Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Gusstrand/Archive

02 September 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

These users' sole contributions are "keep" votes at an AfD formatted in the same way as Mike Searson's "keep" vote (all-caps KEEP, signed with two dashes). Looks WP:DUCKy. I originally thought they might be meatpuppets, but then I noticed the formatting. Possibly editing from different IPs to avoid detection. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 05:44, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

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

Nevermas Not a sockpuppet, I am a noob at editing, just wanted to make sure I was getting the right syntax down so I copied the users above me. Check my IPs, want me to provide it here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nevermas (talk • contribs) 07:45, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Gusstrand I visit one of the few pages I find useful more often than once when I'm dealing with collectors here and see that it is accused of ludicrous allegations and jump in to put in my two cents using one of the most pathetic markup languages I've ever run across (and I've been coding web pages since Mosaic. 0.9)Simple cut and paste of snippets is what I used to post my text. The signature guidelines posted here even suggest the method I used.

Not only am I NOT any sort of puppet, sock or otherwise, but I am also now an offended human being. Check the logs. --Gusstrand (talk) 12:49, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

This is ridiculous: Mike Searson is much too experienced, knowledgeable of Wikipedia, and ethical to do such a stupid and obvious thing. More likely, many Emerson followers knew that his article was up for deletion and registered accounts to vote keep. The history here is that a former editor (whose name escapes my memory since this occurred more than a few years ago) used to rail against this article, apparently had a vendetta against Emerson, and there is quite likely a lot of off-Wiki discussion of Emerson's article in the knife community. No need for this SPI, as Mike Searson is simply not the kind of editor who would be behind this sort of thing. Try an off-Wiki search for off-Wiki coordination, which is unlikely to involve Mike. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:14, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

You don't know me, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt and NOT take your slight against my honor as seriously as I otherwise would. &mdash;Railpatch (talk) 17:41, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Jon Svoboda  Sockpuppet ??? pretty funny actually, I'm nothing of the sort (the last I checked, I'm still human). To get this back on topic, no need to delete the article. The references check out, and it is accurate. It sounds like you have personal issues of some sort with the author — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jon Svoboda (talk • contribs) 18:30, September 2, 2011

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * I'm going the controversial route on this one and ing this case, and here's why. First, I agree with Sandy that Mike Searson is almost certainly unrelated to this. I would have initially written this off as meatpuppetry, except for the fact that all of the accused socks above signed here in exactly the same way. Email me if you have a question about this (per WP:BEANS I'd rather not say more) but I can't help but wonder what's going on. CU can clarify. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 22:17, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, SPI does not help at all in this case. All the accounts are bizarrely ❌, almost implausibly so.  It's certainly possible they're all sockpuppets, but it seems odd that someone would be so effective at dodging CU association (it would take a lot of work to do) yet still have such ridiculous behavioral overlap.  My gut says meatpuppets. Jclemens (talk) 00:47, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Call me paranoid, but is it possible that this was done via proxies? —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 01:24, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It's entirely possible that it could have been done in a number of ways, but the effort required to do it that way makes the lack of familiarity with Wikipedia convention all the more puzzling: who would go to the effort to do it that way when the actual edits are almost *guaranteed* to draw scrutiny? Jclemens (talk) 01:35, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I guess so. For the purpose of the AFD, all of the accounts should be marked as SPAs, I think. I'll close for now, but report any new developments and we'll take a look. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 03:32, 3 September 2011 (UTC)