Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Levineps/Archive

05 December 2013

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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I am filing this SPI in response to this edit made by User:Jrcla2. Per User:Levineps' talk page, he is indefinitely prohibited from creating cats or recatting articles. If these two are the same user, he is using the Ori account to skirt his sanction. I reviewed the two accounts and found multiple similarities between the two.

Editor Interaction:
 * Between the two, there are nine sports related categories where Levi and Ori are the only editors. -
 * Additionally, both editors seem to put a lot of focus on sports articles, however, National Bureau of Economic Research is outside of the topic area, yet both editors have edited there.

Edit summaries
 * CAPS: (Oriole ) vs (Levi }
 * formatting fix: (Oriole ) vs (Levi ) Note: This was Oriole's first edit, an article Levi has edited in the past here.

I attempted to ask the user if he operated both accounts, but he seems to be ignoring me.  Ish dar  ian  06:47, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.'' According to the Wikistalk report, Levineps and Oriole85 have 966 pages in commons, an unusally large number in that Oriole85 only has 8,055 edits. Overlaps include 129 categories, and 7 templates. Categories in common include such disparate entries as " Schools in Rockville, Maryland", "Films shot in Baltimore, Maryland" and "Destroyed landmarks in....(Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C.)" mixed in with various sport-related categories. In articles, sports again prevail, except they also have in common "Carrie FIsher", "Carolyn Kennedy", "Carole King", "Carl Reiner", "Carl Bernstein", "Candy Crowley", "Calvin Klein", CNN "Center", "Cher", "Cokie Roberts", and "Courtenay Cox", and that's just a part of the overlap in the Cs. There really can be little doubt that Oriole85 is Levineps, but the evidence is certainly strong enough for a CheckUser to take a look to see if Levineps has used other socks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:03, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As noted in the comment by Jrcla2 noted above by Isdarian, Levineps' last edit was on November 4th, while Oriole85 was created on November 5th. What's also notable is that these two events came only a few days after this discussion on the talk page of Postdlf, in which Levineps states that they want to return to editing categories, and is told to take his request to WP:ANI.  Instead of posting to the current page, Levineps posts to an archived ANI page .  Shortly thereafter, Levineps stops editing and Oriole85 is created; one month later Oriole85 starts editing.   Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:26, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Given Levineps' history of violating their topic ban -- usually with the excuse "I didn't know it was still in effect" -- if it turns out that Oriole85 is his sock, I believe serious consideration should be given to indef blocking both the sock and the master, and then bringing the issue to AN/I for review, where the community can be reminded of why Levineps was topic-banned in the first place. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:01, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Regardless of the merits of this case (which seems to be quite clear), I find it a bit disturbing that claims to be ignored by, when posting here a mere 24 minutes after questioning Oriole. In addition, neither Oriole nor Levineps have been informed of this SPI. --Randykitty (talk) 12:10, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Nor are they required to be notified. I posted on Oriole's talk page, and he continued editing. I may by assuming bad faith, but I wasn't gonna hold my breath waiting for his response.  Ish dar  ian  13:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Just a minor side point: since both Levineps and Oriole85 get pinged whenever their username are mentioned elsewhere per Wikipedia's new alert system, they were both technically notified. Jrcla2 (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * ( Comment from uninvolved editor ) One would have to have the relevant checkbox ticked in Special:Preferences, under the section "notifications", to be notified whenever they are mentioned. It is possible that they haven't checked that box. Epicgenius (talk) 16:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

@Rschen - I'm confused by your statement below. To my knowledge, it's never been necessary to provide evidence of "sleepers", per se, in order to have a CU to take a look, since, by definition, we cannot know whether there are sleepers or not - that's the entire point of a sleeper sweep. What has always been necessary for a sleeper sweep to be made is strong evidence that there has been socking, and that has certainly been provided here. Approaching this another way, what would you consider to be "plausible" evidence of sleeper abuse? Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
I've blocked both accounts per WP:DUCK, considering the obvious correlation between them. &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  beans  // 15:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * - as the accounts are already blocked, and as for the sleepers, without evidence of plausible sleeper abuse. Rschen7754 08:58, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Closing per Rschen's comments. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:43, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

01 February 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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In December, User:Levineps was blocked for sockpuppetry. In January, User:CensoredScribe -- who had made no edits (near as I can tell) in the Category namespace -- began to focus ONLY in creating and adding oddball categories. See this ANI thread.

In addition, CensoredScribe implies directly that he's been blocked before.

So: sockpuppetry or coincidence? Sleepers, or a one-off? --Calton | Talk 04:19, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''


 * Note: The report above was incorrectly filed, so I re-filed it. I also added Tranquility of Soul, a brand-new account which exhibits the very same kind of behavior as CensoredScribe. BMK (talk) 09:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The report doesn't make it clear how either of the two accounts here are related to Levineps. Was Levineps making the same sort of category edits as these two accounts? —Psychonaut (talk) 09:57, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * To my eye, the similarity of CensoredScribe to Levineps is a general one: the mass creation and population of multiple categories of dubious value, and the failure to stop when the behavior is disputed by multiple long-time editors, as described here. (The connection between CensoredScribe and Tranquility of Soul is much more immediately obvious, entering into WP:DUCK territory.)  It's true that I don't believe Levineps focused on fiction and mythology in the way that CensoredScribe has, but that may simply be the same editor trying to avoid the same result - in Levineps' case, multiple community-imposed editing restrictions which led to scoking to evade the sanctions which led to an indef block.  The pattern of Levineps' behavior is clear: disruptive editing in ctsgories (or article-moving), carried on in spite of protests, sanctions, "forgetting" the sanction (several times) and then socking to continue the behavior.  This pattern maches well enough with CensoredScribe to justify a CU, and, as I said, TofS seems totally duckish to me. BMK (talk) 16:28, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * To piggyback on that, I would add that perhaps there is no coincidence that User:TranquilityResides was just blocked by a checkuser. BOZ (talk) 16:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * CU is not for fishing expeditions--but there is behavioral evidence and the coincidences of the calendar. I endorse CU and hope it comes up negative: clearing the record one way or another is of great value, considering the disruption CensoredScribe is accused of and their intent to mend their ways (see the ANI section Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents and the section below). Drmies (talk) 17:52, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I seems plausible that and  are related by more than user names given their focus on fictional characters and SPAishness. I don't know what to say about their relationship to CensoredScribe and Levineps though other than that it seems more remote. Someone not using his real name (talk) 18:32, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I am also uncertain about the relationship of Levineps to these other accounts, but the connection between CensoredScribe, Tranquility of Soul and TranquilityResides seems pretty clear per this WikiStalk report - bearing in mind that ToS has only 154 edits and TR only 15, and that one would not expect massive overlap in specific categories, when the similarities are in the accounts behavior in mass creating categories. BMK (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, looking at this Wikistalk report], which includes Levineops and his known sock Oriole85, I take back what I said about being unsure about the Levineps connection: look at 54 overlaps between Levineps and CensoredScribe. BMK (talk) 20:52, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Please be wary of your statistics (and so far, I see no statistical analysis here). Both users were specifically selected because they tend to make category edits, which by their nature tend to be edits to a large number of articles.  That means that the null hypothesis is that they will have a larger number of articles in common than, say, two people accused of POV-pushing who besiege a small number of articles on issues they care about. Wnt (talk) 21:15, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually your interpretation of the data is incorrect. Two independent editors, both of whom mass-create categories, would be very unlikely to work on the same categories, given the extremely large number of possible new categories, a point which I actually made above. The fact that mass-creating editors have significant overlap is, therefore, telling. {BTW, where's your statistical analysis?) BMK (talk) 21:51, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The Wikistalk analysis I saw above listed articles, not categories. I guess I'm showing my age when I think allegations need to be proved rather than disproved. Wnt (talk) 00:25, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
 * There should be no expectation that anything be "proved" in order to justify a CU check, it should be enough that the evidence be strong, which I believe is the case here. BMK (talk) 00:32, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
 * CensoredScribe only has 48 edits to categories (20 this month), not like the thousands that Oriole85 and Levineps had. Not a good indicator of mass category edits, but the proportion is close enough. Epicgenius (talk) 01:33, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * is Dragonron/Wiki-star, and certainly ❌ to Levineps. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 20:57, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Noting that another check is needed as there have been some developments in the evidence. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 05:00, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * To clarify, TranquilityResides was checked in relation to another investigation, and this case was not investigated by me until now. As it turns out, everyone appears to be ❌. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 14:12, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Closing as there doesn't seem to be anything else to do here. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:50, 13 February 2014 (UTC)