, there is a pattern of 3rr, wait, 3rr, wait, 3rr. After a couple of days of this, the new IP started showing up to do that 4th revert so that the article would return to Quackguru's version. This happened not just once, but twice - just before the article got protected. What is interesting is that this IP would not show until QuackGuru had run his 3RR for the 24 hour period. So, here is the pattern - (I'm not going to give every edit, but a synopsis of the beginning and ending for each 3rr. You can always go thru them one by one if you wish from this link by backing up one, then forwarding one by one):


 * 7/23 3RR:
 * 7/25 3RR:
 * 7/28 3RR:
 * not long after this last 3rr: 86.146.119.24 shows up, does a very convenient 4th revert that returns the article to QuackGuru's version:


 * I revert (my last revert), and 86.146.119.24 reverts again :
 * 2009-07-28T20:55:25 86.146.119.24 (talk) (44,143 bytes) (Undid revision 304718543 by Stmrlbs (talk) NPOV)


 * I make a couple of unrelated minor edits, and this ip reverts me again
 * 2009-07-29T08:15:00 86.146.119.24 (talk) (44,143 bytes) (undo vandalism by 2 well known fringe pov pushers)]:


 * again:
 * 2009-07-29T21:32:44 86.134.240.225 (talk) (44,143 bytes) (revert edit identified as vandalism)

then 86.134.240.225 shows up for the final 4th revert back to Quackguru's version:
 * then Quackguru returns for 3rr ,
 * 2009-07-30T06:38:23 86.134.240.225 (talk) (45,282 bytes) (Undid revision 305026396 by Stmrlbs (talk) vandalism and POV)

So, there is a definite pattern of QuackGuru first doing the 3 reverts, then this IP coming in to do the 4th.

The comments on these IPs indicate the editor is very familiar with Wikipedia, and uses a phrase I could not find on the internet anywhere except on wikipedia and wikipedia mirrors. They refer to Levine and me as "2 well known fringe POV pushers". This is a phrase unique to wikipedia - I did a google search on it, and it is uniquely wikipedia. I am a fairly new editor who has only edited on a couple of fringe areas. I have also edited on Quackwatch and the Stephen Barrett - not fringe, but watched very closely by a small group of editors: QuackGuru, BullRangifer, Ronz, Verbal - at least this is the group that has shown up for anything I edited.

Initially, I was going to ask checkuser to be run on this small group, but when I did a few wikipedia searches, I found that "Fringe POV Pusher" is a favorite phrase of BullRangifer's. A couple of examples (there are many) :


 * In this case the narrow inclusion criteria allow a number of fringe POV pushers to keep their favorite PS delusion from being mentioned at all, in spite of the fact that those delusions are widely described as pseudoscientific by many V & RS, many quite notable.


 *  It was a cowardly bad ban, created by an ArbCom that wasn't willing didn't know how to deal with the fringe POV pushers and baiters who have pushed all of SA's buttons. The fringies and alties (many disguised as civil POV pushers) are taking over this encyclopedia and soon it will be a good substitute for rense.com, curezone.org, or mercola.com, or any number of other bad websites. Don't get me wrong, I have never defended SA's methodology, but it shouldn't have been necessary for him to defend Wikipedia at all from such nutty editors. -- Fyslee (talk) 11:51 pm, 9 March 2009, Monday (4 months, 30 days ago) (UTC−4)

Also, before this, I had "discussion" with BullRangifer about Quackwatch and peer review, to which BullRangifer reacted quite heatedly:, and this is what the Quackwatch edit war was about - Nguyen's comment about the fact that Quackwatch was not peer reviewed BullRangifer has fought to have Quackwatch accepted as a reliable source, citing the Quackwatch article on Wikipedia as proof of the worth of Quackwatch, so maintaining positive reviews is important to him.

BullRangifer has also stated that he travels a lot, and checks Wikipedia regularly on his travels. So, his home location should not be the only place checked. If the place/company that had the computer where he checked in uses a UK proxy, he did not have to even be in the UK. So, the location of his checkin before/after the IP is what is relevant. BullRangifer has also stated that he has no problem with being run through checkuser.

So, to summmarize:
 * QuackGuru has a history of taking reverts up to the 3RR limit.
 * BullRangifer knows me, a relatively new unknown editor.
 * BullRangifer uses the term "fringe POV pusher" frequently
 * BullRangifer considers me a "fringe POV pusher"
 * BullRangifer is one of the very few regular editors on Quackwatch and Chiropratic and watches both articles
 * Quackwatch has a low outside view count and therefore a lower probability of outside involvement.
 * BullRangifer had a short heated discussion with me over the peer review status of Quackwatch which is what this edit war was about
 * BullRangifer has fought to have Quackwatch accepted as a reliable source, citing the Quackwatch article on Wikipedia as proof of the worth of Quackwatch, so maintaining positive reviews is important to him.
 * BullRangifer has stated that he travels frequently, but regularly checks in no matter where he is, so his home location is irrelevant. His location at the time this edit war was going on is what is relevant.

The timing of 3RR - the knowledge of wikipedia policies, the comments, the small number of editors involved, .. a bit too coincidental. --stmrlbs | talk 01:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I filed a separate SPI because of this [] - I was under the impression that because I submitted the evidence on BullRangifer after the Chiropractic SPI had started, that my evidence had not been considered, and BullRangifer had not been checked against these IPs.
 * response to BullRangifer

After I filed the SPI, I asked how to notify you here:. By the time I finished that, I found out that BullRangifer had been run through the checkuser previously and the SPI was already closed. so.. no point in notifying anyone since the SPI was closed about 5 minutes after I submitted it. --stmrlbs | talk 05:56, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * in response to BullRangifer's 2nd statement, the reason this SPI was declined was because BullRangifer was already run through Checkuser in the Chiropractic SPI, based on the same evidence I presented here. Evidently, the evidence presented in the Chiropractic SPI was enough to check BullRangifer.
 * However, I was under the impression that my evidence was not looked at because I presented it late in the Chiropractic SPI, and this is why I resubmitted it. I would not have resubmitted this SPI if I had known that you had been run through Checkuser for the Chiropractic SPI. --stmrlbs | talk  19:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

See Defending yourself against claims.
 * Comments by accused parties

Stmrlbs never notified me of this SPI. This is abusive forum shopping. The exact same charges, wordings, etc., were already used by Stmrlbs at the Chiropractic SPI. I think it would only be right for the admins and clerks who are dealing with this to place some words of warning and wisdom on Stmrlbs's talk page. This type of forum shopping needs to stop. Brangifer (talk) 05:32, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You could have avoided making this mistake if you had listened to Shell's good advice. She made it clear this would be "an exercise in futility". "Its very unlikely that Bullrangifer uses sockpuppets nor are they generally disruptive in this topic area." That being the case, this was a fishing expedition and was properly declined. For the sake of history, it would still be a good idea for you to place a personal note (not necessarily a template) on my talk page. That would be appreciated. Brangifer (talk) 06:54, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by other users

Requested by stmrlbs | talk 01:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * CheckUser requests

Both users were checked for Sockpuppet investigations/Chiropractic. IPs are not connected to any accounts. BJ Talk 01:56, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments


 * Conclusions