Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dan Sander/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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I was tipped off to do an investigation by a note on my talk page from about a possible deleted page recreation by Terrencejohn at Draft:Dos Corazones, which was deleted under Dos Corazones after being created by Borolandi. The pages are indeed identical. I also found deleted contribs in common between those two at Deborah Berke Partners and Francisco Lupini (and others), and, well, it snowballed from there.

All of the accounts listed below are new single-purpose accounts created to edit or maintain one or a small group of articles (see deleted contribs as well) in a way that suggests paid promotion. Technical evidence suggests that this is an operation of several editors, although some of the accounts are confirmed. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 22:55, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

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

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * The following are ✅ to each other:
 * Behaviourally it seems likely this is the same user as (see deleted contribs).
 * The following are at least to the above group, and some are confirmed to each other:
 * for this group - I would like a clerk's opinion on which may be connected behaviourally to the first group, and any that might be false positives. I already removed a few, and there are several more matching accounts with no contribs. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 22:55, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm working through the behavioral here, but first, a few more possible socks to throw on the pile:
 * Their deleted contribs show overlapping interest with the two blocked socks in in Francisco Lupini and movies related to him - Lupinif is pretty obvious, likewise Pacolupini, and Hmammpelicula appears to be "He matado a mi marido - pelicula" (pelicula being Spanish for "film"), "He matado a mi marido" is a film by Lupini. I will need to look deeper to see whether this is the same people or whether these latest two might be separate UPE promoters. All are stale, will do behavioral eval. GeneralNotability (talk) 19:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Behavioral comments:
 * Several of these accounts mark all or most of their edits as minor, including indisputably non-minor edits. This is not proof of anything, but is an interesting behavioral indicator.
 * Dan Sander is an SPA on Feature.fm, editing it over the course of 2+ years. Some of the activity looks promotional, e.g. Special:Diff/862603250 and Special:Diff/970405088, the latter I think looks like whitewashing to distance Feature.fm from the not-especially-popular executives of WeWork. Marks most edits as minor.
 * ReverseThePolarity is SPA on Dan Slott. Nothing blatantly promotional, but again, single-purpose over a period of years. Marks all edits as minor.
 * Zeev96 works on several music articles. Again, nothing blatantly promotional, but there's a fair amount of what I'd call "touching up" (information on "upcoming new albums," for example) and they added the formation of a supergroup to all five members' articles the day it was announced within the span of a few minutes. I can't find any common thread connecting the artists they've written about, they're not (for example) editing exclusively about artists from a particular label. Always marks edits as minor.
 * PSPazW looks like a traditional sneaky UPE - a handful of smaller edits (though these were admittedly more substantial than we usually see) followed by refbombed articles springing into existence, fully-formed.
 * Plenopticon didn't do anything especially promotional, but has an interesting tag-team; they updated the infobox image for Heidi Weisel within minutes of uploading it to Commons. Brooksbehrens's comments on Commons suggest that they are directly connected to Weisel.
 * Tendai Zvobgo has made two edits, both minor, to Eddison Zvobgo. Their username implies a relationship to the subject, but their edits actually removed the text that listed Tendai as one of Eddison's children.
 * Orioleman12 is an SPA on Bruce Ratner, their edits are puffy (listing honorary degrees and accolades). They also referred to the subject as "Mr. Ratner" - not proof of anything, but something we see a lot from COI editors/UPEs.
 * AIHSimpson is probably also, since that IP created a fairly hefty draft as a single edit and then Simpson submitted it two minutes later. Single-purpose interest in a particular labor union and a person related to it. Both drafts look like typical refbombed UPE.
 * Petersjw is SPA for Jeremy W Peters (the username pretty strongly suggests a relationship with the subject, as in "Peters, J.W."). Subtle puffy edits.
 * Patrickfeeney and Patrickfeeney123 are no doubt the same person (accounts created within minutes of each other). The non-numbered one made no edits, the numbered one is an SPA on Mark Gordon who is shouting "COI" (they've been putting "connected contributor" in all of their recent edit summaries, for whatever that's worth).
 * GeneralNotability (talk) 21:19, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I've read through all of this, and not sure where things stand. It's sounds like most of the large "likely" group is behaviorally verified by GN's analysis above, but no blocks.  If there's some specific questions remaining, I'd be happy to dig in and do more research, but it's hard to know where to start without just going over all of the same ground again. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:10, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I actually pulled this up yesterday and put it on my "to-do" list - I guess I'd wanted someone else to take a look when I did the eval. I'll deal with the blocks. GeneralNotability (talk) 13:14, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've blocked everyone from the "Likely" group as suspected except the Patrickfeeneys (because they disclosed their paid status) and Plenopticon (I didn't see anything excessively promotional last time I looked). I have also blocked the stale Lupinif group. I agree with Ivanvector's suspicions that this is a meatfarm rather than sockfarm. GeneralNotability (talk) 13:18, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Behavioral comments:
 * Several of these accounts mark all or most of their edits as minor, including indisputably non-minor edits. This is not proof of anything, but is an interesting behavioral indicator.
 * Dan Sander is an SPA on Feature.fm, editing it over the course of 2+ years. Some of the activity looks promotional, e.g. Special:Diff/862603250 and Special:Diff/970405088, the latter I think looks like whitewashing to distance Feature.fm from the not-especially-popular executives of WeWork. Marks most edits as minor.
 * ReverseThePolarity is SPA on Dan Slott. Nothing blatantly promotional, but again, single-purpose over a period of years. Marks all edits as minor.
 * Zeev96 works on several music articles. Again, nothing blatantly promotional, but there's a fair amount of what I'd call "touching up" (information on "upcoming new albums," for example) and they added the formation of a supergroup to all five members' articles the day it was announced within the span of a few minutes. I can't find any common thread connecting the artists they've written about, they're not (for example) editing exclusively about artists from a particular label. Always marks edits as minor.
 * PSPazW looks like a traditional sneaky UPE - a handful of smaller edits (though these were admittedly more substantial than we usually see) followed by refbombed articles springing into existence, fully-formed.
 * Plenopticon didn't do anything especially promotional, but has an interesting tag-team; they updated the infobox image for Heidi Weisel within minutes of uploading it to Commons. Brooksbehrens's comments on Commons suggest that they are directly connected to Weisel.
 * Tendai Zvobgo has made two edits, both minor, to Eddison Zvobgo. Their username implies a relationship to the subject, but their edits actually removed the text that listed Tendai as one of Eddison's children.
 * Orioleman12 is an SPA on Bruce Ratner, their edits are puffy (listing honorary degrees and accolades). They also referred to the subject as "Mr. Ratner" - not proof of anything, but something we see a lot from COI editors/UPEs.
 * AIHSimpson is probably also, since that IP created a fairly hefty draft as a single edit and then Simpson submitted it two minutes later. Single-purpose interest in a particular labor union and a person related to it. Both drafts look like typical refbombed UPE.
 * Petersjw is SPA for Jeremy W Peters (the username pretty strongly suggests a relationship with the subject, as in "Peters, J.W."). Subtle puffy edits.
 * Patrickfeeney and Patrickfeeney123 are no doubt the same person (accounts created within minutes of each other). The non-numbered one made no edits, the numbered one is an SPA on Mark Gordon who is shouting "COI" (they've been putting "connected contributor" in all of their recent edit summaries, for whatever that's worth).
 * GeneralNotability (talk) 21:19, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I've read through all of this, and not sure where things stand. It's sounds like most of the large "likely" group is behaviorally verified by GN's analysis above, but no blocks.  If there's some specific questions remaining, I'd be happy to dig in and do more research, but it's hard to know where to start without just going over all of the same ground again. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:10, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I actually pulled this up yesterday and put it on my "to-do" list - I guess I'd wanted someone else to take a look when I did the eval. I'll deal with the blocks. GeneralNotability (talk) 13:14, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've blocked everyone from the "Likely" group as suspected except the Patrickfeeneys (because they disclosed their paid status) and Plenopticon (I didn't see anything excessively promotional last time I looked). I have also blocked the stale Lupinif group. I agree with Ivanvector's suspicions that this is a meatfarm rather than sockfarm. GeneralNotability (talk) 13:18, 21 September 2020 (UTC)