Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lucy-marie/Archive

23 April 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Brand new editor spookily familiar with Wikipedia jargon and procedure, who came into existence around the time that the initial account was running into edit war trouble. Identical pattern of editing, dominantly concerned with UK (mostly SE England) local elections and Formula One motor racing, sometimes picking up where the blocked account left off (e.g. here) and at others interleved (e.g. here). Finally, not so subtle reuse of elements of the name of a previously-confirmed sock identity (User:Jjamesj).  Pyrop e  16:30, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

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

No question in my mind after seeing Pyrope's mention of the User:Jjamesj account. This user popped up out of nowhere to make an arcane point about a Formula One article, having no previous editing experience of Formula One articles, showing a surprising knowledge of Wikipedia methods and procedures, and a very familiar argumentative style (refusal to compromise etc). My experiences with Lucy Marie and this new editor are strikingly similar. Bretonbanquet (talk) 17:34, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Based on behavioural evidence alone, I have blocked Jimjames1989 as an obvious duck of Lucy-marie. AGK  [•] 00:50, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

04 September 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * Several editors suspect Eff Won to be a sock of User:DeFacto. A checkuser would be useful to either rule in or rule out DeFacto. Some diffs are provided at the bottom of the comments section.


 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Eff Won claims to be a new user yet seems familiar with Wikipedia policies and guidelines. With their first edit, Eff Won made controversial changes to Formula One pages, as Lucy-Marie always did; there have been long discussions in the past concerning the format of the season calendar. Antagonistic edit summaries, on their first day of editing, and accusatory messages aimed at User:Prisonermonkeys ,  - accusing him of "deliberate systematic destruction of content", and "irrational hatered" (poor spelling was also a characteristic of Lucy's editing). Refusal to accept consensus or abide by WP:AGF, even when challenged by me ; the latter edit accuses Prisonermonkeys of taking "a stand against" Eff Won, after two days on Wikipedia. The mannerisms and behaviour are strikingly reminiscent of Lucy-marie, an editor I had many encounters with under her various pseudonyms. Bretonbanquet (talk) 22:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I have only just found out about this page, and only by accident after following a weird link on Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, in the section that was added there about me by User:Prisonermonkeys (he comments here too, further down) earlier. Do I need to defend myself aginst the preposterous allegations apparently being made here?


 * Do I understand this correctly; am I being accused of lying about being a new user? I explained at the outset that I was a new user, and that I had read some of the plethora of guidelines and polices that were kindly provided (as links) on my talk page.


 * There is also a bunch of unfounded and even outrageous allegations in that paragraph above. I seem to be being compared with other editors, or even being accused of being them! One the one hand "Lucy-Marie" is mentioned, on the other it is "De Facto". I've only been active here for a week or two, and haven't come across either, other than, if I recall correctly, "De Facto" cropped-up in one of the F1 discussions quoted to me somewhere. I have tried, albeit with hindsight, slightly clumsily, to make some modest improvements to a couple of the F1 related articles, including attempting to add some useful links and to apply some of the guidelines I came across. And I did come up against some particularly stobborn and unpleasant opposition. Some of my comments may have been a bit blunt, but I don't think they were antagonistic or offensive in any way, and I was reacting to some concerted attempts to remove my additions. The "irrational hatered" quote above is seriously out of context; the complete phrase, there behind the link, for all to see, is "I see you have an irrational hatered of these links," (and I don't think that a typo should be characterised as "poor spelling", by the way). I was referring to Prisonermonkeys's recent spree of removing dozens of apparently useful links, but not giving a supportable explanation on the edit summaries. And I have never refused to accept consensus, all I have done is ask for evidence of it, because I was suspicious (because of the poor explanations, behavior and lack of evidence forthcoming) that there was no such consensus.


 * I can robustly rebut the other unfounded allegations made on the remainder of this page, if required, but I hope anyone reviewing this will compare what is being claimed here against what actually happened, with reference to the appropriate talk pages, because I see that the complainants, Prisonermonkeys in particular, do not support any of what they claim with any links or quotes at all. I am confident that anyone even scratching the surface of these allegations will realise that there is no substance to them. Eff Won (talk) 20:48, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

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

I have noticed several behaviours from Eff Won that are consistent with those displayed by Lucy in the past. These include:


 * Telling other editors that if they cannot accept his ideas, then those members are using faulty logic and/or are idiots.
 * Accusing other editors of being in some kind of cabal, conspiring to keep "the facts" away from the reader.
 * Further accusing them of being too close to the page content, and vehemently opposing new editors contributing to the page and disrupting the club of regular editors.
 * Imploring editors to "think of the readers" in making changes to pages.
 * Forcing discussions off-topic when he doesn't get his way, and then re-starting them to try and get a more-favourable consensus.
 * Referring to arguments against his ideas as "excuses" to try and marginalise the contributions of other members.
 * Attempting to force through edits that go against consensus when he doesn't get his way, insisting that consensus is wrong.
 * When directed to certain Wikipedia policies that do not support his arguments, he will take them out of context and use them to justify disruptive editing elsewhere on the page.
 * Aggressively-worded messages left on talk pages of people who oppose him.
 * An overall fixation on minor details of the page, which he insists are the most-pressing issued the page faces, and refusing to allow any discussion of other issues or editing of them until his concerns are addressed to his liking.

It should also be mentioned that some editors of the Formula One pages believe that Eff Won may be a sockpuppet of De Facto and not Lucy-marie; however, I have reason to believe that Lucy-marie, De Facto and Eff Won are all one and the same person as they share common behaviours and edit almost exclusively within the Formula One pages. I have never been able to prove this, and never opened a sockpuppet investigation into De Facto being a Lucy account as De Facto himself was banned for sockpuppetry before it really occurred to me. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 06:27, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Aye, my concerns about Eff Won have been very well summed up here. If I may add, one of Lucy-Marie's main focus on Formula One articles was making what appeared to be small edits to articles and, if they were reverted, would start a long discussion in the ways Prisonermonkeys explained above. Compare a discussion started by Lucy-Marie over a results table (here) to Eff Won's current debate over links in a calender table on this this page. Both accounts follow the same pattern of discussion. What really convinced me that Eff Won was a sock was this edit this edit, where Eff Won claimed a remarkable familiarity with Wikipedia guidelines in saying the 2012 Formula One season article broke many of them; suspicious itself for a two day old account, but coupled with restarting the debate and stating that she would implement the changes unless consensus said not too left me with little over choice. After looking over past debates, it is clear to see Eff Won was using Lucy's methods.

Originally, as Prisonermonkeys stated, I had suspected this account to be a sock of another banned user who has caused trouble with Formula One articles, De Facto, as he followed a similar pattern in picking a particular issue and endlessly debating it. However, DeFacto at least never resorted to personal attacks, to my knowledge, which was where I agreed with my fellow editors that Eff Won is a sock of Lucy-Marie. The suggestion that DeFacto and Lucy-marie are the same account is possible, if you inspect the debates they have been involved in they both have a similar style in picking an issue and creating multiple discussions trying to push their point through (debate til death and then some more), but as both editors were established accounts editing for some time, it leads me to believe it to be unlikely. QueenCake (talk) 20:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

As further evidence of Eff Won'e behaviour, please note this reaction to a reasonable request for him to take a moment and consider his actions. And also, his latest addition, "Serious level of non-compliance with key Wikipedia guidelines" as an example of how he will deliberately quote Wikipedia articles out of context to try and force through changes. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 05:39, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Although I do not have any particulars on whether or not Eff Won is similar to either Lucy-Marie or De Facto as I did not have much of a run in with either of them before they were blocked, I do however feel that Eff Won is being facetious with some of his claims. Specifically, his claim that he became aware of the guidelines of Wikipedia, namely the Manual of Style, only after he created an account and made his first edits a mere four days ago. In fact he starts throwing out policies less than 48 hours after his first edit. His attempts to use Wiki policy in his edit warring seems to indicate that he is someone who has been here before, and therefore would know policy from previous account use. His claim that he is so well versed in Wikipedia policy after only a few days that he can start picking apart such large articles as Formula One seasons is a red flag in my book. In fact that someone could become so well versed in Wiki policy yet completely disregard such basic necessities such as WP:AGF seems to indicate someone who knows of such policies but is intentionally playing ignorance of them. The359 ( Talk ) 08:48, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Lucy always did like to quote policies out of context and use them to justify forcing a change through. Interpreting them as biblical commandments rather than guidelines and accusing everyone involved of fraudulently obtaining consensus by knowingly and deliberately ignoring said guidelines was also one of her more-destructive behaviours.

I just don't know whether she genuinely believes what she's typing, or if she's simply seeking attention. And the more I think on it, the less I know which one is worse. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 11:01, 7 September 2012 (UTC)


 * One thing which makes me doubt that it's De Facto is that Eff Won has not edited any articles other than Formula One articles. De Facto and his socks always disrupted a fairly wide range of topics. But Lucy didn't seem to share De Facto's and Eff Won's incredible egocentricities, nor persist in this belief that all other editors were working together to foil her, until now at least. Bretonbanquet (talk) 21:23, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I do know that DeFacto and Lucy-Marie both made a lot of edits to British related articles. Lucy-Marie opted for British political articles, while DeFacto was adament about the Metrification of the United Kingdom article and it's related links.  Although they never did appear to cross paths, there is at least some slight similarity between them.  As you point out, Eff Won has not made any non-F1 related links, so I think the possibility exists that it could be either Lucy-Marie or DeFacto, but likely not both.  The359  ( Talk ) 21:55, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

The similarities between this discussion involving De Facto here, and these current ones involving Eff Won (1, 2 and 3) should be enough to do a checkuser on Eff Won / De Facto. They are the only two editors ever to have argued about this almost irrelevant point, and they have both done so to mindnumbing levels. Bretonbanquet (talk) 21:31, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Given the results of the checkuser (thanks for doing that), I'm going with my original belief that Lucy-marie is the sockmaster. The similarities between her methods and those of DeFacto make it pretty hard to tell the difference. Bretonbanquet (talk) 22:08, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think Eff Won has gone quite far enough. He demanded to know what he had to do to get his edits accepted, and when given several ideas for how he could improve his demeanour, he chose to attack instead. Was I hard on him in my criticisms of him? Yes, I was - but if you follow his behaviour in the past week, I don't think any of it was underserved. I also tried to end the comment positively, still assuming good faith, even when I feel I have more reason than ever to doubt his intentions. Nevertheless, he chose to ignore whatever advice was given to him and attack me over it. Furthermore, he is still complaining about edits that were reverted a week ago. It's getting to the point where he is simply doing it for the sake of doing it - he has not demanded an apology or an admission or wrongdoing, and every time he asks for an explanation, he shoots down whatever is offered to him before going on anotehr tirade about how his edits were deleted. Nobody who has addressed him has been able to get through to him, and those people who have supported him have only further convinced him that he is right. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 23:00, 9 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The above is the same kind of behaviour displayed by Lucy-marie's last sock User:Jimjames1989 in the discussion about pole position formatting here. Likewise this excerpt from Lucy-marie's talk page, showing the same kind of attitude - creating very long arguments (in this case with at least two admins), persistently turning from the content of a discussion and complaining about other editors' perceived lack of civility towards her. More paranoia here picked at random from Lucy-marie  in the "Archiving" section, complaining about "a few high and mighty users" who are bent on putting her down. Eff Won has made 150 edits to date, 104 of them arguing on talk pages, and only 29 in article space. The content of his/her sandbox  is also not the kind of thing that new users can create in six edits, in my opinion. Bretonbanquet (talk) 23:51, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
— Berean Hunter   (talk)  20:25, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The last DeFacto sock which was blocked is * which is still within scope of checkuser data. If ample evidence is found and presented in diffs here to make the comparisons between ElfWon and that sock, a checkuser may look to see if they are connected as you suspect.
 * Eff Won is to Defacto socks. Looking through the archive and re running checkusers (against several), there is no stability in where these accounts edit from, some even going overseas, making it very hard to see who is related to one another. Each sock in the Defacto archive that I have checked seems to be editing from a different network each time, and does not cross back. This therefore just about invalidates the usefulness of CheckUser at this point. --  DQ  (ʞlɐʇ)  22:03, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Behaviourally speaking, Eff Won is obviously Lucy-marie: compare this obsession with bold print to this nearly identical instance. While some behavioural evidence between Eff Won and Jimjames1989, the most recent LM sock, is inconsistent, I consider there to be sufficient grounds to confirm a connection. Accordingly, I have blocked the named account as a sock. AGK  [•] 12:21, 17 September 2012 (UTC)