Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/LevilRowe/Archive

11 April 2014

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All three editors have been pushing the same POV at David Bergstein, and all three editors have made minimal contributions outside of the article. Their edits all revolve around removing references to the bankruptcies of his five film production companies or adding promotional content. All of the excised content is sourced to legitimate publications such as the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, so it is tantamount to whitewashing.

Edits by Amytecko:

Edits by LevilRowe:. Comment: COI concern expressed by :

Edits by MaxJTracy:

The situation has escalated over the last 24 hours with a sequence of tag-team edits by these three editors:
 * 1) LevilRowe:
 * 2) LevilRowe:
 * 3) MaxJTracy:
 * 4) Amytecko:

I started a COI discussion at Conflict of interest/Noticeboard where suspected some kind of co-ordination between the editors, either via sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry. The article has been discussed previously at Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive833. The behavior on the article is a serious cause for concern IMO, and it would help to know if we are dealing with just one editor or a team of editors co-ordinating their efforts. Betty Logan (talk) 17:02, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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I'd also like to know this. As I said at the COI noticeboard... LevilRowe blanks their userpage (in response to COI complaints and noticeboard notifications), and appears to withdraw from editing just for MaxJTracy to show up. After MaxJTracy's unexplained content removal is reverted, Amytecko shows up to reinstate it. I'd also like to point out that MaxJTracy has previously edited as an IP, 76.91.201.25 (see where the IP signs a post as "Max Tracy" on the article talk page).

I'd also like to point out that this isn't the first time this has come up, in this ANI report it was suspected that these editors were sockpuppets (the editor A18kdE was also suggested as a sock, but with only 2 edits to this article and a number to unrelated articles I didn't make that accusation).

It's only fair to mention that sockpuppetry has been shown in the past at the article, though of the opposite nature. As seen in this SPI case there were a few sockpuppets trying to slant the BLP to be more negative. Now we have a group of editors acting together to remove anything negative (including the removal of sourced information, replacing it with unsourced information more flattering to the article subject). I have reason to believe that at least one of these accounts represents an online marketing professional (because their username matches the real name of such a person) but to not violate WP:OUTING I won't say which of these accounts, or elaborate any further. (An argument could be made that they outed themselves by choosing a username that matches their real life name, but in these cases I err on the side of privacy.) --  At am a  頭 22:09, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * , and  are ✅ to each other.  appears ❌ from a technical standpoint. Although Amytecko is the oldest account, perhaps this should be moved to LevilRowe as they are the oldest confirmed sock? I'll let the closing/archiving clerks make that call. --Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots  21:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Moved to this title (from Amytecko) and closed. I'll block and tag them in a minute. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 11:38, 16 April 2014 (UTC)