Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Maasuni/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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

See COIN case opened today.

These accounts have been tracking the career of Sander van der Linden. The content at that article, written by these socks and IPs thereof, used to say, "He started his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science, but soon moved to work on the psychology of risk with Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale University. Leiserowitz was a doctoral student of Paul Slovic. In 2014, van der Linden moved to the Department of Psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University to work with Eldar Shafir at the Kahneman Center for Behavioral Science. At Princeton, van der Linden was a Fellow of Mathey College, alongside colleagues, including Susan Fiske."


 * Maasuni's (van der Linden earned his masters from Maastricht University) first edit in 2010 was creating Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (which is the center at the London School of Economics where he got his PhD).
 * Sciencemajor1's first edit in 2013 was to Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the same day, that person created Anthony Leiserowitz
 * Sciencemaniac101's first edit, in 2014, was to Anthony Leiserowitz and the day after their first edit they created Edward Maibach. van der Linden collaborated with Maibach and they first published together in 2015 and more in 2017 on the notion of "inoculating" the public against fake news
 * The master "woke up" an in 2016 created the "Gateway belief model" which is promotional for van der Linden, Leiserowitz, and Maibach.
 * Science contributor101's first edit in 2017 was creating the Sander van der Linden page.
 * Maasuni uploaded this image of van der Linden in 2017 which was later added to the article about him by one of the many, many SPA/PROMO IP editors that edited that page, as listing at Talk:Sander van der Linden and the COIN case linked above.
 * Academic contributor is very recent, and was created a few hours after the COIN case opened. Its first edit was to the  Leiserowitz page.

These accounts all have similar names, have all edited the same small group of pages about Sander van der Linden and people/academic centers related to him, and ideas he has tried to publicize.

This is very similar to the case at COIN about Brian Wansink who is also an academic who thinks about media/social media and uses it to promote themselves and their work (and to try to change the world). Likewise to the SPI case HRS395. They each have seen WP as a social media platform useful for promotion, and socked to abuse it for that.

These accounts are all very clearly the same person, following van der Linden's career and editing about him and his colleagues and his ideas, promotionally. One of the socks, Science contributor101, wrote here Yes I also created Sciencemaniac101 and wrote here: the van der Linden page has only been edited by a small number of users including two of my accounts. Two of them!! So how many are there, one wonders.

I requested a CU but I do not think it is necessary for these accounts; the behavioral evidence alone is very strong. You can do one to look for other socks, perhaps. Jytdog (talk) 21:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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 * Given that they have only admitted to using two accounts I think a CU on the three non-stale accounts would be helpful. Note that they now seem to have switched to using a virtual private server to mask their IP. Not that you will make any comment on it, but I have blocked . SmartSE (talk) 09:59, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Smartse's analysis, these accounts are at a minimum working together for the same or closely related promotional purposes. However I wouldn't be surprised if some of these are meatpuppets, not sockpuppets, so a behavioral analysis may end up being necessary. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 07:08, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
The master in this case is stale but the following are ✅ to each other and clearly switching accounts to deceive:

— Berean Hunter   (talk)  16:07, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * is to the above group.
 * Behaviourally Sciencemajor1 and the master are perfect match to the blocked accounts so I will block them too. SmartSE (talk) 16:35, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * All blocked and tagged. Closing.  QEDK ( 後  ☕  桜 ) 08:09, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



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Procedural filing to note that I've blocked this account as a WP:DUCK. It's obvious from their contribs. SmartSE (talk) 17:38, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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Suspected sockpuppets





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

I blocked FlynnBytes as a DUCK in May and semi-protected the article until August. The other two accounts are both very new (< 50 edits) and yet have both edited Sander van der Linden almost as soon as they are able to. Biodome_fan added a self-serving (and mis-attributed) quote to the article and Canyoueditthis? added an official image, uploaded to commons by the obviously related Justtouploadphoto. They also seem to have on commons that they used to try and get around OTRS. SmartSE (talk) 19:54, 23 July 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
— Berean Hunter   (talk)  22:43, 13 August 2018 (UTC) ,
 * It appears that both and  edits through proxy connections, which it makes it difficult to distinguish. Regardless,  is ✅ to  based on the archive, and  appears to be  when taken behavioral evidence into consideration. I have blocked both accounts with different tags.During the check, I have noticed that  may belong to Sockpuppet investigations/CAD Red Plaanet. What's interesting is that the accounts surfaced when I checked the range for FlynnBytes  are behavioral wise identical to CAD Red Plaanet, but in FlynnBytes's case their behavioral pattern does seem closer to Maasuni. There is probably some untangling that needs to be done here, so pinging two CUs  and  that did the most recent check on these two cases for second opinion. Alex Shih (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The use of proxies isn't surprising as they'd started doing that while logged out originally e.g. Special:Contributions/185.230.127.114. I've had a look at and   as well as the SPI but I don't think there is any relation between them and this SPI. CAD Red Plaanet looks like professional UPE, whereas the master in this case is likely a COI individual. The crossover is presumably because they are using the same proxy services. SmartSE (talk) 09:45, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Canyouedithis? used a range in common with Sciencemaniac101 making them likely to the master as Alex has suggested. I would call these accounts ✅ on the same /24 network and sometimes the same IP for a couple of them:
 * I've emailed you a bit of evidence to see if you agree. If so, the tags might need adjusted. I'm not sure about a CAD Red Plaanet connection.
 * I've emailed you a bit of evidence to see if you agree. If so, the tags might need adjusted. I'm not sure about a CAD Red Plaanet connection.
 * I've emailed you a bit of evidence to see if you agree. If so, the tags might need adjusted. I'm not sure about a CAD Red Plaanet connection.
 * I've emailed you a bit of evidence to see if you agree. If so, the tags might need adjusted. I'm not sure about a CAD Red Plaanet connection.
 * I've also blocked as a DUCK (just stale). Given this case, the chances of a new user evading ACPERM to create an article linked to Sander van der Linden is basically zero. SmartSE (talk) 23:12, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Given 's kind input, I have updated the tag for and tagged . Closing. Alex Shih (talk) 07:26, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets



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

This editor has similar interests to the previous socks. See this where the article was edited by an IP the master previously used 4 minutes after this account. There's other evidence that probably shouldn't be public but which makes this link even more certain. SmartSE (talk) 08:39, 24 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Sorry it wasn't clear. See e.g. . SmartSE (talk) 09:55, 11 July 2019 (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

 * - How do we know that the IP was previously used by this master?  Vanjagenije   (talk)  22:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, I see now. But, how do we know that the IP is still used by the same person? Almost a year have passed since it was used by this master. IS there any other connection? After so much time have passed, the IP may be assigned to any other random user.  Vanjagenije  (talk)  14:17, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * No further response from filer. Closing. Bbb23 (talk) 14:05, 1 August 2019 (UTC)