Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dcourtneyjohnson/Archive

Report date February 26 2009, 17:28 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by THF (talk)


 * Evidence
 * I've made over 10,000 edits to Wikipedia, but this is the first time I've opened a SPI, so forgive me if I don't do it perfectly.
 * I've made over 10,000 edits to Wikipedia, but this is the first time I've opened a SPI, so forgive me if I don't do it perfectly.


 * On February 11, Dcourtneyjohnson made this edit to Dave Johnson (at the very top, naturally) and created a G12'ed version of the page; on February 12, Ny pearl recreated the page, claiming it was because he/she was a "fan" and said he/she would be back; on February 13, Dcourtneyjohnson starts editing the page, while Ny pearl has disappeared. On February 26, after an AFD nomination noting the suspicious behavior and autobiography, SPA Whistlindiksee is created and edits the page.  Edit summaries are similar, using phrase "added" and abbreviation "bio" consistently. THF (talk) 17:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * New evidence: Recently-created SPA LindaMWilliams made this edit to Dave Johnson (blogger), adding many of the same self-promoting sources added by Dcourtneyjohnson to the article Commonweal Institute in this edit. Note also that both editors use the same style edit summaries and have the same inability to close /ref tags.


 * New possible sock. SPA Dahvi.wilson created five minutes ago, starts editing Commonweal Institute, but there is a Dahvi Wilson who works at the Commonweal Institute, so this one could be just a coordinated effort to recruit editors off-wiki. THF (talk) 19:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.

Someone suggested I should have an entry in Wikipedia and sent me stuff to add. When I realized that this is a violation of Wikipedia rules I told them I can't do that, and they did it instead.

I suggest you check internet addresses to see that I am not using multiple accounts, I have not logged in as the other accounts mentioned.

The Commonweal Institute is a large organization with a number of people who read the blog, etc. I am a Fellow there.

I will not make any more edits at Wikipedia on any pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dcourtneyjohnson (talk • contribs) 20:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Since Mr. Johnson has made this promise, he made this self-promotional edit to medical malpractice adding a non-notable (and factually incorrect) Commonweal Institute paper. THF (talk) 21:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * See beolow where I followed up after investigating further: "Now that I have made this investment in learning about wikipedia I will continue to edit and help the project - but not on my own page."Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 22:27, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Anyway I did not log in under multiple accounts to made additions, which is what I understand this accusation to mean. Please check internet addresses to verify this and clear this up. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help clear it up. And, as I said, as soon as I understood the rules I told the person who had suggested that I put up an entry that it is against the rules for me to do that and left it to others to take over.

I also suggest that Wikipedia - "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" - might consider taking some steps to promote a better first-time experience for people who want to participate in the project. Sheesh!

Now that I have made this investment in learning about wikipedia I will continue to edit and help the project - but not on my own page. :-)

PS - why is it against the rules to edit one's own page, and why doesn't it say so on the biographies page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dcourtneyjohnson (talk • contribs) 01:41, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It isn't - it's just that there were apparently WP:N and WP:V violations in the article, as revealed in the AfD debate. FWIW we do have a behavioural guideline about biting the newbies. -- samj in out 12:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * OK. As for the notability and verifiability, I understand that an editor who sees this is supposed to look for sources.  The editor who made this particular complaint had in fact written some of those sources (outside of the WP), and in doing so did research that found other such noted, verifiable, reliable sources, some of them very good.  But that editor did not post those sources and instead asked that the bio be removed.  I have learned that I can't get into this in more detail without being banned, so I will leave it to others.  And does biting the newbies include showing up within minutes after any edit I make on any page any time of day, removing or changing the edit, leaving comments, often disparaging, and lodging numerous complaints against me?Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 18:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * For the record, biting goes both ways, and you've bitten much harder with inappropriate and false personal attacks against me on- and off-wiki, including editing an ANI archive to make a baseless allegation of bad-faith editing against me that really smacked of WP:KETTLE.
 * As the editor who looked for sources before making the nomination, I will note that the one blog post you are referring to when you falsely say "written some of those sources" is neither plural nor grounds for notability. (I also note your admitted violation of WP:NPOV when you simultaneously try to claim that that blog post is grounds for notability, but also failed to include it when including the kitchen sink in your list of sources in the article itself.)  I will also note that I unilaterally offered to withdraw the AFD nomination and let someone else make it, and that instead the nomination was closed due to WP:SNOW after many many other editors of all political stripes endorsed the deletion suggestion after their own check for sources.  Because of your allegation of COI, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, I am refraining from nominating Commonweal Institute for deletion, and even from giving it a much needed scrubbing, though if that article does not improve soon, I am confident someone else will nominate it and it will be deleted.  Your allegation of COI is unfounded, incidentally; I certainly wouldn't charge you with conflict of interest if you had a Wikipedia-grounded reason for nominating an article about me for deletion.  If you made neutral edits to articles that fairly represented the issues, and demonstrated you were here to improve the encyclopedia rather than just use it to push your personal opinion, I'd have nothing to complain about. THF (talk) 21:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, I don't know what an ANI or a KETTLE or a SNOW is... In fact, can you make that response a bit more understandable so I can respond?  To clarify your account of what I had written, I wrote that earlier writings by the author of blog posts about the subject of the article demonstrated that the author himself believed the subject was notable, yet didn't add them to the article.  I didn't claim it represented notability for the purposes of the Wikipedia.


 * In the meantime, on conflicts of interest but certainly not about anyone in particular -- To me it is ok if a professional advocate works on a project like the Wikipedia, even when it is done at all hours of the day (making it appear that the person may be paid to work on the wiki) insofar as he or she ADDS to the wiki project. Adding new articles and discussions opens up items for people to start to contribute to, and eventually enough people can join in and a good article results.  So such professional advocacy ends up as a net positive for the project in that it can lead to a positive conclusion.  (I am not paid to work on the wiki project.  I am barely paid for anything...)  But when what the professional advocate does is prowl the wiki for things that oppose the viewpoint he or she is paid to promote, and works to get them removed from the wiki, that is a very different thing.  And when the professional advocate harasses and intimidates the people who try to add stuff that he is paid to oppose, this is bad for the wiki, because it inhibits the open flow and eventual perfection of the information that is made available to the public through the project.Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 22:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Since Mr. Johnson has seen fit to make yet another personal attack against me that is better aimed at his own editing, let me point out that nobody pays me to work on the wiki. Editing Wikipedia is a hobby that helps me clear writers' block and gives me ideas; since I am an academic without office hours, that means I am sometimes editing at 3 pm and writing at 3 am, sometimes the reverse, and far more often not touching Wikipedia at all. I will happily have my record of Wikipedia additions and contributions compared to that of Mr. Johnson's: he can perhaps explain the right-wing conspiracy behind my creation of George Bethune Adams. THF (talk) 22:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There is no personal attack here of any kind in any form.--Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 01:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * If you think that, that's another rule you apparently didn't read. Still waiting for an apology, and it remains really mysterious to me why you think it's perfectly acceptable for you to insert one-sided self-promotional information in violation of the rules but somehow sinister for me to note that you've violated the rules. THF (talk) 02:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Responding to March 4, 22:42, "hobby": OK, I accept that, and understand that you work on the wiki on your own out of interest. That is commendable -- and I am not saying this with any snark.  Perhaps you can understand that when the articles were immediately nominated for deletion, that can give an appearance that it is because of a conflict motive.  And I accept that was not your motivation.  Perhaps you might be more sensitive to possibilities of appearance of conflict when the article so closely align with other interest you may have, though, which I think can be remedied through a message closer to "You are new here, so you don't yet know that articles should be written with a neutral point of view," rather than something along the lines of "You are in violation of WP:NPOV and this article will be deleted."  A new person here will likely react very differently to the first compared to the second.Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 20:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by other users

I think that THF meant to ask for a checkuser, but that doesn't seem to be reflected in the tagging of this page. Cool Hand Luke 22:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I thought that the WP:DUCK was sufficiently obvious that a checkuser wasn't needed (the Oppo212 socks were "verified" with much less, but perhaps a CU was done without my knowing), but if others disagree, let me know. THF (talk) 22:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Its better to be oversafe than not (so CU may be needed) but I agree with you on The Duck. rdunn  PLIB  09:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, given his confidence above, it might be that he was using separate home and work computers, which might just show up as the same metropolitan area. It quacks to me too; flashmobs don't randomly appear around an individual's biography. Cool Hand Luke 17:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually I'd say you're dealing with meat puppets -- samj in out 12:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It never rains but it pours... I agree with above statement. rdunn  PLIB  12:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Why did you remove my response asking that you please run checkuser, and start assuming good faith?Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 02:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Regarding this "meatpuppet" thing. I post here under my own name and account, and don't obscure it. As I said before, someone contacted me, said I should have a page at Wikipedia, sent me the stuff to add. When I learned this was not acceptable I sent it back and said you should add it. So of course the content is the same, and the timing is close. It was my first time here so I didn't know the rules. I am only now learning the rules here -- it is not easy, they are obscure,you have to seek them out in ways that a new person would not understand, and are ambiguous, so it only happens when someone points out a violation. (Which occurs more quickly when the subject is being hounded.) I have learned that the rules say you are supposed to act in good faith, and new people get some latitude, but that certainly is not the case here in these discussions.Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 17:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to add a point to this. I have been editing the Commonweal Institute article. I edit it under my own account. I learned today this can be a problem because of conflict of interest, so I stopped. So where is this "meatpuppetry"? Wouldn't I have been doing that there as well? As for people posting for me, there were items in the bio article that I would have preferred not be there, like my writing Demon Attack for the Atari 400 in the 80's. It was not a great port.Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 18:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Responding further to the "meatpuppet" accusation. When I am front-paged at HuffPo there are millions of people who see it. At other sites where I am often on the front page there are hundreds of thousands. I speak at conventions and other events. Commonweal Institute also has a number of people who pay attention to its activities. So when an entry appears here, some people are likely to know that very quickly, and if some of them know how to edit a wiki, they can take stuff from one page and paste it in another. As for people "disappearing" can you imagine any one ever coming back after the kinds of accusations being made?Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 18:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I just read biting the newbies. There are a lot of people here who should read it.Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 18:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I would suggest that before starting editing is a better time to read the relevant policies. While you (all) may have meant well, wording like "working together to amplify the power of ideas in advancing today's progressive movement" (from Commonweal_Institute) has no place in an encyclopedic article and short of fixing it ourselves we can only really tag or delete it. If you did indeed try to out User:THF then you may want to consider yourself lucky that it's just the article that's gone and not your account too. Perhaps tending to the article would be a good way for you to prove your good intentions as a new user? -- samj in out 11:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I was quoting their mission statement, and wrote that it was quoting their mission statement. I had not been at Wikipedia very long yet, and didn't know that using the mission statement of an organization to describe their mission was inappropriate.  If you think this is inappropriate and one-sided, why don't you rewrite it to be neutral -- which I understand is Wikipedia's policy?  That takes less time than coming here to write this.  It seems that would advance the wiki project.


 * As for "tending to the article" I have been told that I cannot do that because I have a "COI." (I am an unpaid Fellow there.)  So I stopped editing it.  I am trying to learn and follow the rules here.


 * As for threatening again me for "outing" - I had no idea about that rule, I had been here a week. I stopped anything related when notified of the rule.  The circumstances were that immediately after I showed up here for the first time I was threatened with being banned. This kind of treatment was surprising so I looked into what was going on.  I discovered that the request to ban me may have from someone who writes on certain issues, and pointed to the site and asked if this was the person.  HE replied that yes, it was him.  I asked a question: since the person who requested I be banned has certain motives related to his profession, is it appropriate that he try to get articles like Commonweal Institute and my bio banned, when they are so closely related to certain interests of his profession.  That was my "attempted outing."


 * An example of the problem with this is that the person who nominated my bio be removed for not being notable and lacking sources had WRITTEN some of those sources himself in the past, and in so doing did research that found other very good sources. Since then I have learned that the policy at Wikipedia is that an editor should LOOK FOR sources.  But instead of adding those to the article he instead nominated it for deletion.


 * Since then that person has shown up everywhere I edit anything, within a few minutes, and removed my edits, and/or left disparaging comments about them and about me. I have been unable to disengage, the person shows up WHEREVER I edit, or on any talk page where I leave a message.  The person is question has also set up new articles here, existing only to mock Commonweal Institute.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_with_wikipuffery  Perhaps that person has certain professional interests in activity like this -- I certainly can't say here.


 * On a completely unrelated point, may I suggest a rule that would boost the credibility of Wikipedia: If a person is professionally employed to promote a position/company/ideology/etc to the public, and that person is spending time at Wikipedia advancing that viewpoint to the point where it is clear that the person's job involves advancing that position on Wikipedia, that there be some kind of moderating board to oversee that person's activities -- especially when those activities involve a person or organization that is closely related to targets of that person's professional advocacy.  Wikipedia should protect itself and police itself from professional "advocates."


 * Finally, Is there a place on the Wiki where I can ask about issues like these and have them discussed?Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 19:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * You ask "why don't you rewrite it to be neutral". Simple. Interest (or lack thereof). People work on articles because they have an interest in them. Sometimes they have a conflict of interest, and that's ok if they declare it and play by the rules. The stigma of COI is unfortunately very (arguably too) evident at the moment but given one of my preferred articles has been COI vandalised twice today alone it's easy to see why peoples' patiences are tried. Your best bet is to lay low, read as much about how this community works as you can, focus on content rather than contributors and work on getting your remaining article to a point where it will survive heavy scrutiny (which may mean paring it back to the basics with neutral-if-boring statements backed up with the most reliable sources available and no WP:SPSs). If you want to talk a good place to start is WP:Village pump. -- samj in out 00:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks. Good points and I appreciate it.  One thiing -- I was told I couldn't work on my bio or the Commonweal article because I have COI.  My bio was then removed almost immediately so no one had a chance to fix it up, and everyone involved in the Commonweal article is scared to come anywhere near it because they are afraid they'll be banned for working on it.  Just what is the COI policy?  And thanks again.Dcourtneyjohnson (talk) 02:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * WP:COI is actually a behavioural guideline, not a policy, and that's half the problem with it. I don't see a problem with you redacting problematic information from the article and then approaching another editor (like myself) should you have potentially contentious content you want to add. A concise, neutral article is likely better than none at all. -- samj in out 03:03, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
 * Everything seems to have gone extremely quiet here. Is there an ongoing issue to be resolved, or is there now a better understanding of policy such that the case can be closed without further action? Mayalld (talk) 14:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

it appears that there is now a better understanding of what is allowed. Mayalld (talk) 07:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC) Mayalld (talk) 07:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Conclusions