Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/LudoVicar/Archive

17 January 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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This reports concerns the article, a music industry celebrity who was convicted of sex offences and is a controversial figure as a result. The article has over a very long period been subject to editing by SPAs and IPs who seek to add promotional material to the article or remove "negative" material. In the past it has been thought that there was also a WP:COI issue with such edits. See, for example, this SPI thread. Until just before Christmas the article contained much "promotional" style material but in the last three weeks has been re-written. As result three SPAs have appeared at the article with the aim of restoring it to something much closer to the previous style.

They each have different persona to disguise, IMHO, their linkage but they all seem to me to have the same purpose and arrived at the article within a short time of each other. Progrockfan is a longer-term SPA on the article (see contribs) but returned with this and this yesterday. LudoVicar began editing today with a lerge number of edts to the article and the talk page - it's probably best to just look at today's revision history for both. Pedohater is slightly different. This user claims to be a "hater" of King and appeared just before Christmas to applaud the recent changes to the article with edits like this. But, IMHO, the way he phrases his "praise" is meant, in fact, to be supportive of King. For example, in this post he says "the clever way of getting the agenda across is to be more subtle; remove any facts or links that put across his defence side or his 'achievements'". I don't believe someone with the POV he is claiming would express it in a way which makes that POV appear dishonest. This is reminiscent of Progrockfan's comment here that "he has no wish to defend" King or here where he says it "may well be right" that King is a "revolting pervert". It should be noted that Progrockerfan and LudoVicar have surprisingly detailed knowledge of the subject.

I have also added two other SPAs, Monica Santa and Alinceinsprings. They have not edited the article since the recent changes but approach the article in the same way as LudoVicar and Progrockerfan: mimising the convictions and aggranddizing aspects of his career. There is also a similarity in the user names (i.e. a play on a town name, one Australian one Californian). It should be noted that the editing pattern by Progockerfan, Aliceinsprings and Monica Santa has been similar in that each leave gaps of weeks or months between edits then edit the article several times in a day but often add one or two edits to other article(s) as well on that day. They never, as far as I can see, have an editing day when they don't edit the article and only edit other articles instead. (In the case of Aliceinsprings, please note that The Pink Marble Egg is a film made by Jonathan King.) DeCausa (talk) 11:19, 17 January 2014 (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
There's a credible and legitimate concern here, but not enough for me to be happy issuing blocks on behavioural evidence alone. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  12:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ the five above plus . ​—DoRD (talk)​ 15:27, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * All blocked and tagged. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  15:44, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

20 April 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.
 * Editor interaction utility

SPAs on. (Long term problem of COI editing on this article, the last manifestation of which was the blocked LudoVicar socks). Ellymental has very similar traits to the other LudoVicar socks: usually edits one or two other articles on Jonathan King making cosmetic minor changes on the same day as editing the King article, but then has a gap of months before any other editing. Never edits another article in a day without editing the King article. Has a POV of supporting the promotion of King and diminishing his conviction for sex offences. Likely COI.

Ellymental edited the article today for the first time since last summer. The user restored edits one of the IPs listed had made. The IPs (only contribs is editing this article over last 3 days - unsourced PoV edits promoting the article's subject eg ) could no longer edit the article due to semi-protection being put in place earlier today by User:Callanecc and Ellymental immediately stepped in to restore the IPs edits.

Ellymental is a long term sleeper created in 2009. In the first SPI in 2009 concerning COI editing of this article (see here), linkage was made to the location of the then socking IPs and the known location of the subject of the article, which was the ip address of the same hotel. This was explained in this article talk page thread referenced in the SPI. Ellymental intervened in that article talk page to claim they had just seen the subject of the article in a completely different location (on a different continent): see here. Clearly it can be seen from the context of that article talk page thread that this was untrue and intentional disinformation: Ellymental was trying to assist in the COI socking in 2009, but was overlooked in that investigation. DeCausa (talk) 19:46, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * For info, one of the blocked LudoVicar socks,, has posted today a request to the blocking admin, User:Yunshui, to be unblocked. DeCausa (talk) 22:00, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, no - that was my talkback drawing Yunshui's attention to my comment about Aliceinsprings probably being the sockmaster, not LudoVicar... Peridon (talk) 10:46, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
 * No, Aliceinsprings posted this appeal request at 21:23 20 April 2014, UTC, 2 hours after I made this report and 8 hours after the IPs were prevented from editing the article because of semi-protection. This after hearing nothing from this account since it was blocked in January. DeCausa (talk) 15:16, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a general request to anyone - the talkback for Yunshui is from me. Looking closer, Ellymental appears to be the oldest account, beating Aliceinsprings by about five months - and both are years older than LudoVicar. Peridon (talk) 18:26, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Who they made the request to is not material. The point I was making is the fact of the request and its timing. Ellymental won't be the first of these socks. A batch was got rid of in 2009 (linked to above) that went back years before that. There could easily be other sleepers older than Ellymental that happen to be stale at the time an SPI is done then get reactivated. There were socks years older than LudoVicar in the batch that was got rid of in January of this year. This is a long term project for the sockmaster. The likely original account was in fact discussed in 2009 (but hasn't been discussed here and is inactive). If you read the 2009 SPI, that account wasn't blocked because (a) it was stale and (b) who was behind it. DeCausa (talk) 18:56, 21 April 2014 (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
This is a blast from the past. I've seen with problems at the King article before, see here where I was dealing with sockpuppets even back then (five years ago)! I wasn't even an administrator yet in those days. I was brought to that discussion from a notice left at WP:COIN. That discussion led to this SPI which connected a number of editors together. Those editors may or may not be connected to LudoVicar all these years later. I'll note that Ellymental's account was created almost a month after CU connected all of those accounts together, and no follow-up was made to SPI or anywhere else to try to connect the editor to them.

The IPs are interesting. 86.155.166.220 was listed in the SPI report back in 2009 as a suspected sock. No action was taken on it at the time, but comparing it to the three IPs above shows that they are all BTnet IPs from the middle of London. This is not a surprise for me, I suspected that Ellymental was a sockpuppet of the previous confirmed batch (the oldest of which, by the way, happened to be Joneseyboy2007). Another probable sockpuppet of that batch is Alpacatracker, who was created one day after the other socks were identified by CU and blocked, and had a single edit to the article talk page to make a snarky comment to everyone. I'll also note that Ellymental seems interested in information related to Italy, which is shared by the confirmed sockpuppet Special:Contributions/Monica Santa.

I'm going to request CU check Ellymental, in the hopes that information isn't stale. I'm pretty sure that Ellymental is a sock of someone, given their past, but I'd like to see if this is indeed connected to LudoVicar or anyone else. --  At am a  頭 19:40, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * and are ✅ to blocked LudoVicar sock .--Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots  21:56, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Very interesting. I'd suspect that the LudoVicar socks are probably the same as the old group from 2009. I'll take care of these confirmed sockpuppets. --  At am a  頭 22:34, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I blocked both editors. I blocked them as sockpuppets of LudoVicar even though Ellymental is years older. Ellymental was pulled out of a dusty sock drawer as an old sleeper so it was used like any regular sockpuppet would be. If we wanted to change all of this to reflect a new sockmaster, I wouldn't use Ellymental, I'd call Joneseyboy2007 the sockmaster, since I'm sure that this sock group is the same as that old sock group (after all, Ellymental showed up when those socks were blocked and all of these socks have been making the same edits). But that may be more trouble than it's worth, it might just be easier to leave it as-is. I'll mark this for closure, if a clerk wants to change how it is archived I'll leave it to them. --  At am a  頭 22:52, 30 April 2014 (UTC)