Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/GuardianH/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
This last edit felt too pat, especially when GuardianH and I have stalemated our discussion, only to have MBelmear come in and make the same edit. I did some poking around and found that following:  In my several years on the English Wikipedia, I've never seen this occur in proximity to any of my disagreement discussions. However, I'm also uncomfortable with instigating this formal and high-level process, especially with limited evidence and inexperienced editor(s). After discussing all this with the patient and accomodating, they thought it might be worth the effort opining,  Furthermore for whatever its worth, before even saving this page and notifying GuardianH, they appear to have followed my contribution history to 331dot's talk page and made a preemptory statement there (to which I'm not replying, given this page); in light of that statement, to make myself clear: I am not attempting to litigate a minor formatting disagreement in parallel. I recognize the statistical possibility I'm wrong and am seeing correlation in coincidence, but I'm also too inexperienced in such technical matters to deduce whether there are other unnoticed confluences/evidence that might support my concerns. Thanks, all. —  Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 16:52, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.

Comment by GuardianH

In addition to this extra comment, I've transcribed my response from the 331dot's talk page below; one doesn't really know what to say when falsely accused, and a vehement denial of false charges only make the accused look more guilty from the perspective of a spectator. I had a very civil colloquy with User Fourthords over his choice to rather unusually format the education parameter in Jonny Kim, and that conversation remains documented on the talk page; I was the one who explicitly established that our discussion reached no consensus. I took no degree of offense from Fourthord's dissent, though he did from mine, interpreting my attitude as "using unusual polarizing language to describe my edits as compared to theirs." If there was to be any offense taken anywhere, there is a very good case to interpret a great deal of what Fourthords said to be passive aggressive on his end—dropping what can be interpreted as patronizing editing tips in the middle of our discussion, and assuming my dissent stems from a lack of understanding of the guidelines as opposed to wanting to mop up a red flag in the formatting. I'm inclined to believe that there is at least some inkling of bad faith given the effort spent to inflate a scantily-supported sockpuppet correlation—which is frustrating as a devoted editor.

Notable ground for skepticism has already been raised by 331dot regarding Fourthord's claim. Conveniently, Fourthord has completely glazed over contacting MBelmear about our discussion in the talk page and this sockpuppet investigation; I remain so far the only one responding to the implication. As I have raised in the following transcription, differences between my account and MBelmear's become jarringly apparent after just a cursory search: MBelmear performs almost exclusively copy-edits/formatting edits, edits usually pertaining to actors/commentators/media figures, and he had an interaction with Fourthords on Huan Nguyen—edits made days before our discussion on a page I've never edited before in my life. To say the grounds to conclude that somehow MBelmear is a sockpuppet of mine are scant is an understatement. He is not wrong because of a statistical possibility, its that he has just plainly missed the mark. I am completely unfamiliar with the Checkuser procedure and I don't know what an SPI is...if the Checkuser can verify that me and MBelmear are different persons, I would be more than willing to undergo it in order to dispel any doubts.

Here's the aforementioned transcription of my previous reply:

If I may weigh in on my behalf, I say unequivocally that I have no relation whatsoever with @MBelmear; it is a coincidence that they have decided to edit the page for Jonny Kim after I have, and, from a cursory examination of their edit history, we have completely backgrounds and interests. @Fourthords has accidentally drawn a false equivalence here. I don't know anyone from Montana, and I wouldn't decide to create a sockpuppet to edit a page when I was the one to establish the lack of consensus to make any changes.

What is unusually polarizing is not my talk page attitude, but rather the markedly unorthodox formatting that is in the education section for Jonny Kim—it sticks out like a sore thumb. From checking @MBelmear's edit history, they almost exclusively do formatting edits pertaining to actors and other popular figures; it is not surprising that one of these formatting edits was an attempt to fix the weird formatting of the education parameter in Jonny Kim. On a pure correlative/interactive level, I am more likely to be a sockpuppet of Fourthords than I am to be one of @MBelmear. I'm willing to comply with any needed inquiry as to my identity. I'm unfamiliar with the SPI process though. GuardianH (talk) 08:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * The evidence here is razor thin, there are only one article they cross on in a popular topic area, the edit summary styles are different by far, and GuardianH is established with 12k edits. -- Amanda (she/her)  19:19, 19 March 2023 (UTC)