Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/James dalton bell/Archive

03 September 2013

 * Suspected sockpuppets


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Admits to it here. "The fact that I am not 'yet' notable for the patent doesn't change a thing." Note sockpuppeteer is banned.  Neil N   talk to me  19:45, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

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

I would also note that the IP has a fairly similar style to Bell's self-named account. Argumentative, prone to personal attacks and declarations of conspiracies and cabals against him. I'll freely admit my first few responses to the IP were a bit snarky as I was a bit taken aback at the tone of their initial posts but they continued in that vein regardless of you respond to them. I think that even without the self-declaration the behavior is enough to match. Not listed here is User:Pro2rat who I don't believe is a sock but almost certainly a meatpuppet of Bell. Some internet searches find some conversations between them. NeilN has warned Pro2rat and for now I think that's enough. Ravensfire ( talk ) 20:09, 3 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment to Bbb23: I was involved with Bell's last go-round here and he certainly did use sockpuppet IP's . He was indef blocked because of this and other ANI threads. Per WP:INDEF, "In particularly serious cases where no administrator would be willing to lift the block, the user is effectively banned by the community." -- Neil N    talk to me  00:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * I am very puzzled by the history of Bell. If you look at Bell's block log, he was never blocked for sock puppetry. As far as I know, this is the first official report on Bell. Tagging Bell as a sock puppeteer was done by User:Daedalus969, who is not an admin and had no obvious authority to add the tag. Plus, there are many both suspected and "confirmed" puppets of Bell, and at least the ones I looked at were also tagged by the same user. There are many, many IPs that are tagged, and they geolocate to a lot of different places. I haven't, of course, looked at the history of each, but it certainly looks unusual. Finally, Bell has never been banned. The one thing I do see is the reported IP's assertion that he is Bell. Assuming we take that at face value (I certainly wouldn't endorse a CU), I suppose we could block him for block evasion, but I'm pondering how to fix all the history so it doesn't document things that aren't accurate.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:30, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Neil, none of what you've said (I appreciate the link to the discussion) changes the fact that the tagging history is wrong. As for the alleged de facto ban, that is historically a contentious issue. I have blocked the IP for block evasion. I'll try to fix the history when I have a bit more time.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:08, 4 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I have corrected all the tags. Bbb23 (talk) 14:57, 5 September 2013 (UTC)