Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jassy pal/Archive

20 February 2016

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.
 * Editor interaction utility

"Jessy pal" has disclosed to be performing paid editing for Vitis PR on behalf of High-Tech Bridge (diff to disclosure). "Mikdunne" and "Bsdpuffy" have been performing promotional edits for High-Tech Bridge. Are there any more accounts operated by Vitis PR/High-Tech Bridge? —Ruud 22:08, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I now also see there has been previous discussion on this: Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 95. —Ruud 22:24, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I want to know if there are any other accounts besides the three I blocked already (because paid editing by a PR firm). —Ruud 17:58, 23 February 2016 (UTC)


 * The Mikdunne account belongs to another PR firm. As they have not not disclosed their COI themselves yet, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to give more details on-wiki. I'm not sure if the Bsdpuffy account belongs to one of these two firms or to a third. High-Tech Bridge has thus hired at least two PR firms to do paid editing. The Jassy pal account has done paid editing work for several more companies. These are all the details I'm aware of at the moment. —Ruud 21:03, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * You've blocked all three of these accounts already. Did you mean to request CheckUser, or do you suspect other accounts? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 17:46, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Normally in order to do that you would have to request a CheckUser run on these accounts (set the first parameter in SPI case status to "CU" above) so that someone with the permission can run the check. Respectfully, in this case I'm inclined to preemptively decline. The only apparent link between these three accounts is that they have made promotional edits to a certain article, but the pattern of edits doesn't match at all. Jassy pal made 38 edits to High-Tech Bridge over 2 years, while Bsdpuffy made 58 edits to it over the span of a few hours, and Mikdunne made only 3 edits total over a bit more than a year. I'm going to put this on hold for now; can you show any diffs of how their edits are similar? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * You're right, you shouldn't share that info here if they haven't disclosed. I sympathize, but we do need to have evidence of likely abuse of the sockpuppetry policy in order to run CU. I don't see any pattern of sockpuppetry at High-Tech Bridge nor at any of the intersecting articles that these users have edited, and I don't see any indication that any of these accounts are connected to a user known to create socks, nor to each other really. If any of the accounts that you've now blocked come back and exhibit the same pattern again, then a check would be warranted, but I don't know of any precedent for running CU on accounts that violate the COI policy. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 02:19, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Self-endorsed by clerk. I see a pattern of promotional/paid editing in the contributions of all three accounts, they also seem to have had a habit of intersecting with other editors with a similar pattern, so there might be more to this than what first meets the eye. The editor interaction utility shows that all three of them have edited High-Tech Bridge, a highly promotional article, with Jassy pal first maintaining the article for more than two years, and Bsdpuffy then making a major rewrite of the article, and making it even more promotional than before. I have also added an account that was created after the accounts mentioned in this report were blocked, and almost immediately started editing Ransomware, an article that both Jassypal and Bsdpuffy had edited not long before that, adding material similar to what Jassypal had added. Thomas.W talk 16:26, 8 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The four accounts are ❌. Whether they are related in some other way depends on what you think is going on behaviorally. Paid editing? Promoting just one thing? Two are editing from one country on one continent, and a third is editing from another country on the same continent. The last is editing from a second continent.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:04, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Closing with no action, based on CU results. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:45, 21 March 2016 (UTC)