Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/KDS4444/Archive

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Recreated Stewart Levenson, which KDS was widely known to have been paid to create and try to recreate multiple times. Requesting check to see if it is KDS, and also to see if it is related to another UPE account if it is not him. Also adding Gruenback as an autoconfirmed gamer who has also weighed in on this XfD with extensive policy knowledge. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:39, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

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 * ✅ to KDS4444:
 * IvoryDinn and Gruenback are ✅ to each other, and are matches to KDS4444. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 12:45, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * , closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * IvoryDinn and Gruenback are ✅ to each other, and are matches to KDS4444. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 12:45, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * , closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

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Found these on the now deleted Aari work, which was created by, one of the accounts DoRD confirmed to KDS above. All of them were created after KDS' ban. All of the accounts made trivial edits to Aari work, an obscure article, likely to try to establish a history before being used.

Additionally, the article creation by ZACHERY shows UPE signs, and some of the work by Cloudauthor shows other UPE signs in edits to existing articles. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:17, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

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 * Seeing the deleted version, I am a bit surprised as to the motives behind the creation of this near-certainly-non-paid article.Way different from the usual zone of PE. Winged Blades Godric 15:52, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * KDS was very insistent in the past that he didn't only do paid work: Wikipedia was also a hobby for him (I can find the diffs if a clerk or CU wants them, but they're littered across the multiple venues where he defended his actions so it'd take digging). I think he honestly found this topic interesting, and you can see it is the same user if you compare the format and the like to some of his other short articles on cultural works in countries outside the United States (see Ofrenda). The reason I'm asking for a CU on these accounts is that it is a very obscure article that likely no one would be looking at and that using it to gain editing history wouldn't raise questions. Basically, he is the only person who had it watchlisted, so it could be used to easily build a sock farm to autoconfirmed. The ZACHERY account's later creations show that AC gaming to create spam was at least that accounts game. If KDS wanted to make this his main source of income, or if he wanted to help other accounts do it, this article is a pretty low-risk way to help game the system. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:04, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I've been following the disruption on Aari work and related articles and the number of related socks is large. I've reverted tens of newly registered accounts in the last five or six weeks. If it would help to have a list of the accounts I can do that. A list of related articles might be more beneficial as the new users tend to edit them for "clarity and grammar" quite a bit. I'm at jury duty at the moment, but you can get a partial list of what I've been working on here . Dawnseeker2000  17:32, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

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CU check for sleepers please - we haven't heard the last of this. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:29, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Cloudauthor is between and barely  to KDS4444.
 * The remaining accounts are ❌ to each other and to KDS4444.
 * The following accounts are ✅ to each other and to KDS4444:
 * Blocked the two confirmed accounts without tags.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:35, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, for all the work Bbb. Closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:39, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Blocked the two confirmed accounts without tags.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:35, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, for all the work Bbb. Closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:39, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

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Recreated 's Draft:Williemgc. I'm fairly sure these socks are related to the older group that repeatedly created this as well but as Faremusic23 was listed here, the username + interest seems pretty ducky. CHRISSY MAD ❯❯❯  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  14:47, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

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 * Can we have a sleeper check as they have had multiple socks going on at once before? TonyBallioni (talk) 14:50, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * - I'm assuming based on the deletion log that the creation of Draft:Williemgc was recent enough for this account to not be stale. If this is the case, please check to identify potential sleepers. Sir Sputnik (talk) 16:50, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Besides the similar names, there's some technical evidence linking Faremusic to Faremusic23. I'd call them ✅ to each other.  The following are :
 * They're on the same IP range and have similar technical data, but it's a big ISP. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:42, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Blocked by without tags. Not enough similarity on the other two to block at this point. Closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:43, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * They're on the same IP range and have similar technical data, but it's a big ISP. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:42, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Blocked by without tags. Not enough similarity on the other two to block at this point. Closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:43, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

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The thing that caught my attention was this move on March 18 of a draft created by the master to mainspace, with edit note, Subject looks notable to me. The master had previously moved their own paid draft to main space on Nov 16 in this diff with edit note Article has been ready for publication for weeks, have now removed from AfC queue. What in the world would bring a new, unrelated editor to that exact draft?

Proposed sock account's userpage, created in this diff on the 90-day anniversary of the master's community-imposed indefinite blocking via AN (just out of CU reach, correct?) is a Kipling poem that sounds a lot like somebody who is actually wanting to "start again at your beginnings/And never breathe a word about your loss"

This early to edit to Moving the goalposts in which they added the unsourced content "This form of goalpost-moving, however, has the effect of making it easier for a given team to score a goal, rather than more difficult, which is not the meaning implied by the original phrase." sounds a lot like the proposed master, when they wrote here for example about consequences of disclosing paid editing, and here or perhaps better here where they talked about going "underground" with their paid editing instead of dealing with the hassles caused by disclosing - much easier for them and worse for the community, in their view.

The talk page style of the proposed sock is very much like that of the proposed master, with a piling on of rhetorical questions. See here and here for the proposed sock. See here for example for the proposed master. The style is very much the same.

Lining up their contribs in parallel tabs, the similarity in edit note style is very clear. Proposed master said "light revision" often, diff, diff, diff. So too the proposed sock, as in diff.

Like the master, the proposed sock is very confused about CoI matters, like in this message to a conflicted editor. That is actually pretty bad, that they are doing that -- that diff arose from a separate conversation with that conflicted editor at Doc James talk page and the sock account jumped in there, then jumped to the conflicted editor's TP. Zoiks.

Pretty darn quacky. Jytdog (talk) 03:25, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

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 * Requesting CU here. We have two likely non-stale socks found by DoRD in and . TonyBallioni (talk) 03:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The quote from Kipling is the givaway. Quack. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:07, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A million reasons is a bit below . is ✅. . Closing.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)