Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Manastir65/Archive

03 June 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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I'm filing this somewhat after the fact. In April User:Manastir65 created the page Bioregulatory medicine and it was eventually nominated at AfD. I didn't participate at the AfD, but someone did ask for the page's recreation at REFUND. I looked and saw a lot of SPAs and while that's not necessarily a case of sockpuppetry, I am somewhat suspicious of this given that the two IPs are both editing from the UK. I don't think that all of these are necessarily the same person, but a lot of the "keep" arguments seem to be phrased in a similar fashion so I think that there's a reasonable enough doubt to think that checking to see if these are socks or just a case of WP:MEAT is reasonable enough. I'll try to get a few of the editors that participated in the AfD to comment on this, as they could probably provide insights that I'm not aware of. If they aren't socks I apologize, but the creation of several accounts around the same time is a bit suspicious. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   03:55, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.'' I refute unconditionally accusation of sock puppetry, but merely believe in system approach to science, particularly in medicine and that is reason I have and will support Bioregulatory medicine on Wikipedia; since I am trained physician in Bioregulatory approaches myself and truly believe we need a new medicine fit for 21st Century and Wikipedia support would be immensely important, thank you! Bogorodica (talk) 11:40, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I moved this from the clerk section to here. Also, the thing about this is that we're not really arguing whether or not bioregulatory is notable (that was done via AfD), but whether or not there was any sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry going on. This is not a second AfD. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   15:16, 3 June 2014 (UTC)


 * sure I understand, but it is not sockpupetry if one of my account was suggested by Wikipedia to close down because of potential name copyright infringement (Biomediccentre), and discussion was continued with new user name Bogorodica, as it happened in the middle of discussion; sometimes I would forgot to log in and IP would be shown instead; I find this overly pedantic and unnecessary time wasteBogorodica (talk) 16:43, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I'll try to cut down on wiki-jargon and acronyms, since we have new editors here, and some of our processes are not very user-friendly. bobrayner (talk) 21:56, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I raised concerns about the Bioregulatory medicine article. It was promoting a new concept. Another editor took it to Articles for deletion/Bioregulatory medicine. Several brand-new accounts, and IP addresses, suddenly appeared to !vote "Keep". Some of these described their personal credentials or perspectives in a way that seemed closely aligned with the one or two inventors/promoters of Bioregulatory medicine. Overall, the consensus was to delete.
 * After I mentioned possible sockpuppet problems on Articles for deletion/Bioregulatory medicine, Tokyogirl79 asked me to comment here.
 * A minority of the accounts & IPs have edited other pages; almost always related to Bioregulatory medicine, for instance adding links from other pages. Looking at behaviour, I think it likely that all (or almost all) are controlled by one or two people. (I'm guessing two, due to timing, but I could easily be wrong). This kind of switching back and forth is against wikipedia rules, and culturally it's very much taboo. Those rules might not always be clear to a new editor, certainly somebody who's just making a few tweaks to articles, but when it comes to a deletion discussion it's pretty obvious that sneaky vote-stacking is wrong.
 * There is a tool called "checkuser" which can see some technical logs related to your editing, and hence reveal whether two accounts were both active from the same computer. Wikipedia takes privacy seriously, so these logs aren't published, and they are only accessible by trusted individuals who are very wary of disclosing information - and, in particular, it's unlikely that they would say which IP address is associated with a named account.
 * I doubt that checkuser would be useful here - not for lack of technical evidence, but rather there might not be a good enough reason to justify accessing those logs full of unpublished technical detail.
 * The article was bad, but it's gone now, and there is no need for vengeance. We should make decisions on the margin. Despite the attempt at ballot-stuffing the deletion discussion, the editor(s) now seem to be following wikipedia's existing (and sometimes baffling) processes, such as deletion review (having tried Requests for undeletion, to be told that's not the right place to ask for a page to be undeleted). If somebody were to block a sockpuppet now, I wouldn't lose any sleep; but I think people now realise that sockpuppets/meatpuppets are easily spotted and if they did anything more to promote "bioregulatory medicine" their work would be swiftly undone by others (with or without a block).
 * The main problem - the article - has now gone, although we still have Draft:Damir Shakambet, a hagiography of the inventor of "bioregulatory medicine", which was created two weeks ago by, an account whose only purpose - as far as I can tell - was to promote that person. Most editors can't see who did what edits to a page that has since been deleted, so I can't tell what Quadtetra did on Bioregulatory medicine or other deleted pages; but Quadtetra was recently warned that other pages they created, Dr. Damir Sakambet and Damir Sakambet, were being deleted. After two failed attempts at creating hagiographic articles, they started a draft instead. I will add Quadtetra to this sockpuppet investigation for completeness, but they didn't participate at the deletion discussion, so I think it's possible that Quadtetra is controlled by a different person who was acting on behalf of the person controlling these more recent accounts, or vice versa. Which would mean "meatpuppet" rather than "sockpuppet", although that difference is a matter of diagnostics - the way we treat such behaviour should still be similar.
 * We have an obvious conflict of interest problem. Wikipedia's rules on conflict of interest are not perfectly clear (there are grey areas), but suffice to say that most articles which are deleted at AfD got there because they weren't notable or because they were full of synthesis or spam trying to make the topic much more important than it actually is; and articles like that are often created by somebody who really wants to promote their small business, new idea, or garage band.

have a sweet sleepBogorodica (talk) 00:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is open source database and all people can express themselves the way they seem suitable, and Wikipedia set the rules, making sure these rules are fair and applied so that everybody can express equally until reaching joint consensus. Sock puppetry or meatpupetry is something that I do not approve, but when above editor create witch hunt and pursue their own rather then wider interests, in the orgy of fire burning supposed witches, that is really worrying. It is definitely out of order to present innuendos, delete references, as above editor presented article for deletion and was instrumental in this process too, and continue to manipulate system in place by creating independent investigations and judgements, frustrating Wikipedia process in place. I fear that such unhealthy eagerness may burn us all in the process diminishing Wikipedia standing.
 * I have already addressed the issue of two different user names, since Wikipedia asked me to change user name due to another similar name potentially copyright issue, so I obliged to Wiki call and changed name from Biomediccentre to Bogorodica and since that took place in the middle of AfD that may have created impression of deliberate change which is not the case. Indeed I am a new editor and this is a new process for me so perhaps learning rules and processes but would prefer to see from others rather moderate and sensible discussions round the topics and serious issues, rather then continual discussion and accusations about rules and internal politics.Bogorodica (talk) 00:31, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Finally, regarding the main article that instigated the whole process including unsubstantiated accusation, the article itself has not gone, as it is currently at deletion reviewBogorodica (talk) 00:35, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems that article was not received well by other editors on delete review and that is fair, so thank you all for help and constructive criticism. I have not created page myslef but some other people and they all messed up using wrong references and totally wrong angle. I myself started doing page on same topic last year but was waiting for more scientific data before submitting article but here we are. Great learning experience and as a great fun of Wiki concept hopefully will work together again in future, bets wishesBogorodica (talk) 06:25, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - I have looked over this case, and as admitted below Bogorodica = Biomediccentre. That said, being a retired CU, I know that CU will most likely not produce any useful results in this case just because of the nature of the location and nature of the edits on the AFD. I'm also not convinced these are the same person. MEATs I could see, but there is a lack of a consistant message beyond them wanting to keep the article, which likely means multiple people. I therefore see no action to take on this case, but I encourage another case if further editing provides more evidence. -- DQ   (ʞlɐʇ)  14:23, 16 June 2014 (UTC)