Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jissen/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Background
A large number of suspected sockpuppets have edited the article Ghil'ad Zuckermann and articles related thereto.

The main article in question, Ghil'ad Zuckermann, was created in 2004 by an Israeli IP and subsequently edited by a number of Australian IP users. These are the places where the person in question is based (Israel and Australia), thus I suspect WP:COI as we will see. On 24 August 2008, the article was nominated for deletion by with the result Delete. During the discussion, signed as ”Daniel” vouched for Keep and WP:COI was pointed out by Crieff:

"I don't know your real identity, but your IP address is in Brisbane, Australia, where Zuckermann holds his ARC fellowship, you appear reasonably familiar with Zuckermann's life and work, and you seem especially motivated to preserve his Wikipedia entry. If you are identical to or personally know Zuckermann, then please take a look at these guidelines."

58.174.100.83/”Daniel” responds:

"Crieff, Brisbane is much bigger than you think, it has several million people and three major universities. It's very simple: I went to a public lecture given by the Subject, was extremely impressed by his originality and genius, googled him and read many of his publications (unfortuantely, I'm not familiar with all the languages he writes in). Does this mean that there is a conflict of interest? If it does, then I am off, no problem[…]"

Later in the discussion, the account, who is a ”professor of linguistics” (user page) is created in order to participate in the discussion. Note that made a few contributions on constrained poetry, for instance this edit which also relate to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, making WP:COI very likely. After the article was deleted by in late 2008, the decision was disputed by the same user on Stifle's user page. Before the article is deleted, makes some edits to the main article, a user who like Jissen also had made edits on constrained poetry, see diff. Since Jissen is the oldest registered account, it is considered the ”main” account here, even though it is not an active account.

Recreation of article
Three years later, on 5 Februari 2011,, ”an Australian student of linguistics”, recreates the article after a discussion.

Up until the time of writing, i.e. for 10 years, registered users have been improving on this article, and many other articles on matters related to Zuckermann, creating pages on his books (Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew and Revivalistics), and adding references to Zuckermann’s work on various topics on linguistics. I argue this is against at least two rules, for instance:


 * Avoiding scrutiny: Using alternative accounts that are not fully and openly disclosed to split your editing history means that other editors may not be able to detect patterns in your contributions.

While there is some temporal overlap between the accounts above, they have mostly been active during different periods and keep to different articles for the most part.


 * Contributing to the same page or discussion with multiple accounts

Many of the sockpuppets have in some way edited the main page (Ghil'ad Zuckermann). See the following edits: Pindaris, Aborig, Etymyth000, SuzieMillen, SAOTY, CéliaRemaut, LingvaF, ElenaCobb, Californiarockss, Mazaricuu

Further evidence from English Wikipedia
I will now describe the edits made by the different accounts, and why I believe they are intimately linked. First I point your attention to three things:
 * The obvious similarity between many of the usernames, many following the formula . Many other have a linguistic connection ”LingvaF”, ”Etymyth” (etymology) or ”Aborig” (from Aboriginal language/studies, a field of Zuckermann’s.)


 * The removal of Conflict of Interest templates (also using similar language, cf below).
 * “removed old templates as the issues they raised have been resolved and adequately addressed (by others)” (CéliaRemaut edit)
 * “removed template as the issue it raised has been fully addressed by several contributors” (SAOTY edit)


 * The similar style in how many edits are constructed:
 * Many edits start with e.g. ”According to GZ” etc.
 * ”Ghil’ad Zuckermann proposes” (Etymyth000 edit)
 * ”Ghil’ad Zuckermann describes” (SuzieMillen edit)
 * ”According to Ghil’ad Zuckermann” (LeonidaBishop1 edit
 * ”According to Ghil’ad Zuckermann” (SuzieMillen edit)
 * ”Ghil’ad Zuckermann proposed” (ElenaCobb edit))
 * ”Ghil’ad Zuckermann proposes” (Californiarockss edit)
 * ”As put by Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann” (SAOTY edit)
 * The similarity in how many sources are cited, for example:
 * The use of ”(See) p. xx”
 * Californiarockss edit
 * AshleeCrane edit
 * ElenaCobb edit
 * LeonidaBishop1 edit)
 * SAOTY edit
 * The use of e.g.  +, e.g.
 * Dellankss edit
 * SuzieMillen edit,

I will describe the accounts in chronological order from first edit, and the examples come from larger edits, leaving out the IP’s and the first three registered users, Jissen, Pindaris and Aborig who already have been mentioned above:


 * has added some references to Zuckermann's books in a number of articles, e.g. Creatio ex nihilo (diff), Neologism (diff), False etymology (diff) and Rhyming slang (diff)


 * created the article on Zuckermann's book Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, uploaded its cover, and have added Zuckermann's views to a few articles referencing the book, including Dictionary (diff) and Lexicon (diff). When asked about WP:COI on their talk page, the user said: ”I am a language teacher interested in lexicography. I read the book carefully and am impressed by it.”


 * has made some larger edits to the main article, including one removing the COI template (diff). This account has also made edits on Australian-related subjects, for instance on indigenous Australians (diff).


 * have created the article on Zuckermann's book Revivalistics, uploaded its cover File:Revivalistics FrontCover.jpg, and made several edits to add references to this book, for instance in: Translation (diff), Dynamic and formal equivalence (diff), Cognitive effects of multilingualism (diff). The user has also created the article on Native Tongue Title, a term Zuckermann coined, and made several edits on Jewish and Australian topics. On their user page, asked about WP:COI to which they replied: I met Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann 5 years ago. I listened to a lecture he delivered in Sydney. No connection or relation. I am currently reading and re-reading his new book “Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond (Oxford University Press), which is impressive.” Note the similar story to ”Daniel” who also went to one of his lectures and was impressed, and to  above who also read his book, was ”impressed”, created the article on the book and uploaded its cover.


 * has mostly made category edits about grants and awards that Zuckermann has received, for instance this edit.


 * has almost exclusively written about Adelaide Language Festival, which Zuckermann founded, but also adding Zuckermann's name to e.g. the Adelaide Festival of Ideas (diff) or adding Zuckermann (among others) to University of Adelaide (diff).


 * has made some large edits to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, for instance adding references to Zuckermann and his ”filmography” (in practice a list of links to various interviews with him), see diff. The user has also added references to Zuckermann's views in articles such as Endangered language (diff) and Heritage language (diff), or Linguistic rights (diff)


 * has made some larger edits adding references to Zuckermann's work, e.g. in Simile (diff), Vietnamese (diff), Rhyming slang (diff) and Periphrasis (diff)


 * have made a couple of larger edits adding Zuckermann as a reference, for instance introducing Zuckermann's coinage ”snobbative” in the article Snob (diff), in Stolen generations (diff), in Mondegreen (diff), in Swahili language (diff), in Back-formation (diff), in Conversation analysis (diff), and many more.


 * has made some large edits referencing Zuckermann, for instance, creating the article Polarity of gender, and editing Antanaclasis (diff), Metonomy (diff), Metaphor (diff), Paraprosdokian (diff), Indo-European ablaut (diff), Apophony (diff), Niqqud (diff), and Transfix (diff). Also notice this edit to article about fellow Oxford graduate Mads Andenæs adding yet another coinage of Zuckermann's. The same edit was made to Christopher de Hamel (diff)


 * has made large edits to Zuckermann's book Revivalistics (a term he coined) adding positive reviews of the book (diff) as well as edits to the main article (diff).

Edits outside English Wikipedia
I will now refer to edits made outside of English Wikipedia. While it is not relevant to en.wp per se, it is necessary for two reasons: (1) It provides extra evidence to the investigation on en.wp, (2) Some of the accounts on en.wp have made edits in other languages. However, I have only listed the accounts relevant to en.wp above, but I will now discuss some additional accounts outside of en.wp.

The article about Zuckermann is available in 103 languages which is a lot for a linguist. The only other living linguist with more international Wikipedia presence is probably Noam Chomsky. The reason for this is that there are a number of accounts who make multilingual edits about Ghil’ad Zuckermann on multiple versions of Wikipedia. These type of edits include:


 * asking for Zuckermann’s article to be created (common for older accounts)
 * creating Zuckermann’s article
 * adding references to Zuckermann’s work, either just to his books and articles in the bibliography, but often especially information on his views, e.g.
 * that Zuckermann thinks Hebrew should be called ”Israeli”
 * information on things he has written about such as phono-semantic matching, language revitalization, compound verbs, periphrasis etc.
 * adding Zuckermann to various lists, for instance:
 * famous polyglots, famous linguists, people in Adelaide, people from Israel, Oxford alumni, people born in 1971, people born on June 1, etc.

I was unable to insert a table, but I have summed up all international sockpuppets I have been able to find in a table here. Feel free to move the tables to a subpage of this investigation.

As you can see, some of them overlap with English Wikipedia and have been mentioned before. Some of them have edited the article on Zuckermann in over 30 languages, one in over 90.

Connections to other sockpuppet accounts
Similar sockpuppet accounts appear to have edited the pages of certain other biographical articles. I will give a single example for the sake of brevity: The article Maurizio Giuliano has previously been the focus of another sockpuppet investigation. The reporter notes that “[Maurizio Giuliano] may possibly be an article about the contributor himself. It seems central in the contributions... ”.

Of the suspected sockpuppets in the aforementioned report, the following have also edited the page about Ghil’ad Zuckermann, usually in a manner similar to the sockpuppet accounts reported further above:


 * – diff example
 * – diff example
 * – diff example

The list of sockpuppet accounts mentioned in the Maurizio Giuliano report above could be extended to a number of other accounts which have similar names but have been created in order to edit the article on Giuliano in other languages, or to add references etc. on English Wikipedia. Note also the similar names to many of the sockpuppets in this investigation.

These additional accounts can be found in a table here.

As shown above, it seems very likely that many of these accounts are intimately linked in some way, either being sockpuppets of the same user or a small number of users. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 15:27, 29 March 2021 (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

 * Closing without action. Everything here is inactive and stale. Feel free to re-file should activity start again from these accounts/IPs, but right now nothing is meaningfully actionable. The SandDoctor  Talk 16:25, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
 * What action do you suggest on a global scale? Activity is present for many of the accounts, especially if you look outside of en.wp. See for instance AshleeCrane, Banjol, Jrfepp, Mazaricuu, Zuzka Bartik, all with activity from the last 6 months, and this was just from a quick look at some of the more active global accounts. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 09:58, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
 * If the accounts don’t edit here, there is nothing we can really do and enwiki SPI isn’t the correct venue. On a global scale, global locks (for accounts) or global blocks (for IPs) are the global recourse. They are requested on meta at SRG and are auctioned by stewards. — The SandDoctor Talk 16:05, 26 April 2021 (UTC)