Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Higheredutrust/Archive

03 November 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets

I'll request a Checkuser only for the usernames, not the ips, for whom I'm providing behavioral evidence. There may be other sleeper accounts involved which I may have missed. Over the past few months to a year, a few ips and editors have focused on the Amity University and Ashok Chauhan page, deleting the same cited content and adding the same worded content. They've been single purpose accounts, not editing any other pages except these two. When one account goes dead, another comes alive and repeats the same edits. Yesterday, Higheredutrust commented on User:Theroadislong's talk page that they had talked a few months back with me (Wifione) with respect to Amity University. I traced back and found only one editor with whom I had talked about Amity, and that was User:Cfiveindia, who had accepted then that he/she was part of Amity University, who wanted to remove negative information. I've left a query on Higheredutrust's talk page, asking whether they are Cfiveindia, which is till now unanswered. Some examples of similar edits given below:
 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.
 * RahulGanpathy: adding 'not for profit', blanking 'Controversy' section, adding NAAC accreditation 'with the highest Grade A' terminology
 * Cfiveindia: adding 'non profit', blanking 'Controversy' section
 * Higheredutrust: adding 'non-profit', blanking 'Controversy' section, adding NAAC accreditation 'with the highest Grade A' terminology
 * 106.211.112.108: adding NAAC accreditation 'with the highest Grade A' terminology
 * 106.211.86.20: adding 'non-profit'
 * 203.196.135.20: adding 'non-profit'blanking 'Controversy' section  Wifione  Message 10:16, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

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

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Higheredutrust doesn't return any socks on CU, and the other accounts are . -- DQ  (ʞlɐʇ)  03:05, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Might be meat-puppetry on behalf of said trust. I've now blocked Higheredutrust because of the username, not for socking. If other admins feel that any other accounts need a block for puppetry, please go ahead. De728631 (talk) 17:08, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

08 November 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets

Cfiveindia, a user account that had stopped editing exactly one year ago, is back to editing a couple of days after a suspected sockmaster Higheredutrust was blocked this week (for the editor's username) post my SPI report (which, incidentally, had mentioned Cfiveindia as a suspected sock of Higheredutrust; kindly see the previous report for diffs and reasonings). Cfiveindia had accepted in discussions with me earlier that they are part of Amity University. The recent edit of Cfiveindia and many edits one year back are similar to past edits by Higheredutrust. Additionally, some hours ago, ip 165.123.45.193 left a message on User talk:Ekabhishek that they are part of Amity University giving reasons that are exactly similar to those used by Cfiveindia and Higheredutrust. Wifione  Message 02:19, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.
 * Cfiveindia: Blanking 'Controversy' section.
 * Higheredutrust: Blanking 'Controversy' section.

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

This might just be me but I get the feeling Cfiveindia is breaking a Username rule. Can someone confirm if this is true or not? Your friendly Wikipedia prefect :) - (I can haz Cheezburger?)  10:45, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
Higheredutrust & Cfiveindia are clearly the same person, or perhaps accounts used by the same pool of people. Whether their actions should be regarded as sockpuppetry is open to question, as I see no abusive use of the fact of having two accounts. However, the failure to respond to repeated requests to state whether or not the accounts belong to the same person does suggest a wish to evade scrutiny, so probably "sockpuppetry" is the right word. However, whether sockpuppets or not, the accounts have been used for long-term edit warring, and exist purely in order to promote the interests of the institution they are being used by, so I have blocked Cfiveindia indefinitely, and posted to Higheredutrust stating that there are more reasons for being blocked than the username issue, which was the only reason that had been given before. 203.196.135.20 has been used in the same way, and I have blocked it for two weeks. If the problem continues, it may be reasonable to consider a much longer IP block. None of the other IP addresses has yet made more than one edit, and RahulGanpathy has not edited for over six months, so I am leaving them, though of course a block might be considered if that changes. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:43, 16 November 2012 (UTC)