Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Eposty/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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There have been numerous transgressions by Eposty and what is almost certainly his IP in relation to December 13. It began with this edit by Eposty on 5 February by which he removed all the sub-headings in the article and said: "Not following WP:DOYCITE". As I pointed out when restoring the sub-headings, the article's structure is nothing to do with DOYCITE and there has been a recent discussion and consensus on the subject of period sub-headings (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year/Template and WikiProject Days of the year/Template). I hoped that would resolve his issue but soon afterwards he was back with a straight revert, completely ignoring the message about discussion and consensus. Among his edits at this time was this one which is really a straight piece of vandalism because we use the null template for alignment of dates. As an experienced editor, its purpose should have been obvious to him, even if he if he had not actually seen it before.

He then made this amendment which is serious in the present climate because even if African-American should be inappropriate as a term for some reason, a reference to colour of skin cannot be justified and his edit summary is potentially offensive to many people. In the case of Jane Edna Hunter, it is entirely appropriate in terms of her life and times to describe her as an African-American. It would be interesting to hear from Natalie Bueno Vasquez on this as she is the main author of Hunter's article and originally added the birth entry to December 13.

In a couple of his other edits, Eposty has a problem with the short notes we are now introducing at WP:DOY to justify inclusion of sports and media personalities. We are doing this to try and cut down on the number of non-noteworthy and recentist additions that clutter up these lists (see WP:BIRTHDOY). In one of these edit summaries, Eposty tries to justify his action by saying that "detail isn't necessary as all the other ones don't have it". It should be obvious to him that the article is one of several listed at WP:DOY as a work in progress being brought up to project standard. Work of this scale and scope isn't completed in a few minutes or even a few days. The intention, of course, is that all the other sports and media entries will "have it" in due course.

I restored the deleted content a few hours later and decided that I should raise the matter at his talk page, especially as he had breached WP:BRD. I think my message to him is fair comment. Work on improving the article continued that day, mainly on finding sources as per the project initiative.

Several hours later, the IP deleted African-American from Jane Edna Hunter's entry without comment. Next, the IP removed the justification note from Richard Dent's entry (this had been newly added that day with a source for Dent's DOB). I don't think there can be any doubt that the IP and Eposty are the same person per the WP:DUCK check – I doubt if you can confirm a mobile edit IP with a checkuser tool. No doubt Eposty will claim he was on his mobile and couldn't remember his password, so he should have indicated somehow that he was temporarily obliged to edit as an IP. As the edit stands, it is made to appear that another editor agrees with him about use of African-American.

Soon afterwards, African-American was restored by who rightly said that the term is there to match the subject's biography article. I missed something here because when I returned to December 13, I saw the removal of the note about Richard Dent and just thought it was fly-by vandalism by an IP without making a connection, even though I was aware of 5225C's intervention which I didn't relate to the IP at that time. Later that day (7th), Eposty was back with another deletion of African-American plus another crass remark about "colour of skin". No attempt was made to answer my talk page message or to take part in any kind of discussion as per BRD. He followed that with this removal of justification notes (including, you will notice, Richard Dent) and his edit summary here amounts to a personal attack which directly breaches WP:5P4. He is accusing me of "picking and choosing" and says: "Only doing some just shows laziness or only carrying about certain sports/players". That is a deliberate insult because the upgrade is a work in progress that will take a long time to complete. It should be obvious that the births are being addressed bottom-up because the big problem with non-noteworthy entries is recentism and the last section, 1941–2000, was nearly complete at the time apart from the top two entries so it is simply untrue to assert that there has been any "picking and choosing" or "laziness".

When I saw this attack on both the article and myself, I again restored the content and I again wrote to Eposty on his talk page. This time I told him in clear terms that he must respect BRD and I warned him about his colour of skin remarks which are completely out of order. He has not replied. He has also refrained from interfering with December 13 since that warning and so I was content to let the matter rest. He did make a brief return later on 7 February to add a birth entry, which is fair enough and he did provide a source per DOYCITE, although his citation is a bare url and I would think that someone with 15k edits must know how to use WP:CITE.

The reason why I have decided to raise this case now is because of the bare url. I hadn't realised that Eposty was the author of that entry and, having converted the url to standard, it occurred to me that I should check all recent edits in case of any more anomalies. It was then that I made the connection between Eposty and the IP. I had been prepared to view the problems as water under the bridge but this blatant use of an IP to "support" his case is one transgression too many and that's why I'm opening an SPI. I'm leaving Eposty a note so that he is aware of it.

I might add that Eposty has caused problems at WP:DOY before by failing to respect consensus and insisting that he alone is right. Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year which was an issue finally resolved by Deb.

Whatever the verdict on sockpuppetry here, I think that the two "colour of skin" remarks need to be considered seriously by a sysop because they were unnecessary and must certainly be offensive to many people.

Please let me know if I can help further. Thanks. No Great Shaker (talk) 11:42, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.'' This intrigues me. I have noticed User:Eposty making many contributions to Year and Date articles, mostly good ones but sometimes not-so-good ones, especially in terms of accurate edit summaries. If Eposty has been using IP addresses to edit, I would like to think that this could be a case of forgetting to log in or accidentally logging out (easily done). The removal of African-American as an identifier does concern me, but it's not relevant here. Deb (talk) 12:41, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * First off, I think it is funny that like six or seven users is a "consensus"... How many registered users are on this site?  That is a hardly a "consensus" when you are talking about less than 0.001% easily, but whatever...
 * Second, I have been using WP:DOYCITE because I have seen many others use it that forget to inline citations... Nothing there has anything about this layout that was agreed upon by the above "consensus" that keeps getting mentioned...  If you are going to use it, put it there, don't keep quoting other places within the Wiki depths...  Not everyone wants to dig around everywhere just to try and read something...
 * Third, I have many friends that are black... Notice that I did not say "African American", because all of them think that the term is now incorrect and want to be called black...  Well lookie there, that is a "consensus" among my black friends, so it must be done...  But in reality, the media has abandoned the use of the term "African American" and now uses "Black" pretty much everywhere...
 * Fourth, if you are going to want to use these sub-title headlines, then so be it, but you must use a consistent distance between timeframes... You don't do that to graphs as it skews the visual of the data, but maybe that is what you are wanting to do...  Seeing 1901-1910, 1911-1920, 1921-1940, 1941-present is just being lazy so each section has the same amount of people?
 * Finally, if you feel that you must still wield some kind of power, just ban my account and get it over with... I am volunteering my time to try an help out and make things nice and accurate (like during baseball seasons), but to keep getting attacked because maybe no more than five dates have this "consensus" and the rest of the 350+ dates have the old method, you should see why I think either this new "consensus" either should be rolled out to all pages ASAP or discarded...  User "No Great Shaker" seems to have plenty of time complaining about me in this post and editing December 13, I nominate that user to do the other pages immediately...
 * Anyway, carry on... eposty (talk) 14:10, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , you seem to be clouding the issue. All that's being asked of you here is to say whether you have or haven't deliberately used an IP address to avoid detection. Have you? Deb (talk) 14:58, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I am logged into my account on my home laptop (which is wired) and work computer (which is also wired)... If I am on my cell to make a change, I do so and I do not log in...  I do not log in because I don't want login information to go over wifi...  Is it a crime to want to protect login information?  eposty (talk) 15:03, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * How do you explain the numerous mobile edits in your contributions history, then? No Great Shaker (talk) 08:44, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Just to summarise Eposty's mobile usage, he has submitted 18 mobile edits in his last 250 contributions going back to early December. The most recent one on 7 February is interesting because it was after he logged off to make the two IP edits. He then logged on again, despite his alleged concerns about wi-fi connectivity, to edit Aaron Rodgers and that was only seven minutes before he made his second colour of skin comment, having switched to what he calls his "wired" device in the meantime. He is presumably unaware that mobile edit contributions are tagged as such and are easily detected. As far as this SPI case goes, regardless of his other transgressions, Eposty has deliberately used an IP to create a "supporter" for his African-American issue and has compounded the malpractice by twice making unacceptably crass remarks about colour of skin. No Great Shaker (talk) 10:58, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Whatever, fine... I won't remove "African" from "African American" any more and won't disrupt the layout "consensus" if that date is one of the few that is updated...  It isn't worth the headache and witch hunt...  Happy?  eposty (talk) 13:00, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Good morning. I was asked for comment, and since I'm tangentially involved I can only say that I go with the consensus of the people participating in the work being done, which is to say that the terms African-American and Black are used when appropriate and relevant to a person's entry in Wikipedia. It is clearly appropriate in the case of Jane Edna Hunter.

It is sometimes a trial to see which things are the consensus at a given time, but fellow editors have been very helpful to me when I have not followed them and have given me space to acknowledge my errors and make corrections. I appreciate 's work and support in this matter. Natalie Bueno Vásqueƶ 17:27, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Recommend no further action as User:Eposty has admitted to logging out in order to make dubious edits and hopefully now realises he mustn't do this. Deb (talk) 11:36, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll second that. I think a warning will suffice here and hope he learns that he must comply with site policies, respect the guidelines and co-operate with other editors – all within reason, of course. No Great Shaker (talk) 13:38, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Closing without action., please don't edit while logged out. If you are concerned about account security on public wifi, I recommend creating a second account for use on untrusted connections or computers and declaring the relationship between the two (see the first bullet of WP:SOCKLEGIT for more information), that's a fairly common practice. GeneralNotability (talk) 00:46, 14 February 2021 (UTC)