Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Makro/Archive

21 January 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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On 17 January 2014, Mark Burnett (producer) was nominated for deletion (by me). The creator of that page, as an AfC submission, was User:Makro. The same user had also accepted their own AfC submission of the same page, a highly unorthodox action.

Within eight minutes of Makro opining "Keep" on the AfD discussion, IP 90.214.105.156 commented on the AfD discussion, also arguing to keep the article, and echoing almost exactly the same phrasing as Makro had already used in the article itself ("has worked on many TV sets"). One of the IP's few other contributions in the same time frame was to edit a user sub-page of a user on whose talk page Makro turned up very soon aftwards.

After other editors !voted to delete the article, a new account User:Js46358 appeared to also !vote keep, had never edited on any other topic, and shared a tendency for odd typos with Makro - compare "heard of hime" with Makro's "happenes" in the AfD and "says your expertese" elsewhere.

After another Delete !vote from an established editor, new User:DSmith2014 then turns up, again at the time with only one other edit outside this topic. Dsmith2014 repeats (word for word and character for character) the "Has an IMDB page" keep rationale of User:Js46358. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:06, 21 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

 * - Endorsing check per behavioral evidence above. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * . ​—DoRD (talk)​ 17:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Socks all tagged and blocked indef, master blocked two weeks. Closing now. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * . ​—DoRD (talk)​ 17:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Socks all tagged and blocked indef, master blocked two weeks. Closing now. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * . ​—DoRD (talk)​ 17:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Socks all tagged and blocked indef, master blocked two weeks. Closing now. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * . ​—DoRD (talk)​ 17:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Socks all tagged and blocked indef, master blocked two weeks. Closing now. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

29 March 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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A little over a day ago, a discussion was opened here that discussed Makro's rapid re-reviews over at AFC. While defending himself, Makro stated that Belshay also had the same edit summary as himself when making reviews. The only problem is, the only re-review Belshay did at that time was this one, from March 16th and started re-reviewing en-masse shortly before Makro pointed it out here, much in the same style as Makro (large amounts of reviews in a short period of time).

Since some of us decided to essentially not recognize Makro's re-reviews (long story short, many of us don't actually believes that we were correct 100% of the time), Makro has ceased reviewing, and now Belshay has started doing all of the re-reviewing. One issue we had in Makro's contributions was that he was seemingly making hundreds of reviews in a very short period of time (see contribution history for more information, as well as the talk page), but the main issue is that once Makro stopped, Belshay reconfirmed 484 of Makro's reviews in 32 minutes, where they essentially agreed with Makro and didn't challenge any of what was being done there. Oddly enough, in the brief review of both of their submissions, I found that Belshay only posted reviews that stated that they didn't agree with the reviewer on my page.

One final thing that should be of note is that once I pointed out in this edit that Belshay had similar behavior to Makro, Belshay started changing their rationale from things like this to adding more information in their review reasons, which were essentially in the same prose format as Makro's until that point.

I posted on the talk page more information on the similarities between the two, but it essentially boils down to the fact that both of them have made a minimal amount of actual reviews, and then in recent days, both have started to rapidly re-review other's reviews, while stating that the original reviews are correct. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:59, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I should also add that besides the reviews, both users don't respond to any inquiries by users about their submissions, with Makro removing any questions, while Belshay just ignores them. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:10, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

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

In the case of sockpuppetry, I am not really sure how to disprove a negative. I am not Makro or in any way associated with any other Wikipedia account. Hopefully, there is some way someone can confirm that in an evidential sense. Also, I only received two messages from Ktr101 today. One was his acceptance of one of my wikipedia articles into the main space. And the second pertained to this, which I am concurrently responding. I don't see how that constitutes ignoring someone when its not even been more than a day. Also, just a factual point, I have the sixth highest number of reviews in all of Wikipedia, so I am just not clear on how that constitutes a minimal amount of participation in AFC. If there really was a problem, I would have appreciated a good faith attempt to notify me, explain to a novice AFC reviewer whatever issues are present, and explain what can be done in the future and what could be done to correct anything done already. At any rate, we can all take a deep breathe, exhale, and see a little good in people. Belshay (talk) 05:03, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * i have no connection with Belshay. Makro (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - - The diff with Belshay reconfirming 484 of Makro's reviews is a big red flag, but let's get CU to check. King of  &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 00:34, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * and are technically ❌.--Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots  21:51, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Closing. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 21:56, 2 April 2014 (UTC)