Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ConnectedEquality/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets


Adding prior socks:




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

ConnectedEquality ran a ring of accounts who edited similar changes into the pages of obscure Republican Minnesota state legislators. These accounts often added copyrighted bio content and trivia, as well as deleted reliably sourced content that reflected negatively on the subjects. The socks I listed engage in similar behavior, raising questions of coordination or whether a single user is controlling several accounts. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC) Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * (i) The ring of accounts can be found here:, (ii) Editor interaction analyzer on the confirmed sockpuppets and the suspected sockpuppets. The accounts have very edits but they are all on the obscure pages of Republican state legislators in Minnesota, (iii) The accounts post copy-pasted material from the official bios of these politicians, see the "hidden edits" of this confirmed sockpuppet and the "hidden edits" of this suspected sockpuppet, (iv) the editors all have in common that they add mundane poorly sourced trivia about the politicians and delete well-sourced content that reflects poorly on the politicians, (v) it is not reasonable to demand that conclusive diffs be provided for a dozen+ accounts when each account makes few edits (it would be an egregious time-sink for veteran editors and essentially permit sockpuppets and paid editors to wreak havoc on the encyclopedia by creating many accounts that do few edits each). Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:36, 21 November 2020 (UTC)


 * , Thank you for the additional information. I'll dig into this deeper in a moment, but I do want to respond to your point about requiring diffs.  Yes, I know it's work.  But look at it from the point of view of a clerk (who happens to also be a veteran editor who dislikes time sinks) but is not familiar with the history of this case.  Usually when it's a repeat offender, there's a case archive to get you up to speed, but not this time.  You have apparently been following this for a while and know a lot of the history.  All I was asking is that you share some of your knowledge, so I didn't have to start discovering things from scratch which you've already figured out.  -- RoySmith (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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Hi! This is Skylervilt. Just wanted to say this is the only account I have, and I am a novice when it comes to editing wikipedia pages. I work at the Minnesota Senate and have been trying to update and edit several Senators' sites with verified information. Unfortunately, I am not adept at using the right copyright or citations.

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Can you please list who these previous "ring of accounts" were? Also,  -- RoySmith (talk) 16:22, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * - Looking over the editing history and examining some specific articles, I'm reasonably sure Mnjobs, Mnchick, Raeco, and Skylervilt are the same person, and somewhat less sure they're ConnectedEquality. I know CE and the previous CE socks are stale, but asking CU to at least confirm these 4 to each other, and maybe find more sleepers. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:28, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay. These bullet points are all technical results, not based on behavior.
 * Mnchick appears to be ❌ to any of these.
 * Mnjobs is to Raeco and Skylervilt.
 * Raeco and Skylervilt are to each other based on geolocation and UA.


 * There's a small behavioral difference in the edit summaries of Raeco and Skylervilt that makes me lean toward different people, but it's really small and I'm not familiar enough with the rest of the case to know if it's enough to prevent blocks. The other two don't have enough technical similarities to justify blocks. . Katietalk 16:25, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking at the two most likely accounts (Raeco and Skylervilt), I'm guessing the "small behavioral difference" Katie noticed is that one often uses Visual Edit, the other never does. I was initially only "reasonably sure", but the CU results certainly didn't do anything to confirm.  At this point, I don't see enough to block purely on behavior.  This is adequately explained by a local political action group doing a concerted effort to tweak the pages of local candidates.  The bunch that I checked are all from the same party, which sort of supports this theory.  This might also explain why several of them geolocate near each other.  I'll issue uw-agf-sock to Raeco and Skylervilt, but that's as far as I can go with what we've got. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:57, 28 November 2020 (UTC)