Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jeffrey Vernon Merkey/Archive

Report date September 2 2009, 00:21 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by Poindexter Propellerhead

On Aug. 26, editing anonymously (as I usually do anymore), I happened to look at the article on Jeff Merkey, which I hadn't visited in years. I was surprised to see some material which was not at all consistent with the listed citations, it tacked this wrong-looking sentence onto the end of some correctly quoted material:

"Merkey later withdrew his financial support of the Wikipedia project after reviewing evidence of diversion and mismanagement of the charities funds by Wales and the Wikimedia Board of Trustees and was immediately banned from the Wikipedia site by the Arbitration Committee for frivolous and unsubstantiated claims after he terminated the payments of $5,000.00 per year to the Wikimedia Foundation."

The edit which added this sentence was done on February 12 from the IP address 67.214.232.162, which is registered to an ISP in Provo, Utah. Its only edits are the aforementioned one to Merkey's page, and to the page on NDISwrapper - those edits refer to work done on NDISwrapper by Merkey's company, Wolf Mountain Group. I edited out the unsourced accusations against Wikipedia, and made the quote in the article consistent with the cited sources.

Today I took a look to see if the article had been tampered with, and found that my changes had been reverted by an editor logged on from 166.70.238.46. Nslookup told me it was in Utah, and traceroute told me that it was a machine that used jmerkey.fttp.xmission.com (166.70.235.16) as its proxy/gateway:

12 * * ae-4-4.car1.LasVegas1.Level3.net (4.69.133.109)  44.998 ms 13  * * * 14 * * ae-2-2.car1.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net (4.69.133.118)  33.368 ms 15  AMERICAN-FI.car1.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net (64.158.68.14)  36.522 ms  39.204 ms  42.361 ms 16  unknown.Level3.net (64.158.69.18)  40.375 ms * * 17 jmerkey.fttp.xmission.com (166.70.235.16)  2994.878 ms !H  2995.299 ms !H  2996.019 ms !H

I no longer remember how administrative stuff works around here (apologies if I filled this form out badly), and am doubtful that much can be done about ban circumvention, but figured it was my duty as an editor to say something.
 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.


 * Comments by other users


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments

-- Peter Symonds ( talk ) 21:28, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Conclusions
 * hasn't edited since April. No action taken.
 * blocked for 55 hours; block evasion.

Please leave the sockmaster untagged per deletion summary (per WP:OFFICE). MuZemike 22:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Sandstein
Jeffrey Vernon Merkey was banned for a year in 2007 at Requests for arbitration/Jeffrey Vernon Merkey; the block has since been extended to indefinite by Werdna (see User:Werdna/JVM Block). While reviewing an unblock request (see User talk:RhodiumArmpit), I came across evidence that Jeffrey Vernon Merkey might be evading his block:
 * Linuxmdb has created three articles related to Jeffrey Vernon Merkey: NetWare File System (Open Source), Timpanogas Research Group and MDB (Linux). Their other edits are in apparently related fields.
 * 71.219.59.226 has edited projectspace pages related to Jeffrey Vernon Merkey,


 * N.B. Jeffrey Vernon Merkey's ban was re-set several times due to sockpuppetry. It wasn't until Sept 2008 that his ban was extxended to indefinite by Werdna. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pfagerburg (talk • contribs) 14:12, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Pfagerburg

 * AmaTsiqua has made edits related to Jeffrey Vernon Merkey: Solera Networks (to insert references to Merkey's patents), Processor Affinity (to add claims relating to Merkey), Novell and Novell NetWare. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pfagerburg (talk • contribs) 14:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The well-known addresses 166.238.70.43 through .46 no longer tracert through a server with "jmerkey" in the domain name, so those addresses cannot be used to detect new sockpuppets. T. Canens said "use behaviour," and so I present this diff: where a policy-mandated notification of a WP:AE action is "vandalism," something that we've seen before from other Merkey sockpuppets. Pfagerburg (talk) 14:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
Requested by  Sandstein   07:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As far as I can see, JVM is . Any recent JVM socks a CU could compare Linuxmdb to? T. Canens (talk) 18:46, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

*I'm going to call this, as there appears to be no non- accounts for a checkuser to compare to. The most recent sock that I can find,, was blocked in October 2009. Use behavior. T. Canens (talk) 04:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * - Compare against . T. Canens (talk) 14:56, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ that the three listed accounts are identical. --jpgordon:==( o ) 18:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Linuxmdb blocked. Leaving IP alone for now since it hasn't been editing in a while. T. Canens (talk) 18:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Wgfinley
By his own admission this is Merkey but trying to determine if this is a proxy for setting the ban time or if any further tweaking of the IP ban is needed. WGFinley (talk) 20:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, missed a sock, need to have Novellfounder checked against the IP. Thanks.  --WGFinley (talk) 00:13, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
No checkuser needed here - according to this site, the IP is probably not a proxy and is allocated to Qwest. TN X Man 20:52, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

–MuZemike 22:03, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Did another check after some suspected socks showed up, and the following are ✅ as Merkey:



And –MuZemike 04:33, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Remainder blocked/tagged NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 04:43, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Pfagerburg
These IP's have made edits to three articles, Pediocactus, Sclerocactus, and Disocactus flagelliformis. These edits were reverted by other users, and, as edits of banned user.

The edits came to my attention after 64.230.253.50 said I was socking (without providing any evidence, I might add). Then 72.24.153.99 said the same thing. Finally, three of the IP's claimed that I was socking from 24.37.221.6, which geolocates to Canada (where I am not, and haven't been since I was in grade school). Since Merkey has stalked me before (though he got my employer wrong), he knows exactly where I live, down to the street number and name. The accusation that I'm editing from Canada therefore falls afoul of WP:AGF.

All of the IP's listed above geolocate to the Albuquerque, NM area, which is where Merkey recently self-reported his location.

These IP's are also very interested ("you have been topic banned") in an interaction ban to which I agreed after I was (IMHO) unfairly blocked for reverting this sockmaster's harassment and violation of a site ban a few months ago.

The terms of that interaction ban still permit me to report sockpuppets, which is what I'm doing. Reporting, but not reverting, no matter how ludicrous and bad-faith the accusations are. Pfagerburg (talk) 02:24, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Same geographical area, same baseless accusation. Pfagerburg (talk) 02:49, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments

 * This is quite ridiculous from both sides. indeffed as obvious sock. 24.37.221.6 blocked 48h for the same reason. T. Canens (talk) 18:12, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Most recent IP reported blocked 24 hours. T. Canens (talk) 18:15, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

17 February 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Obvious JVM sock is complaining about being trolled on ANI again. This is the diff where he really gives himself away:. I'm not sure if his complaint is wrong, but he's banned and not allowed to edit. Not sure if it's worth checking for sleepers...JVM is a long-term sockpuppeteer, but he is technologically sophisticated to an extent that makes CU pretty useless. Bobby Tables (talk) 14:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * Comment I don't think the Bisexual Orchid accout or the IP are JVM. I think it's User:Pickbothmanlol. His MO is this kind of impersonation of other banned users. Night Ranger (talk) 00:51, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * I'm not sure what's going on here. If somebody more familiar with JVM's MO could take a look at it, that would be great. Nonetheless, it's strange enough that I'm endorsing CU. NativeForeigner Talk 20:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This had already been looked at in the context of ANI. Based on CU data, Bisexual Orchid has no relation to any other currently active accounts. The IPs in particular are not related, but are already rangeblocked for a short while due to multiple account abuse. Amalthea  11:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If this went through ANI and no blocks were handed out, I'm going to let it go for now. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 22:07, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

27 November 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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

IP appeared today; only edits are blanking an obscure subpage of User:Jeffrey Vernon Merkey with a comment containing "right to vanish" and then requesting deletion of the same page at AN/I. IP geolocates to the same area as previously confirmed IPs. CU not requested, would be stale. Ivanvector (talk) 19:31, 27 November 2014 (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

 * Nick has deleted the page as a courtesy, so I don't think the user will return. While the IP edits clearly establish a connection, I don't think a block 2 weeks later will serve any purpose. Mike V  •  Talk  04:13, 10 December 2014 (UTC)