Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kavindeep/Archive

23 January 2016

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Behavioural; this one is a bit of a hunch but I suspect foul play here and would like to get to the bottom of it. The article Karan Doe was written by the suspected puppet and contributed to (principally to remove maintenance tags) by the suspected master. Per a discussion with the article creator on my talk page, I find his assertion "I don't have any personals links with this guy" hard to believe. The Karan Doe article is partly a coatrack for a website called Pollywood Reporter and the article creator also wrote on my talk page "His work has been used in references of many wiki articles". I can find five such articles (Millind Gaba, Himanshi Khurana, Virsa Arts, JSL Singh and Samira Koppikar) and it appears that all of those references were in fact placed there by Kavindeep. Given that Abhaymahajan999 doesn't appear to be playing things quite straight, I find this coincidence somewhat suspect. Additionally, according to Pollywood Reporter Doe's real name is Karandeep Kumar, which is not dissimilar to Kavindeep. Thus there are indications that both users may be Karan Doe or one of his aliases. BC108 (talk) 20:05, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Additional sumbmitter comments
As requested by, below:

Abhaymahajan99 registered at 08:18, 23 January 2016 and their first edit 12 minutes later was to create Karan Doe. Both and I made changes to the article and he engaged in conversation with us, including the use of templates such as. This is not typical behaviour of a new editor.

In the conversations he started, the first thing Abhaymahajan99 said to me was that he had no connection with Karan Doe. I never said he did - it seems odd he felt the need to say that. Then he added "His work has been used in references of many wiki articles" so I looked to see where those references are and found they were all placed by Kavindeep, as follows:


 * Himanshi Khurana. The article was worked on by Kavindeep - a total of 54 edits, the third of which added ref to Pollywood Reporter. Here are the additions of such refs: Then he took them off when article was at AfD but put them back later:.


 * Millind Gaba. The article was written entirely by Kavindeep and the first ref added was to Pollywood Reporter:.


 * Samira Koppikar. Four edits were made by Kavindeep, in their entirety they added references to Pollywood Reporter:.


 * Virsa Arts. One edit by Kavindeep and it too added a ref to Pollywood Reporter:.


 * Rupinder Handa. A series of four edits, in their entirety they referenced Pollywood Reporter: (they have since been removed by another editor).


 * JSL Singh. One edit by Kavindeep and it again added a ref to Pollywood Reporter:.

In fact, these are the majority of Kavindeep's edits. There were some minor edits to three other articles unrelated to Indian actors: Karan Goel (cricket), Bikram Singh Majithia (politician) and Kakrala Bhaika (a village) and then edits to Karan Doe:


 * Karan Doe: five edits in total; three to remove maintenance tags; neither of the other two edits were to resolve the problems tagged: . The first edit was just 17 mins after the article was created.

So, only two users appear to have referenced Pollywood Reporter anywhere, Abhaymahajan99 seems familiar with the edits made by Kavindeep and Kavindeep "found" the new article written by Abhaymahajan99 within minutes and "supported" it by removing maintenance tags. There does seem rather surprising familiarity of each other's work and the use of one account to support the other.

If you look at Abhaymahajan99's first edit he wrote that Karan Doe "is known for his work in Pollywood Reporter where he does interviews with famous personalities like Millind Gaba, Samira Koppikar, Himanshi Khurana and many others". Of the "many" famous personalities, the only three mentioned were the same three that Kavindeep had written about at that point. If you look more closely at the time lines you see this, plus other interesting points:


 * Kavindeep
 * Worked on the Himanshi Khurana page throughout October to December 2015.
 * Stopped editing 08:16, 30 December 2015
 * Restarted editing 06:16, 23 January 2016
 * Created Millind Gaba
 * Added refs to Samira Koppikar and back on to Himanshi Khurana
 * Stopped editing 07:54
 * Abhaymahajan999
 * Created his account just 24 minutes later at 08:18 and created Karan Doe
 * Kavindeep
 * Resumed editing at 10:51 to remove maintenance tags from Karan Doe and add refs to JSL Singh

Next, see the conversation with Abhaymahajan999 on my talk page. I had tagged the article as having no indepedent refs and he said that a new, independent, ref had been added (presumably this). The ref was to another non-notable site www.artistmag.in which looks very similar to Pollywood Reporter. On its contact page it said "Contact the admin (Karan Goyal) for any other queries". Karan Goyal is a pseudonum of Karan Doe (according to Abhaymahajan999 on the wiki article and my talk page), thus showing that the site is not independent. I pointed this out to Abhaymahajan999 who replied that this was not the case - indeed he seemed to know exactly who it was run by. At the same time, the name Karan Goyal was removed from the contact page which was either a tremendous coincidence or evidence that Abhaymahajan999 is very much related to the subject. That Karan Goyal was previously on the page is verified here

So, we have an article about a non-notable person who runs small, non-notable, websites - one of which is heavily promoted in the article. The article was written by an editor who is clearly trying to conceal their connection with it and may therefore be gaming Wikipedia in other ways. The website seems to be a small, one-man operation and two editors are writing about it, both apparently with a familiarity of each other and working together on the new article. The new user is behaving like a more experienced editor. If they are not the same person there's a remarkable number of coincidences here - but to help establish whether that is the case or not I requested a Checkuser.

BC108 (talk) 13:42, 24 January 2016 (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

 * Could you provide some diffs that show a behavioral connection to the accounts? (Similar edits, style of writing, engaging in edit wars, etc.) We are not able to run a check based upon a hunch. Mike V • Talk 23:43, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅, above. BC108 (talk) 13:41, 24 January 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅ -- Amanda  (aka DQ) 09:16, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Both indeffed and tagged. Closing.  Vanjagenije  (talk)  19:46, 28 January 2016 (UTC)