Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/MKS Harsha/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Identical edits on Hinduism-related pages, recreation of Karna vs Arjuna. Yunshui 雲 水 07:09, 8 August 2018 (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
All accounts listed are ✅, blocked and tagged. No action needed, this filing is just for the record. Yunshui 雲 水 07:09, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



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Not sure why/how this wasn't in the last CU but significant overlap with the master and socks and similar nonsense/poorly worded recreation of Vrishaketu CHRISSY MAD  ❯❯❯  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  15:44, 20 August 2018 (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
❌, closing.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:11, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

 * Group 1


 * Group 2


 * Group 3


 * Group 4


 * Unclassified


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

Background: Arjuna and Karna are mythological figures, half-brothers, rival archers, and combatants on opposite sides of the Kurukshetra War in the roughly 2000 year-old Indian epic, Mahabharata. Unfortunately, their combat has not ended on wikipedia and over the past few years, possibly dating back to 2013, two or more (sets of?) users have continuously (1) dumped large amounts of text from the epic onto these and related articles, and (2) extolled the superiority of Karna/Arjuna while belittling the other. Edit-warring, disruptive editing and (confirmed) sockpuppetry has followed. Afaik, this is not a significant real-world or religious issue, which makes me suspect that we are dealing with a very small number of sockmasters with idiosyncratic idee fixe.

Particulars:
 * was previously named Karna DV, and Karna fan club before that, and has been exclusively editing in the topic-areas discussed in the background. Compare with the usernames and editing of and their CU-confirmed socks, such as,  etc. What makes this a bit complicated is that, despite the previous usernames, Sri Harsha 191817 and MKS Harsha, have made some seemingly anti-Karna edits (see discussion (here), which may be explained by their contention that Initially I was fan of character Karna. But later I read sources and got grip of full content.... They deny socking or even knowing what that word means.
 * ,, are serial socks created as soon as the previous sock gets blocked. Example edits: , , ; similar edits by 2409:4060:2086:3290::2197:38a1.
 * and have been edit-warring at Arjuna and related pages (see intersection), and attempting to get the other blocked.  joined in at Sri Harsha 191817's side at Talk:Karna (eg,, ) besides being heavily involved in this whole topic area.
 * Sri Harsha 191817 is involved in a parallel edit-war with and  at Hindu mythological wars.
 * There seems to be a side-skirmish over whether Arjuna is the equivalent of 2 or 3 maharathis (great warriors) with Raja1811Narasimhan and Shubham942001 on opposite sides.
 * Not listing diffs for the IPs since they are ever-changing; duck-cases, except for identifying the exact-sockmaster; and CU won't be able to publicly comment in any case.
 * There are other possible sock-accounts, such as, who have been long active in this are but have not edited recently; and, other transitory/sleeper accounts I have likely missed.

To be clear: I don't expect all the above accounts to have MKS Harsha alone as the sockmaster. There seem to be at least two sockmasters involved but a CU may be better able to decide who belongs in which set and, arguably, the exact classification doesn't even matter. Other possibilities for sockmaster include (SPI). Abecedare (talk) 19:30, 8 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks User:DeltaQuad for the input. I'll take another look at providing specific diffs for the Group 3, 4 editors and see if there is more behavioral evidence linking Sri Harsha 191817 to any of the other editors I listed (at present their most direct connection is to and their confirmed socks from 08 August 2018, which may be too stale to confirm through CU tools). Will get back in around a day and will ping you when ready. Abecedare (talk) 03:12, 9 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Group A


 * Group B1


 * Group B2

Evidence I found Amanda's tentative grouping of the socks to be very helpful in organizing the editors and evidence in my own mind and here. So I am stealing the idea albeit, with some re-ordering. For readability, I have collapsed the earlier text (although, it of course remains relevant) and named my groups differently so there is less confusion as to which grouping is being referred to.
 * Group A, which is just, is a sock of . Evidence:
 * (copying from earlier) was previously named Karna DV, and Karna fan club before that, and has been exclusively editing in the topic-areas discussed in the background. Compare with the usernames and editing of  and their CU-confirmed socks, such as,  etc.
 * MKS Harsha, Sri Harsha 191817 and, another known sock, not only share similar user names, but the latter two also self-declared their real-name to be "Sri Harsha" on their respective wikipedia userpages
 * In terms of editing, Sri Harsha's very first edit on wikipedia in Dec 2018 was deep-reverting the Arjuna article to a state close to where earlier MKS socks had left it (I haven't been able to determine the exact version they were "reverting" to; possible that the editors were maintaining an offline copy). Since then they have worked systematically to undo any edit that doesn't comply with their POV; hence the huge fraction of their edits being reversions. Same behavior seen at Karna starting with this deep revert.
 * Stylistic peculiarities eg, use of the word "resource"
 * Peculiar (and POV!) language added: ... since Karna had a habit of flying away from the battlefield after being defeated vs ... because larna had a very bad habit of flying away from battle field.
 * POV overlap: need to see the whole editing history but for a simple comparison see this edit by Sri Harsha 191817 and the (deleted) article, Karna vs Arjuna, created by prior socks.
 * Group B All share a pro-Karna/anti-Arjuna POV in opposition to MKS Harsha et al. Those in Group B1 are definitely socks of each other, with some unknown sockmaster (possibly but I haven't examined their sockfarm's editing peculiarities, besides the blatant POV pushing, to be sure); see their edits and edit-summaries at Arjuna and Hindu mythological wars for evidence. Those in Group B2 share the same POV but the behavioral evidence alone is not strong enough to be certain of their socking/sockmaster(s). May be CU could help, but even aside from the potential socking, the SPAs warrant warnings/blocks for disruptive editing and soapboxing.
 * I have removed from my earlier list because, aside from editing in the same topic area, they don't share commonalities with either of the above two camps.
 * Pinging . Abecedare (talk) 22:25, 9 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I believe all the accounts that could be blocked based on behavioral evidence alone have now been blocked (except, User:Sangita 237920, but since they are currently inactive, that's not a huge deal). So unless CU can link the Group B2 accounts to each-other, or to the B1 accounts, this SPI may be ready to close. Any issues arising from revival of any of these accounts can be handled on a case-by-case basis.
 * PS: In reviewing the article/account histories last week, I realized that contrary to my earlier memory I wasn't involved with any of these pro-/anti-Karna/Arjuna accounts as an editor; I had only been involved in blocking some earlier socks in conjunction with in Jan/Feb-2019. So I should be able to help out more directly if these issues re-arise although I won't use the bit in the current instance in order to avoid appearing to be both the prosecutor and the judge. Abecedare (talk) 21:09, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 * This sounds sensible to me. I'll leave the blocking to you (no hurry) but can seed an Aman742000 SPI page for future use; will wait for this SPI to be closed though to avoid creating a mess through premature actions. Abecedare (talk) 21:29, 14 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I have created an SPI report for Ayan2312003 related accounts. Unless the clerk has a suggestion for a better way to split the reports, I believe both the SPIs are ready to close and archive. Abecedare (talk) 17:22, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Infully agree to whatever decisions you take since you know best, all I want is factual display of information. Arjuna page glorified with lack of any citations but Karna edits seem to depricate him a lot with words like 'sexual assault' where the epic doesn't have any such thing, I just asked why and have been politely trying to ask the admins to change such derogatory marks, thank you (Dinesh2069 (talk)

I would also like to add that Karna wiki page still has massive anti Karna propaganda and posts without any proper source. If you can tell me how I can abide to the rules and provide proper facts so admins can change it then it will be a great help. (Dinesh2069 (talk) 10:43, 18 April 2020 (UTC)) 10:40, 18 April 2020 (UTC))''

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - It's pretty difficult to run these checks as you have combined two sockmasters here, so it's hard to figure who you think is who. I'm going to try and start seperating them, but if you can do a better job of cleaning it up, please do so. --  Amanda  (aka DQ) 02:28, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, i've classified them into groups based on your comments and what I saw. I didn't see anything obvious that screamed to merge the groups. Every other group seems to be editing against group 1 - which is alleged to be the master. Is that correct? Also, i have already checked group 2 who are all to each other, . --  Amanda  (aka DQ) 02:44, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * My last comment for now is Group 3 & 4 don't have enough diff provided evidence to assert that they may be related to the others in their group. Therefore, . As for Sri Harsha 191817, on RP's talk page, you seem to claim that they aren't even the master, so I really don't know how to proceed with that one given it's only one account with no suspected socks. -- Amanda  (aka DQ) 02:56, 9 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Editing content pattern-wise, groups 2 and 3 are very similar and I'm going to block the whole lot later today. The first and third IPs in 4 are also definitely a part of those two sets but not much point in blocking them. I'm not sure of group 1. Abecedare, could you see if you can find behavioral similarities? --regentspark (comment) 15:14, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Definitely making my head hurt! Ok, so the two harshas are clearly socks. MKS Harsha was blocked back in August 2018 and the Sri Harsha appeared a couple of months later. Both have the same style (the "sir", for example). So that much is clear and I've blocked Sri Harsha. Group B1 are part of sock farm, that too is likely (I've tagged them as MKS Harsha socks so that needs to be corrected). Probably too late for CU to tie them to King Porus though. CU might show a relationship between the B1 and B2 accounts and that would get us somewhere. We can then see which accounts are related, pick the earliest account and assume, for lack of anything better, that that one is the sock master.--regentspark (comment) 01:51, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm. My feeling is that we split this into two. Once with MKS Harsha as the sock master (group A) and one with Aman742000 as the master (Group B). That way we can address the future socks that are bound to show up. I'll block the Sangita account as a sock of the Aman master and tag the three accordingly. I have some RL stuff to clear up (from the comfort of my sofa!) so the blocking and tagging will have to wait a day unless someone else wants to do it. --regentspark (comment) 21:21, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. This SPI can now be closed and archived. --regentspark (comment) 00:49, 16 April 2020 (UTC)