Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lomtikov/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

See here - these are some of the users that have refspammed the same paper into > 100 articles. SmartSE (talk) 16:40, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * There are many, many more SPA accounts engaged in the same activity. The ones I have found so far make between 2-8 edits on their accounts, and add basically the same material to the articles. Adding more to COIN list. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 17:04, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Example diffs by four different accounts: one, two, three, four. There are more accounts listed at COIN. Can't add them all, as it may be 100+ accounts. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 17:18, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Abuse is cross-wiki. MER-C 18:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * - Mz7 (talk) 19:37, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This is an unbelievably extensive group of sockpuppets. I have run a lot of checks over the past hour, and I suspect this is a rather wide-scale operation that involves multiple people.


 * The following accounts are ✅ to each other (Group 1):
 * The following accounts are ✅ to each other (Group 2) and to (Group 1):
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts are ✅ to each other (Group 2) and to (Group 1):
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts are ✅ to each other (Group 2) and to (Group 1):
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts are ✅ to each other (Group 2) and to (Group 1):
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:
 * The following accounts exhibit the same behavior and are each individually to each other and to these groups:


 * This is where I stopped running checks. I think I could go on and keep running checks, but I think it would be far more efficient to simply find the socks by behavior, e.g. using User:COIBot to find accounts that have recently added the mdpi link. Mz7 (talk) 20:18, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Could you take a look at please? There's evidence here implicating them via  (stale) SmartSE (talk) 10:36, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh crap, time has flown along and May was 90 days ago. SmartSE (talk) 10:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Noting here that there is attempt to do a query on the database that COIBot uses in relation to this SPI: User talk:Beetstra. Mz7 (talk) 13:17, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is also meta:User:Praxidicae/mdpi_spam and all those users have been glocked. There may be more that added other links earlier on though. The only think left to do here I think is decide who we should consider the master? is the first registered account to exhibit this behaviour. SmartSE (talk) 12:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Also note that I've requested global locks on the older and stale accounts. SmartSE (talk) 13:15, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, two people have suggested merging, so I've gone ahead and merged the cases. GeneralNotability (talk) 14:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You've done a wp:cut and paste move, which is wrong. You should have performed a WP:history merge. Keeping the history of SPI cases is very important.  Vanjagenije  (talk)  22:27, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , yes, I did a cut-and-paste with attribution in the edit summary. My understanding was that we should not do histmerges when two cases were being edited at the same time and have interleaved edits. GeneralNotability (talk) 22:29, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that seams OK. Anyway, all accounts here are either blocked or locked, so I'm closing.  Vanjagenije  (talk)  09:18, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

 * ( originally filed under this user)


 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

All have significant overlap in topics relating to Uladzimir Levaneuski, either inserting references to works by him or editing pages related to him and his frequent co-authors (such as BIS conference, Interstudent, or Wikirank.com). Overlapping edit times and potential vote-stacking in AfDs. All but one account is stale, so this will be behavior-only. GeneralNotability (talk) 18:12, 8 August 2020 (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

 * Shouldn't this be merged with Sockpuppet investigations/Emel Ulusoy, a big farm of one-article-per-SPA Lewoniewski refspammers? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:31, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , I split it out because this group is behaviorally distinct - the Emel Ulusoy group appears to be automated or semi-automated throwaway accounts, these appear to be manual edits, possibly meatpuppets, and are used multiple times. There is certainly overlap - WorldProfessor, for example, inserts similar blocks of text to the Ulusoy group a couple of times in 2019, but their earlier behavior certainly looks like manual operation. Same goal, certainly. I'm not opposed to merging them if other folks would prefer it that way. GeneralNotability (talk) 00:05, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * - I have posted there to suggest that that is moved to this master. While the tactics might have gotten more sophisticated, it's obvious that they are the same people. I have also requested global locks on all of these apart from NewLibrarian who I hadn't spotted, but no action yet. SmartSE (talk) 10:18, 9 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I ran my mass search a few days ago, came up with several hundred unlocked accounts, and requested locks on everyone. I think we're finally done here. GeneralNotability (talk) 14:39, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your efforts GeneralNotability. Just to add - I blocked here yesterday as they weren't globally locked. There's no direct evidence either way pf their involvement with this, but given they haven't commented on this at all since it was raised several weeks ago, I thought it was best to err on the side of caution and block. SmartSE (talk) 17:05, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , fine with me - I agree with not globally locking them (and intentionally didn't submit them for a lock) precisely for that reason. GeneralNotability (talk) 17:53, 25 August 2020 (UTC)