Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jobas/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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

Doug Weller talk 13:08, 30 May 2017 (UTC)


 * User:Jobas1 also blocked as an alternative account, see . Doug Weller  talk 18:02, 13 August 2018 (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
✅ Note that there has been considerable socking through IP addresses also. . Doug Weller  talk 13:08, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

After the sock puppet, Eliko007, was discovered and blocked, the user returned again with another sock puppet to make the same edits in the article Growth of religion , as there are similarities in the topics of the articles edited by the two users. Also, the user was using the sock puppets to support his views. The good man 232 (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * This is a pretty good joke. I'm one of the original editors still around from when the RPR project was just kicking off. My topic range has always been history, medicine, men's rights and religion articles with some other stuff in the mix. Anyways, go ahead and checkuser me. It will be entertaining more than anything. Call my office any time at 313-334-4887 if you need to talk. I have never used account Eliko007. desmay (talk) 13:27, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Desmay has been editing Growth of religion and related topic articles since 2017. Elizium23 (talk) 13:52, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You'll see entries on my Talk page going back to 2004. I've been here that long, and am not hard to find. ;-) desmay (talk) 17:05, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You need more evidence than making the same edit (usually a lot more) when linking two years-old accounts. But no, I don't think there's any chance Desmay is Jobas (among other things, socks don't usually [indirectly] identify themselves on their user pages). They just share a POV. Eliko, on the other hand, is unsurprising. Looks like he racked up a few thousand edits. Wonder if anyone has gone through and applied WP:SOCKSTRIKE and WP:G5 yet. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 16:51, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * The master and the blocked sock in 2017 are too for data to be pulled. This will need a behavioral investigation...  ~Oshwah~  (talk)  (contribs)   23:35, 1 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The extensive overlap in pages edited got me interested enough to dig some more. And once I did, I didn't see anything that made me think socking.  Closing. -- RoySmith (talk) 04:53, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

This looks exactly like Jobas, who is well known for using multiple sock accounts. Exactly the same methodology, reasoning and speed of edits. Exactly the same religious agenda, deleting any reference to atheist from secular pages and atheists. Please can someone do a check and if confirmed ban. Mramoeba (talk) 15:18, 26 February 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

 * Checkuser cannot be used to confirm accounts to IP addresses. Only accounts to accounts. Declining CU...  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   15:49, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Please add at least one diff from both the IP and Jobas or a Jobas sockpuppet so we can better determine whether sockpuppetry is at play, because it's a little hard to tell without this context. Sro23 (talk) 00:34, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * - Moving this to More Info, and reminding that without diffs, this can't make any progress. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:01, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Required additional information has not been supplied, closing. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:08, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Same basic editing pattern as previous socks. Multiple previous accounts are globally locked. See also. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 22:04, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

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

I have no connection with the named user. If you need to investigate to confirm this, feel free. Regards.--عبد المسيح (talk) 17:45, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Sorry if I'm missing something, but I don't immediately see the pattern – there's very little overlap with the archive, and the ticket doesn't contain any additional evidence either. Could you specify the pattern you're seeing? Best,  --Blablubbs&#124;talk 22:24, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I should have marked it as procedural per the linked ticket. If you don't think it matches, that's fine. I was merely doing this as a courtesy. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 22:29, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll follow up on OTRS. :) --Blablubbs&#124;talk 22:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Thanks! ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 00:00, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Just noting that I plan to close this if there's no follow-up by 4 June. --Blablubbs&#124;talk 18:18, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Closing without action and without prejudice against a new filing per my response in 2021052510012114 --Blablubbs&#124;talk 18:37, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

The type of edits and religious agenda are very similar between the IP addresses and the previously banned sock puppet, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Tow of these IP addresses was used in an edit warring here and here in order to make other users violate three revents rule first, as for the other one, it was used to delete texts for no apparent reason, and the last two was used to add texts with sources, even though these sources did not support or mention the text, and this was the sock puppet, Eliko007, doing the same. Also, All IP addresses share the same geolocate and ISP, and these geolocations and ISPs are almost identical of an IP address for Jobas has been prevented before, and Jobas was using that IP address 14 years ago with the same religious agenda here and here. Averroes 22 (talk) 22:34, 14 July 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

 * . Checkusers cannot confirm accounts to IP addresses. They can only confirm accounts to other accounts.  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   23:25, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Then perhaps the default template that people fill out to make these reports should omit the option to include IP addresses in the report, if they are going to be disregarded anyway. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:55, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * @Anachronist, we don't disregard IP addresses entirely at SPI (and often make behavioural blocks), we just can't use CU to publicly confirm them to named accounts. -- Blablubbs (talk) 18:32, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Most of the IPs are long stale, it's not clear what the socking issue is, and the filer is currently serving a 2-week block for harassment. Closing. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:36, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
I got a tip via email that these two accounts may be Jobas. While the evidence tying them to Jobas was weak, things such as made it clear to me that the two accounts may be connected. So, I ran a check. This is documenting my results. Guerillero Parlez Moi 21:15, 17 May 2022 (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
I have CU blocked both accounts, and I will wait for a clerk to look it over before tagging. -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 21:21, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
 * and are ✅ socks of each other
 * The two accounts are Jobas socks due to the lack of recent data to compare them to. Someone who knows the master better might be able to parse the behavioral better than I can.
 * I think there is enough here looking over this again -- Guerillero  Parlez Moi 20:06, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
I consulted with by email (and partially here) and we agreed that it is worthwhile to open this sockpuppet investigation. In early December 2022, I also consulted with by email about the same matter.

Between October and December 2022 there was a lengthy and exhausting discussion with the user Foorgood at RSN. The discussion, and later RfC, at RSN was about ARDA/WCD/WRD. On 3 December, Foorgood was banned for disruptive POV-pushing on other talk pages and against other users. I have strong suspicion that the Foorgood account was a member of an extensive network of sockpuppets or meatpuppets with a precise COI.

The Foorgood account was one amongst others (also banned; e.g. Groznia, see my last message on their talk page) which were recently engaged in a seemingly concerted wave of ARDA et al.-pushing across Wikipedia.

As you can see, the Foorgood account was started in February 2021 and since its beginnings it edited articles pertaining to Christianity and atheism. This connects it to another group of accounts which have been repeatedly spamming certain sources and the related views on such topics across Wikipedia, namely the accounts revolving around the globally banned user Jobas.

On 30 November, the account going by the Arabic nickname عبد المسيح voted at the RSN RfC siding with Foorgood's argument. This account is a generally inactive one, and before the 30 November vote it had been inactive for about two weeks, and thenceforth it became inactive again. In May 2021, this account was suspected to be Jobas, although it was never checked.

As I wrote to Doug Weller here, however, I am quite certain that Jobas' main new account is Kfager1. The editing patterns and pool of interests are the same (Christianity and atheism). Clear evidence is that Jobas used bots to make tiny identical edits to different articles through which he hid his major (controversial) edits, and Kfager1 seems to be doing the same.

In this set of diffs dating between 16 and 25 October 2022, you can see Kfager1, عبد المسيح and Groznia who edited the same article on the same days, within a few hours of each other, often adding the same dubious sources (ARDA et al.) later discussed at RSN.

There is further evidence, including peculiar expressions used and grammatical errors made by both Jobas and his sockpuppets, and a list of IPs, which I will share by email with the CU operator. Æo (talk) 17:16, 7 January 2023 (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

 * - -- RoySmith (talk) 23:35, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Kfager1 is ✅. The other two appear to be ❌. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:48, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I have sent you an email with further behavioural and IP possible evidence. I suggest to archive it for any future case, if possible. Æo (talk) 23:53, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Riopex, Ebasti and SonoCat are characterised by editing style, added contents, pools of interests and bias — pro-Christianity, anti-atheism/agnosticism, anti-Islam; frequently focusing on religion demographics and adding religion to biographies —, which might be identified with those of either Jobas' or Rajputbhatti's sockpuppet/meatpuppet networks. Therefore, I suggest a comparison of these accounts with those listed in the foregoing SPIs of both networks. I suspect there might be overlaps between these two networks.


 * Riopex and Ebasti
 * Here and here, Riopex and Ebasti were editing the same article.
 * More in detail, here Riopex claimed to have "trimmed unnecessary material" from the lead; the information was about Islam and seemed to be referenced and relevant (although the sources and the prose were not excellent).
 * Here, they were editing another article together, in the same hours.
 * Here, here & here, they were yet again editing another article together, in the same hours.
 * Here, Riopex and Ebasti were supporting each other in a discussion.
 * Here, you can see that Ebasti made unexplained deletions and alterations of sourced contents, and swapped academic sources with newspaper articles.
 * This was followed, just a few minutes later, by amendments made by Riopex. Especially see this one. The same pattern (one of the accounts makes a substantial change, the other one makes amendments shortly afterwards) went on on 5, 6 and 15 February in the same article. The edits clearly pushed an anti-Islamic narrative.
 * Here, in a long series of edits from late 2022 to early 2023, you can see the same pattern of alternating edits by Riopex and Ebasti, and the similarity of their edits with those that Kfager1 (confirmed Jobas sockpuppet) and Reltus (confirmed Rajputbhatti sockpuppet) had been making to the same page (though disputed and reverted by ).
 * Among these edits, here you can see that Ebasti restored a statistic from an unreliable source which was disputed and reverted by Gheghji, and questioned by myself in a previous discussion on an unrelated talk page (in which I also raised the ongoing problem represented by these sockpuppet networks to the attention of, the administrator who first blocked Jobas on the English Wikipedia). The source was originally added to the article by Kfager1 (Jobas) — see here — removed by Gheghji, and re-added by Reltus (Rajputbhatti) — see here.
 * The very same source was reintroduced in another article, here.
 * Here you can see that Riopex reproduced the same changes previously made here by Boldex (another Rajputbhatti sockpuppet) and reverted by.


 * SonoCat
 * Here, SonoCat made some controversial edits to the article on Islam, adding some questionable sources including The Sum of All Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought and "No God in Common": American Evangelical Discourse on Islam after 9/11, which deal with either past Christian theological views on Islam or some modern Evangelical commentators. The books are likely written from an academic perspective, while they are used to support the following cursory sentence, "modern religious and secular criticism of Islam has concerned Muhammad's sincerity in claiming to be a prophet, his morality, his marriages, his ownership of slaves, his treatment of his enemies, his handling of doctrinal matters and his psychological condition", without reference to any precise page. This type of hasty additions, seemingly based on good sources but not expressing what the sources themselves actually say, were typical of Jobas.
 * Here, SonoCat continued to edit an article just a few days after Kfager1 (Jobas) had left off, alternated by the following IPs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
 * Their edits here also seem consistent with those of the Jobas sockpuppet network.

Jobas' accounts have often been warned for copy-pasting content without attribution from one article to another. See the warnings on their talk pages: here and here. Riopex and SonoCat seem to engage in the same practice, judging by the warnings on their talk pages here and here.
 * Further behavioural evidence

, or any other check-user who will deal with this case: In addition to comparing the listed accounts with Jobas' and Rajputbhatti's sockpuppets, I suggest to do a search of other possible accounts used by the IPs, since I suspect there are many more. Apart from the few IPs listed hereabove, I already sent to RoySmith an email with various other IPs certainly associated with Jobas. I may list them here, too, if needed. Moreover, as I already discussed here with Doug Weller, the editing of these accounts has been so extensive, deep, enduring and accumulating over the years that the articles which have been their target, mainly "Christianity", "Christian population growth", "growth of religion", "Christians", "Christianity by country", "decline of Christianity" — which they have been obsessively filling with intricate networks of unreliable statistics —, but also the corresponding articles on Islam — which they have often filled with anti-Islamic bias —, should be at least purged from what they have added. However, they are so compromised, given that hardly anyone will ever be able to consult those intricate networks of sources cited haphazardly (and many of which are unreliable), that some of them could be deleted or merged as WP:UNENCYC, WP:CFORK, and WP:JUNK.--Æo (talk) 00:32, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Further commentary


 * @Æo I'm less active at SPI than I used to be, so I may have to leave this to somebody else to work on. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:35, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Alright, if the check-user who will work on this case needs the list of IPs, I will list them here or send them by email upon request. Æo (talk) 00:41, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Also compare with the following IPs, which were certainly Jobas: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.--Æo (talk) 13:11, 19 February 2023 (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

 * - Riopex is probably Rajputbhatti . Given signup dates, some edit summaries, tags, etc, I think SonoCat and Ebasti could be Rajputbhatti, but they are a harder call. MarioGom (talk) 12:34, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * - -- RoySmith (talk) 19:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * and are ✅ to Sockpuppet investigations/Rajputbhatti.   is a bit more complicated.  They are ✅ to, who in 07 January 2023 I said was confirmed to Jobas.  The problem is, looking at the data that's available today, I'm not sure that my previous finding was correct.  I suspect some of the data that was available at the time was more telling, but I don't have it now, so I'm not 100% sure. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:34, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * - Please move Ebasti and Riopex to Sockpuppet investigations/Rajputbhatti. I'll block all these accounts, but leave the tagging to you. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:36, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * . Pro forma filing for Riopex and Ebasti: . Global lock for SonoCat is already requested. Closing. MarioGom (talk) 21:53, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
I believe that Durziil89 and Derek-airtken are sockpuppets of Jobas. The edited topics are the same as those edited by Jobas and his previous sockpuppets, namely general Western culture, other Western and non-Western particular cultures, ethnicities and religions, always with pro-Christianity and anti-Islam points of view. These new accounts add or re-add the same information with the same sources that were added and used by Jobas and his sockpuppets, and the editing styles are also the same.

Please consider:


 * Edits 1, 2, and 3 by Derek-airtken; 1, 2, and 3 by Durziil89; and compare them with edits by Jobas' confirmed sockpuppets: 1 by Hugitt, 2 by SonoCat, and 3 by Kfager1+SonoCat.


 * Edit summaries are almost identical. For example, like previous sockpuppets of Jobas, both Durziil89 and Derek-airtken copy-paste content here and there from one article to another. In doing this, Jobas' sockpuppets Marsharbt and Kfager1 wrote edit summaries like this and this, and Durziil89 uses the exact same wording, this.


 * As with previous sockpuppets of Jobas, Derek-airtken's copy-pasting is often without attribution: see this warning on his talk page, and compare it with this one on the talk page of Jobas' sockpuppet Kfager1. Derek-airtken also edits articles about cuisine, another topic on which Jobas and some of his previous sockpuppets focused.


 * Here Durziil89 supported Ramos1990 in a discussion. Jobas' confirmed sockpuppet Kfager1 did the same here. There is a long history of interactions and reciprocal support between Jobas and Ramos1990; see these overlaps and timelines.


 * Like Jobas and his previous sockpuppets, Durziil89 edits on both the English and the Arabic Wikipedias, and uploads images (possibly copyright violations) about Christianity on Wikimedia Commons, and also often makes tiny serial edits adding or removing categories or wikilinks.

--Æo (talk) 17:05, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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


 * I am quite sure that they are sockpuppets of Jobas. Let me ping and, who investigated the previous Jobas sockpuppets and can perhaps give additional input.--Æo (talk) 04:07, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Æo My input is that this is WP:OTHERPARENT. @Vanamonde93 didn't see enough evidence to run a check.  If you've got better evidence, please add it to the case.  I'm not going to override his judgement just because you're "quite sure". RoySmith (talk) 15:27, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Vanamonde93, @RoySmith: The evidence at the level of individual edits is indeed not convincing enough in this case. However, without going into the quality of said edits (I am unable to check the sources at the moment), see for instance this edit, with which Durziil89 re-added a chunk of text which was originally added to the article by Marsharbt (Jobas' sockpuppet) in this edit. Also, edits like this by Durziil89 are very similar to edits like this one by Marsharbt. Æo (talk) 18:40, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - I'm sorry, I do not enough evidence to run a check here. The edit-summary mentioned is the one suggested when warning users about WP:CWW. The article overlap is scant, and temporally distant. Apart from a vague interest in the Druze faith I really see no similarity here. Vanamonde93 (talk) 02:13, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Those similarities appear accidental or superficial to me. In the edit you highligt, Durziil89 is actually making a revert; they did not add the text in question. Also, Jobas's socks are very stale; any sanctions would need to be based on behavior alone, and this simply isn't enough. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:11, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If anybody picks this case up, I suggest you start by reading Sockpuppet investigations/Phoenixhill. RoySmith (talk) 22:54, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * CU was declined and behavioral evidence is too thin to justify action. The Wordsmith Talk to me 02:53, 5 March 2024 (UTC)