Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Evershawn/Archive

28 April 2015

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Both these users are devoted to writing articles about Luke Weil and A. Lorne Weil as well as deleting negative information about these two from Born Rich (film). The allegations are heavily detailed out by at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:53, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

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

I am not the same user as evershawn whom as far as I know is not a currently blocked user anyway (so not sure why it matters) I do however know this person in meatlife and have had lengthy discussions about user Shibbolethink's focus on Luke Weil and his mission to smear him because of his suspected PR scrubbing theories. If you'll notice, my latest edits are constructive, more accurate and I have not attempted to remove any cites. My biggest problem with Shibbolethink has been that he desperately is trying to include Weil's name unessarily even when the cites he's using do not reflect what he's saying. I merely enhanced the article to accurately reflect the information in the cite itself which was what drove Shibbolethink to the admin notice board. Since the beginning Shibbolethink has been overly anxious to post warnings, make accusations and revert edits with no discussion or reasoning for doing so. He's made several personal attacks against me rather than focus on the content itself and what's wrong with my changes. JS18WlKlPEDlA (talk) 20:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)


 * As User:Oiyarbepsy mentioned, I put a ton of info pertinent to this over at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents but here is the TL;DR from my SPI evidence:


 * 1) JS18WIKIPEDIA and Evershawn have very similar grammatical structure and phrasings in their talk page entries. See: 1 2
 * 2) Both users edited similarly on the Born Rich (film) page. See 1 2 and 3 4.
 * 3) Both users have three or four word user pages and regularly blank their user talk pages removing warnings. See:  1 2 and 3 4
 * 4) also visible in the above diffs is continual appeal from both editors to "report vandalism to wikipedia administration" when other editors warn them for editing against consensus.
 * 5) Evershawn was blocked from his activity on the Luke Weil and A. Lorne Weil pages, it is quite possible JS18WIKIPEDIA was created as a method of shedding this past block. In the intervening time there were several IP addresses that made edits corresponding to a similar interest.


 * Also, I'd like to note that Luke Weil's wikipedia page has been the subject of several news stories pertaining to so-called "Black Ops reputation management" aka companies that you can pay to wipe your slate clean online. As New York Magazine reported, one of the services they'll do for you is edit your wikipedia pages to remove any unflattering material. This is also covered in Jon Ronson's book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, here. Here are some quotes from the NYMag article:


 * "But when sleuthing through the metadata, I noticed other names thrown in incongruously: Joe Ricketts, Helen Lee Schifter, Irena Briganti, Antonio Weiss, and Luke Weil. I also noticed the same Wikipedia editor, Belkin555, had tidied the entries of several of them. A few were powerful people with no apparent scandals to cover up: Joe Ricketts was the founder of TD Ameritrade, and Antonio Weiss runs investment banking for ­Lazard. Others, judging by the unforgiving kliegs of a Google search, had left much messier trails on the web."


 * "And then there’s Luke Weil, 33, whose father, Lorne, made a fortune in the off-track-­betting industry. In 2006, according to the Observer, Weil, who now works as a VP of his dad’s company and once sued the makers of the Born Rich documentary to force the removal of his own too-candid interview footage, assaulted a music producer with a broken liquor bottle and battered his then-girlfriend, Patrice Jordan, and was sentenced to a year in jail."


 * (in the comments) "Graeme, nice piece, but you didn't dig deep enough. Where there's one Wikipedia account like Belkin555 there are almost definitely others controlled by the same person. Did you know that until May 2012 the Wikipedia article on A. Lorne Weil contained info about Luke Weil? Two IP editors came along and removed all mention. Luke Weil deserves his own article - somebody get on that!"

-- Shibboleth ink (♔ ♕) 20:23, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I haven't been there that long so I haven't had time to do a robust and spectacular user page and I'm just now refining my understanding of policies and procedures, sorry Shibbolethink. You've certainly not been a warm 1 man welcoming comity. Currently Arxiloxos and I are having a constructive and agreeable discussion regarding Born Rich changes (Arxiloxos being an editor here with far more experience and credibility than you and seemingly a more neutral point of view on this). To be honest, your whole sockpuppet and admin board dispute is overly aggressive when you could have just taken part in the discussion there which is very constructive and not hostile (at least when you're not participating in it). I guess I'm just old and don't enjoy or see the need for conflict like college kids do. Have fun with your witch hunt. I think any reasonable admin is going to see that I'm doing constructive edits with Arxiloxos at this time and there's no issue other than your persistent belligerence in the matter. Cheers JS18WlKlPEDlA (talk) 20:41, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Contrary to what you said above, User:Evershawn is blocked with an expiration time of indefinite. See here.-- Shibboleth ink  (♔ ♕) 21:23, 28 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Shibboleth - If you look at the user talk section for Evershawn the block was suppose to be for 24 hours so if it's still blocked perhaps there was an error on the admins part setting the time for the block. There was never a second disciplinary action taken to warrant extension as far as I can tell. JS18WlKlPEDlA (talk) 21:30, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think this is the link you want.-- Shibboleth ink (♔ ♕) 21:52, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm, the talk page clearly indicates a 24 hr block with a threat to indef if the behavior continues once the block expires -- yet the one and only block is an indef. Paging for clarification. Rgrds. --64.85.217.144 (talk) 16:25, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Definitely a mistake: I can't imagine why I'd intentionally say one and do the other. It would be one thing if I'd left only the block template ("maybe Nyttend just typed the wrong thing"), but that can't explain my detailed rationale, with the "when this block expires" stuff.  With this in mind, I've unblocked him: he should have been automatically unblocked two weeks ago.  I've not read the rest of this page, so maybe what I'm saying isn't relevant, but...if Evershawn's been operating another username or been editing without a username, it shouldn't be considered block evasion, unless he did it within 24 hours of the original block.  There's no good reason to sanction someone if his only infraction was meant to get around a mistake by a blocking admin.  Nyttend (talk) 16:55, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * You're right, I don't think either should be pinged re: block evasion. I'm really much more concerned about the behavior detailed in Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Even if this is a case of sockpuppetry, the problem is what they're doing while operating puppets not that they're operating puppets.-- Shibboleth ink (♔ ♕) 16:58, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I left a note at WP:ANI saying the same thing as here. We might as well just close this SPI, since there's no infraction of the sockpuppetry policy.  Let's just evaluate the behavior that you mention.  Nyttend (talk) 17:04, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Ok, so Evershawn's block should have expired on 14 April. That account was abandoned and JS18WlKlPEDlA was registered on 17 April. Even if they are run by the same user, it's not WP:ILLEGIT. Closing this case,  Vanjagenije  (talk)  23:15, 29 April 2015 (UTC)