Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/GraniteSand/Archive

18 November 2013

 * Suspected sockpuppets


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GraniteSand is obviously a Wikipedian with years of experience. On his first day he templated his userpage. In his first week he created a Wikitable from scratch in one edit. He knows his way around obscure noticeboards, and understands footnoting and other concepts like a master. Clean start is a possibility, but block evasion is much more likely, because he seems to totally reject many of Wikipedia's core policies. Just like someone who has earned a block.

Bencmcclain is a WP:SPA who plays good cop/bad cop for GraniteSand. They disagree briefly and then decide they're in total accord. The Bencmcclain account only seems to exist to help GraniteSand on a page where he's run into disagreement.

Not sure how to track down GraniteSand's blocked sockmaster; possibly checkuser. Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:31, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * His editing is very odd, especially if you look at his earliest contribs, he's an expert from the start. He definitly has an agenda and experience. Also, one of his earlier edits mentions the SPLC Very suspicious. John Reaves 18:17, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't understand, what's very suspicious about mentioning the SPLC and what agenda is it you think you're decoding from my edit history? GraniteSand (talk) 18:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

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

I'm not Bencmcclain nor the IP listed. This is the only account I use and it was not created to evade a block. I also disagree with Dennis' characterization of edits as rejecting core policy. Ben seems to be a person's real name who lives in Seattle as he is familiar with a relatively obscure Seattle blogger, has an active internet presence on The Stranger's website, and refered to himself as "Sawant supporter". The other IP is a Seattle IP, likely Ben's. Also, I think the IP listed is Ben when he forgot to log in. GraniteSand (talk) 22:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * So can I get an update on when this will be closed? GraniteSand (talk) 02:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Wow, I don't really know what to say. It's true I joined wikipedia just a few days ago, in order to edit the Kshama Sawant article. Does having edited only one article mean I'm some kind of bot? If you look at the talk history on that page, the reason I made an account at all was because I thought the wikipedia page included a really bad claim that was getting repeated a lot, the source of which was one ambiguous sentence by Goldy in the Stranger which granitesand was interpreting as saying she wanted to collectivize Amazon. That seemed a crazy policy (I voted for her and didn't recall any mention of that in her platform!) and I didn't think the claim should be on wikipedia b/c Goldy was too ambiguous. Me and another editor convinced GraniteSand to drop the claim (though it took a lot of convincing, read the back and forth on the talk page.) Then, having won I started second guessing myself and did some google searches restricted to before the goldy article was written to see if I could verify goldy's claim. I found a single mention of Kshama's 2012 campaign platform including wanting to nationalize Amazon, Boeing, and Microsoft. So I went to the wayback machine and entered votesawant.org and found that she did indeed make that part of her platform back in 2012. So I retracted my skepticism on that claim since she's apparently much more socialist than I realized. (Though I'm happy that the Goldy article is no longer the source for that b/c unlike granitesand I do really think he was equivocating.) So that's the story of that. It's hardly 'disagreeing briefly then coming to total accord', how do you even get that? And if you notice, I've agreed with you (Dennis) on almost every other thing! I think the marxist stuff should go and my most recent changes (which were endorsed explicitly by User: John Reaves in the talk page) reworked it to deemphasize the marxism spiel by putting it in the economics section (although granitesand undid that quickly and made it more prominent again, that was annoying), and I also think the political positions are way too long and worked to scale them back (just not a wholesale deletion like you did, that was crazy and disrespectful). I also, like you, see no reason to work in the trotskyian/workers international/yadda yadda into the article and deleted it (though granitesand quickly undid that as well, so I can see why you might be annoyed, but do you always do stuff like this when annoyed?). All these things I stated clearly and respectfully on the talk page. In fact the *only thing* I've disagreed with you on is when you said the political platform of her previous campaign should be removed from the article because it was getting negative attention, and come on, you know that was absurd. And even if granitesand is overly controlling of the article, he's a drop in the bucket compared to you, and he was always respectful even when we were adamantly in disagreement. With accusations like this clearly you aren't so respectful. Anyway, sorry this was a rant but I've been working really hard on this over the last few days, taking up way too much of my time, and then you come in with your vast experience and say I'm a sock puppet. I doubt I'll be making any more wikipedia contributions any time soon, thanks. Bencmcclain (talk) 23:45, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * I probally should have just asked for further evidence, and diffs, since they are required to file an SPI, but I went through and found the relevant behavoiral evidence to run this check. I checked these two on the grounds that I thought they were the same, and not because of any possible relation to users blocked not listed here. The two named accounts are ❌, but GraniteSand == CarpetBumming, who split their editing history on a page, and it's also ✅ to . this trio may have connections to a major sockmaster, but I don't have enough evidence to confirm it at this time. -- DQ   (ʞlɐʇ)  20:26, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Will you know for sure at some point? Or is this case closed? John Reaves 21:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe...I'll do a little more digging when I am back home, but all data normally available to checkusers on this master is stale. So i'll check the range things were on, see if anything pops up, or if I can contact an older checkuser who might have some info. -- DQ on the road   (ʞlɐʇ)  22:44, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've blocked CarpetBumming and TreeMop indefinitely. I haven't blocked GraniteSand since there was no chronological overlap between the three accounts, but I'm open to a second opinion. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * As mentioned on my talk page, those two accounts are derelict because I forgot the passwords I was using for them as I usually use independent and randomized passwords. After forgetting two I didn't make the same mistake with this one. There are no other accounts, I don't have socks, I'm not a sock and I've never violated any of the rules governing the creation and use of user pages. If I can clear anything else up let me know. GraniteSand (talk) 21:11, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * This begs the question: Why did you not disclose that you lost the password. I'm still not convinced personally that this is all of your accounts, but I don't have any evidence yet. -- DQ on the road   (ʞlɐʇ)  22:44, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Frankly I just forgot the accounts even existed, it's why I never even bothered to tag them as derelict. I wiped my computer's cache a couple times and realized after that I had forgotten the password so just created a new account. Look, I know has this all works. If you want any specific questions answered just ask. GraniteSand (talk) 22:55, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Is there any objection to this being closed at this point, or should I leave it open longer? Mark Arsten (talk) 20:56, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Closing per my above comment. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:06, 26 November 2013 (UTC)