Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lau Cheng/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
Similar date of account creations of all these accounts. The master creates account on 29 March and the rest 31 March. Besides the overlap on multiple articles and spamming of articles with POV ridden copyvio material, all of them use similar edit summaries like "It is the recent incident that happened", "It is very important data/update not mentioned anywhere" or "Changes made according to the current situation". Uzek (talk) 18:27, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

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All accounts just got blocked. Can an admin close this case? Uzek (talk) 23:32, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * along with and . Closing. MarioGom (talk) 14:38, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Same time of account creation for all of these accounts, (April or around 10 days ago this month), same poorly sourced copyvio material spamming of the same set of Pakistan related articles. (Interaction timeline for 2 accounts for e.g 1)

They also use similar edit summaries like "changes/update made according to current situation" and use use of English,russian names

I've seen many of these accounts this past month, so dozens more will probably show up upon CU. One favourite target article of this user is the Balochistan, Pakistan article where a lot of these end up meeting e.g User:Paisley Harrison, User:Sebast Victor Jiménez, User:Elio46766 (Like blocked sock User:Manon Bain) Uzek (talk) 13:14, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
All now blocked. Please continue to monitor affected articles. - Mailer Diablo 20:46, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Suspicious behaviour, to confirm and check for others. Several other accounts were blocked in the last filing but were not CU'd. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 01:50, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ that the following accounts belong to each other:
 * I would say it is the following accounts are from the same operator with degree of sophistication:
 * I would say it is the following accounts are from the same operator with degree of sophistication:
 * I would say it is the following accounts are from the same operator with degree of sophistication:
 * Thanks. Tagged, closing. Spicy (talk) 13:16, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Like other socks of the same master, these accounts have been created only in order to edit war in Human rights abuses in Balochistan, and all have made at most 2 other edits prior. Behavioural evidence should be sufficient. — kashmīrī  TALK  15:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

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 * - I'm convinced that these accounts are related but since previous checks uncovered additional accounts editing other articles, I think CU would be a good idea. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 05:01, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
 * CU isn't much use here - most of these accounts were created/used through IPs that spur recognises as proxies, but it looks like they get a new proxy for each of them, and they're dotted fairly randomly around the world. Blocking as suspected based on the editing pattern.  Girth Summit  (blether)  11:56, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

 * ( original case name)

Others actually pointed this out on the Talk page but nobody really reported this after 2 days. So guess I have to step up. But I suspect all these accounts are the same person. My evidence is that I see all of them display a very recognisable idiosyncratic pattern on a very narrow range of articles. Most have 3 to 4 edits total. And their first two edits is usually for newcomer tasks. And their next edit is straight up into adding an edit that either blames China, or promotes India on articles about the Sri Lanka or Pakistan economic crises. None of them really deviate from this rigid pattern. And there are so many of them and hope you find technical evidence to confirm it's all just one person.

(Four examples of many)

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ElsieCubenet

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ranjeet_Kumar99

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/GeronimoZitto

4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/AriaNowen KirklandWayne (talk) 17:07, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

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You are supposed to file the case under the oldest account. I didn't go through all accounts, but account's sockmaster  could be the case name. An SPI clerk might need to rename this case. Best. Chanaka L ( talk ) 06:36, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Please merge to the Lau Cheng case and then request CU. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:14, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge completed. I've reviewed the contributions of the non-stale accounts and agree that they look very much like socks of Lau Cheng, except for , who just seems like a generic spammer. for obvious reasons, excluding Miqbhai. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 23:48, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I've checked a bunch of these, all of the ones I've looked at are using proxies - CU is therefore, and it isn't going to help us find any others. To the extent that I've looked at the behaviour, I agree that there's an obvious pattern, but I expect you've looked at it more closely than I have so I'll leave it to you to determine whether these should be blocked (for all the good that will do...).  Girth Summit  (blether)  09:44, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Girth. I've blocked the non-stale accounts except for Miqbhai. Not going to bother with the stale accounts for now but feel free to report if they reactivate. Closing. Spicy (talk) 10:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

 * ( original case name)

Doing similarly scoped, series of minor edits that look like preperation for something like AutoConfirmed, I saw them because they were all arriving on this article about Bangladesh -- they are solid edits, but look like some of the sleeper sock communities that we have seen in the past. Sadads (talk) 13:54, 25 October 2023 (UTC)


 * And I would have ignored this as part of an editathon or something, but the behaviour is exactly the same at very different points in time, spread out over the course of several months. Sadads (talk) 11:27, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi,@Vanjagenije: both editors have only 3 contributions that look exactly the same: See Bashaernia and Alanaxd. And there looks like a third: Backeschwilli, Sadads (talk) 21:17, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know how you could demonstrate that three accounts are doing the exact same thing.....Sadads (talk) 21:18, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - .&#32;In order to facilitate and expedite your request, please provide diffs to support your case. Please give two or more diffs meeting the following format:
 * 1) At least one diff is from the sockmaster (or an account already blocked as a confirmed sockpuppet of the sockmaster), showing the behaviour characteristic of the sockmaster.
 * 2) At least one diff per suspected sockpuppet, showing the suspected sockpuppet emulating the behaviour of the sockmaster given in the first diff.
 * 3) In situations where it is not immediately obvious from the diffs what the characteristic behaviour is, a short explanation must be provided. Around one sentence is enough for this.  Vanjagenije   (talk)  16:34, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * - Please, compare those three. There is indeed striking similarity between their editing>: two minor edits (adding links) and then straight to Gender inequality in Bangladesh !  Vanjagenije   (talk)  22:28, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * CU is . is stale,  is editing out of what appears to be a stable IP range, but  is using proxies so I can't compare the two.    Girth Summit  (blether)  13:25, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * , does this look like Sockpuppet investigations/Lau Cheng/Archive from a technical perspective? Behaviour seems very similar.Spicy (talk) 14:29, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Alanaxd looks pretty much the same as the last lot of Lau Cheng socks - it's by no means conclusive, but they are using the same vanilla UA and some of the same sorts of proxies. As I said, Bashaernia doesn't appear to be using proxies as far as I can tell, so in that sense they look different - might be the same person just editing out of a regular IP of course, there isn't a lot to go on from their few contributions. Girth Summit  (blether)  08:11, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Based on the behaviour and what you've shared about the technical data, I'm reasonably convinced that Alanaxd and Bashaernia are socks of Lau Cheng and have blocked them as such. I'm leaving Backeschwilli alone for now as they are stale - feel free to re-report if they return to active editing. Closing. Spicy (talk) 15:39, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

 * ( original case name)

Each account created consecutively on the following day from 12-16 September. Earliest account from China–Maldives relations is Lianggdynsty created 24 June 2023. Each account began with only three edits ending with an edit on China-Maldives relations. Edits at around the same timespan every day. Similarly detailed edit summaries. Same subjects. Recent edits on similar subjects within 20 minutes of each other:. Qiushufang (talk) 11:19, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * . MarioGom (talk) 20:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * FWIW, this looks like WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Lau Cheng. Spicy (talk) 20:20, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * - RoySmith (talk) 18:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * - There's nothing that matches from a CU perspective. Per 's suggestion, I also took a look at WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Lau Cheng where  commented in 08 October 2023 that he suspected proxy use.  I re-checked a few accounts from that report and I'm seeing a pattern which makes me suspect the accounts reported here are using the same kind of proxies as those accounts.  So my recommendation would be to merge these two cases and block on the behavioral evidence. RoySmith (talk) 18:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Done, closing. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 19:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)