Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Journalist492/Archive

05 September 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.


 * Update 6 September 2012: additional suspect (see below) not yet checked by a CheckUser: 

I believe that at least two of the above accounts, and perhaps as many as all of them, are involved in sock-puppetry and/or meat-puppetry. Over the last few months, the primary (and in some cases sole) activity of these accounts has been to partly or wholly remove sections mentioning an abuse scandal (relating to Allan Cundick and Ian Jackson) from two articles: Before I proceed, please note that my ability to provide evidence in this case is compromised by the fact that some of the pertinent edits made by these accounts have since been deleted from the public archive.
 * Gospel Hall Brethren
 * List of scandals involving evangelical Christians.

Of the above accounts, the only one with edits prior to 24 July 2012 is Journalist492. Before 2012, however, this account had not been used for nearly four years.

Suddenly, in mid-2012, the account became active again, and its first action was to engage in section blanking, by deleting a newly-introduced section called "Abuse cases" from the Gospel Hall Brethren article.

Between 21-23 July 2012, User:78.150.108.178 (not one of the suspected sock/meat-puppets) more or less restored the section which had been blanked, and also created a new section called "Allan Cundick, 2011" in the List of scandals involving evangelical Christians. I believe the contents of the two sections may have been similar, but only the latter remains visible in the public log.

Apparently in response to the restoration/creation of these sections, on 24 July 2012 the following suspect accounts became active and performed unexplained removal of content or complete section blanking on those sections:
 * 37.152.35.142: Unexplained content removal from "Allan Cundick, 2011" section (sole action of account to date).
 * Anyonebutyou: Unexplained section blanking of abuse-related section in Gospel Hall Brethren (sole action of account to date).
 * 81.20.190.118 Repeated unexplained/unjustified section blanking of both sections through to 25 July 2012, additionally violating 3RR on Gospel Hall Brethren.

After blanking the "Allan Cundick, 2011" section another two times on 4 August 2012, suspect account User:81.20.190.118 became inactive.

On 22 August two more accounts became active for the first time and performed section blanking of the abuse-related section in Gospel Hall Brethren:
 * Ndrbw
 * Montague80

Note that the second of these has a username consisting of a word followed by numerals, much like the suspected puppet-master account, "Journalist492". This section-blanking may have been in anticipation of Journalist492's substantial rewrite to the Gospel Hall Brethren article later that day.

On 28 August 2012, another new user account became active and twice partially blanked the "Allan Cundick" section:
 * Talktruthjourno

Note that this username consists of a string of three concatenated words, much like the earlier suspect account "Anyonebutyou". Also note that the third word, "journo", is slang for "journalist" and that the suspected puppet-master account is named "Journalist492".

On 31 August 2012, yet another new user account became active and has performed only one activity: to partially blank the "Allan Cundick" section:
 * Forfar4EastFife5

On 3 September 2012, yet another new anonymous user became active and performed only one activity: to blank the "Allan Cundick" section:
 * 86.26.59.190

Finally, between 31 August 2012 and 3 September 2012, three of these accounts have made comments in Talk:List_of_scandals_involving_evangelical_Christians: Talktruthjourno, Montague80 and Journalist492. Not only are the three comments all in close agreement, but the last two are also very similarly written. zazpot (talk) 01:54, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

To conclude: the suspect accounts above have all been involved in a pattern of similar edits to similar sections in one or both of two articles and/or those articles' talk pages. They have all gone from dormancy or non-existence to being active during the same period of time (summer 2012), yet none of them, I think, has made a post at the same time as another of them.

Admittedly, the IP-based accounts are in disparate parts of the British Isles, but this could be due to the meat-puppetry, travel and/or tunnelled/proxied connections. I have requested CheckUser attention to see whether any of the other suspect accounts have ever used one or more IP addresses used by another suspect account in the list. zazpot (talk) 12:42, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Update 6 September 2012: another account, Roccos1978, has become newly active and has, as its sole activity, joined in the discussion about the Cundick section. The similarity between Roccos1978's contribution and the contributions of Journalist492 and Montague80 (which the CheckUser has already determined are technically indistinguishable (see below)) makes me suspect this is another sockpuppet, so I have added it to the list above. zazpot (talk) 14:03, 6 September 2012 (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

 * - The overlap and timing make it pretty clear that something is amiss, and CU should be able to shine some light on the subject. Dennis Brown - 2&cent;    &copy;   Join WER 18:09, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Firstly, note that geolocation in the UK is worth very little. Anyway, Journalist492 and Montague80 are ✅. All the other accounts appear technically ❌ to one another. No comment on any of the given IP addresses per CU policy. WilliamH (talk) 23:19, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 2 weeks for master and indef the one confirmed sock. Closing. Dennis Brown -  2&cent;    &copy;   Join WER 14:13, 6 September 2012 (UTC)