Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jnyssen/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Created articles about massacres with the same template, see overlap , timecards , large edit summary overlap, and COI creation of Jan Nyssen. Related discussion about Rastakwere at. Ping me for further analysis notes and off-wiki evidence. MarioGom (talk) 13:27, 23 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Since I was asked to provide further analysis, I'm posting the on-wiki part here:


 * added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * added one (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * added photo (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * addition (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * administrative reorganisation (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * augmented (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * better photo (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * better reference (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * categories (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * categories added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * category added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * changed to disambiguation page (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * correction (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * dab (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * disambiguated (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * edited (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * edits (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Ethiopia (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * expanded (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * figure moved (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * further developed (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * gilgel abay (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * History (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * history (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Humera massacres (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * hyperlink (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * illustration (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * infobox (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * infobox added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * keep (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * language editing (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * link (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Link (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * link improved (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * linked (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Links (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * map (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * market day (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Milakua massacre (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * name in Tigrinya (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * naming (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * new category (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * new disambiguation page (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * new page (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * new redirect (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * new section (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * one added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * page created (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * page creation (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * photo (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * photo added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * redirect (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * reference (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * reference added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * reference improved (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * references (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * references added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * reorganised (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * restructured (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * reworded (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * rewording (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * rewritten (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * see also (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * shortened (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * small edits (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * template added (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * timeline (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Typo (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * typo (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * typos (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Typos (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * update (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * updated (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * upgraded (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * Wildlife (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)
 * woreda reorganisation (Rastakwere/, Jnyssen/)


 * The off-wiki part is trivial, and now probably redundant given Platonk's comments based on on-wiki data. MarioGom (talk) 19:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

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


 * By Platonk

My digging into edit histories have led me to the conclusion that either users Jnyssen and Rastakwere are the same person, or they sit elbow-to-elbow in the same office (meatpuppet), and that both of the users have been engaged in refspam and COI on the same topic and in the same manner.

In June 2019, Jnyssen was cautioned on his talk page about COI and refspam. A quick look around that time found dozens of edits by Jnyssen adding a link to the purchase webpage for a book authored by a Jan Nyssen; now refspammed into 188 Wikipedia articles. I found numerous other citations added by Jnyssen that point to papers by the same author.

Checking Rastakwere's early edit history, his first edit was the creation of an article. Within the first 72 hours Rastakwere had created 5 articles and edited 6 other articles — in each of those 11 edits he added a citation to a publication with "J Nyssen" as one of the authors but which was disguised by using the generic phrase "and colleagues" after another author's name.

Rastakwere created the page Jan Nyssen. The first version of the CV-like article was extraordinarily detailed with 58 citations and 8 images — 4 of which had been uploaded by Jnyssen to Wikimedia. But Jnyssen has not edited that article.

Recently, there have been numerous arguments amongst editors about Rastakwere's edits on the Tigray conflict subject and they revolve around reliable source issues. One of the predominant citations used by Rastakwere in the creation of around 100 Wikipedia articles (with the word 'massacre' in the title) was a multi-author document uploaded to ResearchGate (thus self-published) which included the author Jan Nyssen and called colloquially "the Atlas". There are now 243 articles containing "nyssen, j" (a form seen in citations). Rastakwere defended his use of the Atlas citation in a recent AfD, and an earlier one.

Noting that Jnyssen stopped editing in English Wikipedia on 1 August 2021, but that he continued to upload images to Wikimedia for 12 more days, I randomly picked one ( uploaded on 6 August), saw that it was used in a single article (Wurgessa), checked the edit history and saw that Rastakwere had started editing that article on 5 August, the next previous edit having been made by Jnyssen two years prior, and on 6 August Rastakwere added the image to the Wurgesa article an hour after it had been uploaded by the other editor.

And lastly, the smoking gun. The had been uploaded just 4 minutes before Rastakwere added that same image to a Wikipedia article.

As closing summary, both editors have refspammed Wikipedia with hundreds of instances of citations relating to the same author.

— Platonk (talk) 05:26, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Lest anyone think that some of the refspam/COI was done 'honestly' (naïve about the rules), I point to the disengenuous way in which editor Jnyssen created/constructed the article Soil in Tanqwa Abergele. The entirety of the article was written two years ago by Jnyssen. There are 11 citations, the first 7 are co-authored by "Jan Nyssen" or "J Nyssen". However, the editor Jnyssen omitted the author names on the two articles in which "Jan Nyssen" is the lead author, and typed someone else "and colleagues" for the other 5. Citation Bot later filled in the two missing "Jan Nyssen" names. (The other 4 citations either cite Jan Nyssen or one of Jan Nyssen's works cited theirs.) If editor Jnyssen wasn't aware of Wikipedia policies about COI, then he wouldn't have tried to conceal those author names. This is just one of several similar concealments that I have found; but this was by far the most glaring, and deserved mention. I wasn't even looking for this stuff; it just fell in my lap when I was editing Tanqua Millash, a recent Rastakwere creation, to fix a duplicate citation to a government document. In my opinion, it is egregious to knowingly continue to edit this way for two more years following what I'm certain was full awareness of our COI policies. Platonk (talk) 10:41, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Users Rastakwere and Jnyssen have similar writing styles. On its own, this is only circumstantial, since this is a qualitative judgement.
 * By Boud

Jnyssen had to be warned several times, e.g. on, , , , , and , about copyright violation. Rastakwere also had to be warned several times, on, , and about copyright violations. On its own, this is only circumstantial evidence, since it only shows that both seem to have misunderstood or ignored how seriously Wikipedia takes copyright. The fraction of new editors in this situation is not that small.

Several of the points by MarioGom and most of the points by Platonk refer to editing events that seem quite unlikely to occur as coincidences. The "smoking gun" incident, on its own, could be a coincidence, like most of the events could be individually.

However, all of the coincidences taken together make it very likely that the two "are the same person, or they sit elbow-to-elbow in the same office", as Platonk said. If they are two people sitting elbow-to-elbow in the same office, then there's still a very strong COI.

Rastakwere has made 1000 edits since 22 August 2021, making about a dozen edits almost every day except 1 November, but since, just before the filing of this SPI, has done no editing. The Defending yourself guideline states "If there is a good reason for the evidence provided, point it out in your own section." I cannot predict how others will react, but a statement made here by (allusion to rastaquouère?) could make life simpler for everyone rather than dragging this out. Boud (talk) 18:18, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I think you people do not understand how bad the situation is in Tigray, and how poorly it is known to the outside world. This is not a matter of personal or departmental self promotion, this is (or has been) an attempt to make the situation known to the outside world. Facts reported in different databases on massacres are only the tip of the iceberg. This is the main message I wish to share with you; and sorry if working speedy and with self-constructed templates has led to shortcutting some of the Wikipedia rules. Rastakwere (talk) 10:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The largest humanitarian crisis in the world, since a decade
 * Thank you for your statement. However, the first Rastakwere edit, 14 months before the start of the hot phase of the Tigray War (3–4 Nov 2020) and the associated genocide. The sockpuppetry started before the armed conflict and genocide. Boud (talk) 21:58, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Blocked, tagged, closing. Bbb23 (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2021 (UTC)