Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/J.Gowers/Archive

16 May 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

''Please list evidence below this line. Remember to sign at the end of your section with 4 tilde characters " ~ "''

In the context of a dispute over the deletion/merger of pages (see for summary) J.Gower appears to be using these as sock puppets/meat puppets. On Talk pages J.Gowers has made what appear to me to be sloppy pretenses of responding to/discussing/arguing acts of IPs (congratulating other editors for allowing material added by 195.195.166.57 ; and after J.Gowers had been chastised for attempting to delete User pages (, - mine), IP is being used as 'bad cop' and suggesting User pages should be deleted, allowing J.Gowers to play 'good cop' and say 'can't we all get along' ). At heart, different IPs are being used to repetitively restore (via cut-and-paste) content removed in merge that had been originally contributed by J.Gowers and attempted to be restored by him in the same manner (,, vs. ; and corresponding editing of redirects, e.g.  vs. , , ). Further, J.Gowers edits are comments just minutes after post by these IPs in spite of a more general pattern of only periodic editing over months. Given the timing and the way J.Gowers vandalized poll regarding recent block to reframe outcome in his favor, I think his behavior with respect to these IPs is sufficiently suspicious to merit scrutiny, as if true sockpuppetry this behavior is seriously escalating a content dispute. Of the IPs, 86.189.11.10 has only edited in this dispute, 195.195.166.57 is a known shared IP (don't know if time-linked edits by IP and J.Gowers can be teased out) - 86.161.235.143 would be stale. Agricolae (talk) 02:12, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Correction: Of the text that keeps being restored, a good bit is my own and that of Cavila, put in a Talk page, then copied verbatim into article space by two additional stale IPs, 86.176.240.143, and 91.85.187.253, that must also be considered suspect. Agricolae (talk) 21:10, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Further evidence: On being told of the SPI, User:J.Gowers responded "Someone don't have no sense of humour, now....", and the next day suspected sock 195.195.166.57 'awarded him' an Epic Barnstar, to which he again responded within 2 minutes (with 'aw shucks' false modesty  and incivility ). Agricolae (talk) 03:18, 20 May 2011 (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

 * - CU won't connect IPs to an account. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 02:26, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
 * 86.161 is stale. I've blocked 86.189 for three days. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 03:17, 20 May 2011 (UTC)