Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Longmermaidhair/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
Possible sock puppetry - purpose is unknown, but a clear editing pattern exists. Oldest account (Longmermaidhair) creates and edits bios of academics, but also makes unprompted edits to new editor's sandboxes (see Diff and Diff, made to two different suspected sock sandboxes 4 mins apart, and Diff). All edits were done without on-wiki conversation, and it is interesting how User:Longmermaidhair was able to edit two random sandboxes of two new editors 4 minutes apart. In one instance, User:Mantisshrimp16 edited their sandbox, after which User:Longmermaidhar made an edited 3 mins later, followed by a second edit by Mantis 3 minutes after, all in a sandbox without any on-wiki communication. All four accounts edit the biographies of academics.

The suspected sock editors all started editing on the same day (see, , ), all within one hour of each-other, and all three made random edits (albeit using a new editor's tool) in rapid succession to attain semi-confirmed status.

The intent of this possible sockpuppetry is unknown, but given these accounts have published articles in the main space, it may be AFC circumvention. SamHolt6 (talk) 17:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC) SamHolt6

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.


 * Hello, Mantisshrimp16 here. I created my account as part of an effort by our racial justice group to increase the number of BIPOC scientists present on Wikipedia.  Our group met over zoom to learn how the Wikipedia editing process works, and then we shared our pages with each other to review and make edits before publishing our work.  Each person chose one BIPOC scientist to create a page for.  As far as I know, all these accounts belong to different people (this is my only Wikipedia account).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mantisshrimp16 (talk • contribs) 17:39, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi! We are all employees at the same institution where we held a wiki-a-thon to add Wikipedia pages for notable academics that belong to under-represented communities. We each worked on a page and @Longmermaidhair helped make final edits before publishing. We communicated off-Wikipedia on Zoom and Slack for this. Multi-tasker-ak (talk) 17:38, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hello! Yes, we were communicating off Wikipedia as Multi-tasker-ak says. I led the Wiki-a-thon on October 6, 2022 and yesterday/today we had a push to finish up the articles we started. Mantisshrimp16, Slavetothecat, and Multi-tasker-ak were all creating their first article and asked me if I could take a look at the draft articles in their sandboxes. Instead of giving them feedback I made edits directly so they could see what I was saying. Apologies - I will definitely avoid this in the future! Longmermaidhair (talk) 17:51, 4 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello, Slavetothecat here. Like Mantisshrimp16, I created my account as part of our racial justice group to work towards increasing the visibility of BIPOC scientists.  We are employees with the same organization, who do this work on a volunteer basis, outlining the process described by Mantisshrimp16

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - I think there may be another explanation., , , , can you explain what's going on here? Thanks, Spicy (talk) 17:23, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The explanation provided strikes me as very plausible, so I'm going to close this without further action. Could I ask you to disclose your affiliation with each other (and other participants, if any) on your userpages (see Special:MyPage)? That will hopefully help avoid further confusion. Thanks and happy editing! --Blablubbs (talk) 17:54, 4 November 2022 (UTC)