Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hurungudo/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Looking for a someone to look at a likely case of either sock or meat puppetry; I am unsure which is more accurate, but I believe have complied fairly compelling evidence of socking. The investigation focuses primarily on two editors, User:Hurungudo (the suspected sockmaster) and User:Gukura, both of whose contributions I have looked at extensively when drawing up this SPI. My general speculation is these two editors are either the same individual or are coordinating in some way, a major issue as User:Hurungudo has been blocked for undisclosed paid editing. The third editor listed on the SPI has too few contributions to accurately assess. I have also requested checkuser to identify any other involved editors, though I have a feeling that this may be a clear DUCK case.


 * Chronology of edits
 * Per their contributions ), Gukura ceased editing on 5 July and went dormant for two months, only beginning to edit again on 3 September—two days after Hurungudo was blocked.
 * Gukura created an article with this edit . Less than 10 mins later (<7 mins after Gukura's last edit), Hurungudo edited the article, and went on to edit the article extensively; Gukura has yet to edit the article since. It should be noted that the article had not been added to any WikiProject and contained no Wiki-links at the time of Huru's edits, making a <10 mins response time very interesting.
 * At Draft:Kambo Boys, a similar chronology is visible; as seen with these diffs, Huru made a series of edits to an article, only to stop, and for Gukura to make an edit to the article 3 mins later. Neither of the two continued to edit this article after this point (at least for the next several days).


 * Commons contributions
 * Evidence based on Gukura's commons contributions also implies a connection between them and User:Hurungudo. I have listed some examples below.


 * Buffalo Souljah - Gukura uploaded |uploaded an image (properly obtained via OTRS ticket) of the article subject on 5 June 2019; less than 3 minutes later, Hurugungudo added the image to the Buffalo Souljah article on en.wiki—this came with no visible on-or-inter wiki coordination.
 * Janet Manyowa - Hurungudo created an article on Manyowa, and Gukura later uploaded an image of Manyowa to the same article.
 * I was going to continue comparing Gukura's image uploads to Huru's articles, but on closer inspection every image—without fail—uploaded by Gukura was later added to articles created or recently edited by Hurungudo. Note this includes images of article topics that were later deleted, and I discounted duplicates of the same image Gukura uploaded to the commons. In short, Gukura has never uploaded an image has not been used on an article by Hurugundo.
 * OTRS/Metadata - On their en-wiki userpage and Commons userpage, Gukura notes they are a photographer, which would explain the pictures. However, looking at the images they uploaded, none seem to have complete metadata, and at least one image was granted to the commons via OTRS and thus by definition not the personal work of Gukura. The use of an OTRS-confirmed image also reinforces the possibility of a connection between Huru and Gukura as Huru was blocked for undisclosed paid editing—at the very least it credibly indicates Gukura is in contact with an article subject.


 * Potential COI edits
 * Before and after Huru's block for undisclosed paid editing, Gukura made a series of edits (some less than two days after Huru's block) I feel credibly indicate some sort of connection between the two editors:


 * Gukura's first ever edit was made at Articles for deletion/Mobarz Kidifa, an AfD which concerned an article created by Hurugumgudo. This is a major red flag.
 * Following their return (after two months of inactivity) to editing, Gukura moved two draftified articles that had been created by Hurugungudo back to the mainspace (see moves ); this is allowed by policy, but is suspicious given both moves were made within one hour of each-other.
 * Gukura also removed  UDP templates from articles created by Huru. Both tags were also removed without addressing in the edit summary why the tag had been addressed. Again, not against policy per se, but such edits can be indicators of sock/meat activity.

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


 * Per request by, my evidence concerning KateKate263 centers around their participation in Articles for deletion/Mobarz Kidifa (also mentioned above); an editor involved in the AfD noted that both Gukura and KateKate were SPAs given their limited contributions at the time. KateKate also edited Janet Manyowa, which was edited by both Huru and Gukura. Given that KateKate has 8 contributions in total and 4 of them were made to articles/discussions involving the other editors, I felt they should be included in this SPI.

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
I don't see any evidence for KateKate263. Please provide it.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:26, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Hurungudo and Gukura are, blocked and tagged. There is a possibility they are meat puppets. KateKate263 is , and there is also a possibility they are a meat puppet. for KateKate263.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:21, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I think "meatpuppet" is as likely as any other explanation for KateKate263. Given that there have been no further edits from that account, I'm going to consider it non-actionable and mark the case for closure. –Darkwind (talk) 07:21, 13 October 2019 (UTC)