Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Icerat/Archive

10 March 2016

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Historik75 is a new WP:SPA who has been engaged in disruptive editing, POV pushing, and driveby tagging on the Amway article. The user's initial arguments were discounted on the Talk page, and suddenly the next day, a new WP:SPA appeared (Platinum), pushing the same non-neutral POV edits, in an apparent attempt at vote stacking. The same day, a sleeper account (Icerat) that has been dormant since Nov 2014 suddenly appeared as well and jumped in on the vote stacking and driveby tagging. These accounts are not seeking to establish consensus and have been essentially ignoring the rebuttals raised by several editors on the Talk page (like this for instance ). It appears to be a cadre of Amway distributors (or one masquerading as a cadre) waging a war of attrition and violating WP:COI. Rhode Island Red (talk) 21:17, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

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

I agree that this is worth a look. Both accounts share an extremely similar use of debate-team-style rhetorical tactics, specifically the use of loaded questions:

Icerat:
 * Don't you agree that coverage in the article should be in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources?
 * Are you disputing that Amway was cleared of being a pyramid in the US and UK?
 * So just to be clear, you think the lede should point out Amway has been investigated as a pyramid scheme, but not that those investigations cleared it, and to do so would be a violation of WP:BALANCE Is that correct?

Historik75:
 * Grayfell, do you find it reasonable to accuse somebody of something and not provide a room to present the whole facts?
 * I wonder why you keep deleting the simple information (backed up with source) that Amway was not found to be a pyramid scheme in the US. Can you tell me the reason?

There are other examples, as well. Grayfell (talk) 01:02, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you admins for taking the time to investigate. Agreed that the pattern of conduct is highly suspicious overall and the purposeful attempt at obscuring identities to which you refer adds fuel to the fire. The editors' recent partisan activity here on WP, upon review, will not bode well for them. All 3 accounts march in virtual lockstep and the two newer accounts display an inexplicably intimate knowledge of the nuts and bolts of WP (inconsistent with a newbie). Serious issues here with WP:COI, WP:SOCK, WP:SPA, WP:SOAP, and WP:DE/WP:TE. Rhode Island Red (talk) 19:32, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * BTW, have a look at this thread for example and tell me it isn't the very essence of WP:TE and WP:IDHT on the part of one of the WP:SPAs. Rhode Island Red (talk) 20:13, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Rhode Island Red is unfortunately displaying the very type of belligerent behaviour that caused me to "sleep" in the first place. In the last week, after constantly reverting edits of mine without discussion in talk, or, when he elects to participate in talk, failing to actually answer questions and address concerns, he and his "partner" Grayfell have multiple times accused me of being a WP:SLEEPER (so?), and WP:SPA (check my record) threatened me with edit-warring notices on my userpage, posted a warning COI (despite failing when the exact same accusation was made (and investigated) several years ago) and directly threatening to "have me banned" unless I obey his orders. All violations of WP:HARASS, of which this appears to be just a continuance. Historik75 has in contrast tried to follow WP guidelines (posting an NPOV dispute notice on the Amway article after talk failed, which RIR reverted, and then opening a dispute resolution process.) I note he appears to have been banned from WP earlier for similar types of belligerent behaviour and "ownership" of MLM related articles. Anyway, I'm not a sock and neither Plantium nor Historik75 are socks of mine.--Icerat (talk) 20:13, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I am constantly being called WP:SPA, WP:SOCK and WP:IDONTKNOWWHAT by a certain editor and this seems to be a way how to silence opponents when the arguments evaporated. As Icerat says, the editor was banned in the past and I can now understand why. I can find dozens of WP:RULES that this editor broke now (some of them being mentioned in Icerat's commentary), but I won't. I believe I don't need to because the discussion speaks for itself. But I would like you to please stop with the accusation that I seem to avoid the detection! If I remember well, I use only 2 computers and one smartphone to access Wikipedia. The 2 comps have static IP addresses and the smartphone has a dynamic IP that is assigned by mobile operator. Avoiding detection? There is no proxy between myself and Wikipedia, nothing! How can I be accused of avoiding detection? Somewhere in the discussion Plantium says that he is/was(?) in the other part of the world (don't know where but shouldn't you be able to recognize 2 places that are in the other parts of the world?). However, I still use the two static IP addresses (the first one should end with 68.114 and the second one should end with 40.4) to edit Wikipedia and perhaps only one or two times (don't know exactly) used smartphone (dynamic IP). I use smartphone mainly to access the Wikipedia when I am out, but usually do not edit as it is not comfortable. For God's sake why would I use another account to publish only 2 or 3 short comments in several pages long discussion??? Don't know how many posts he had exactly, but you can see that the number is totally insignificant. Would it be worth??? I can assure you that Plantium, myself and Icerat are three different persons. Or, more specifically, I do not use any other name here - neither Icerat, nor Plantium. On the side note: I have noticed that the one who accuses me of being an SPA started here on Wikipedia some 10 years ago as SPA editing one single article for one year and had conflicts with other users too about taking ownership of the article as Icerat states. I made my second edit here on Wikipedia and it happened to me too and I am constanly harassed by someone who is not even willing to answer my questions regarding the edit that occured based on a false argument. I am not the one who started the personal attacks and I have been trying to avoid them for the whole time. I regret to say it, but I am disgusted that such harassment to new users is tolerated here, but this certainly won't stop me from revealing my arguments in a proper discussion. But at least I now can understand why Icerat tells he became sleeper for 2 years (if I remember well). I will not comment on this anymore because I still believe that the accuracy, NPOV and BALANCE of the article/lead is what really matters here and I will certainly not allow anyone to drive me into this fight.--Historik75 (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I left my comment below so I will only comment on this one - before you make a conclusion, please read the FTC in lead, NPOV dispute and RFC: Wording of Lede Paragraph, and read the arguments of myself, Icerat, Plantium and the three opponents. I am pretty sure that your questions will carbon copy my and Icerat's questions.
 * WP:TE? WP:IDHT? Yes, of course, but definitely not on my part. You decide based on the discussion about the topic. I believe you will understand why we are now here. I am new to Wikipedia, I don't know all the rules that RIR uses to accuse me but I try to use the common sense while learning how the Wikipedia works. When somebody tries to hide the information that he knows of and has a history of negative posts over multiple MLM companies here on Wikipedia is he really not biased?--Historik75 (talk) 22:19, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * In short - just to let you know what happened - I questioned an unsourced argument upon which an edit was made (deletion of the result of FTC case while keeping the accusation). I added the FTC case back. That's all I did. Is this called POV pushing? Anyway, it got reverted. I suggested that we revert it to the original version before the first edit appeared. I was not allowed to. Put an NPOV template on the page and started Dispute resolution process. The template was removed by the user actively involved in a dispute. And I am accused of WP:DE? Something went wrong... Am I missing something?--Historik75 (talk) 23:31, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, one of the sock suspects, Platinum, went silent pretty much the instant that Historik75 found out about the sock investigation and denied any association. After trying to tip a DR vote, Platinum hasn't posted in 9 days. Highly suspect. Rhode Island Red (talk)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
I have moved this case to the name of the oldest listed account, and adjusted the list of accounts. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:23, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

- two long-idle accounts suddenly becoming active again wanting to discuss a POV in an article, plus a new third account created at the start of the dispute and which has only supported the same POV, is indeed suspicious. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:27, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * and are  related to each other, but the technical data shows signs of purposeful obfuscation (i.e. the data looks like someone trying to avoid detection). Because of this, the relation of these two accounts to  is  and will need to be evaluated based on behaviour.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots  18:14, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

This section is for clerks and admins. I have moved your comments above to the "comments by other users" section. Also, this venue is for evaluating whether any of you are violating the sockpuppetry policy by abusing multiple acccounts. Your content dispute is to be settled elsewhere, and we will not comment on it. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:51, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Is this one of the cases on which you need help? If so, you don't say what help you need. Please ping me with a reply because I don't have this page on my watchlist. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 12:51, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I had asked to elaborate on their findings on the training subpage but never received a response, then this fell off my radar. Apologies for leaving this open so long. Based on inconclusive CU and my own digging, I find that Icerat is unrelated to the other two accounts. As for Historik75 and Plantium, without elaboration I can only go by how I interpret the CU comments, and I believe that the two accounts' possible relation and editing style doesn't rise to the level of a WP:SOCK violation. Closing with no action. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:13, 3 May 2016 (UTC)