Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Manveermalhi/Archive

11 February 2013

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Manveermalhi was blocked, so this user made virtually the same edits to the same article with the new account. Quack quack! Biker Biker (talk) 20:40, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

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— Berean Hunter   (talk)  02:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeffing sock and blocking master one week which includes a reset of his block evasion. Closing.

7 April 2014

 * Suspected sockpuppets


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Is a SPA. Similar editing and motives on the following articles:
 * Rajnath Singh
 * Narendra Modi
 * Confederation of Indian Industry
 * Rahul Gandhi

--RaviC (talk) 21:10, 6 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Caught a second sock editing on the Confederation of Indian Industry page, made a Wikipedia article for the his boss (namesake of the sock). Admissions of guilt here: https://twitter.com/ankitagaba/status/452342360744402944 --RaviC (talk) 11:11, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

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That Twitter feed is an indication that Ankitagaba and Manveermalhi know each other, but are different people. So I'm confused as to why you'd call it an "admission of guilt". The other account being accused as a sockpuppet is already blocked, just FYI (not as a sock though). --  At am a  頭 18:44, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi there, thanks for taking a look. Regarding the first account, I do understand that it's been blocked for violation of username policy. It would be good to do a CU in addition, as it would prevent the user from being able to get around the block of one of their sock accounts.


 * Regarding the second account: I agree that there is less going for this one, but if you take a look at the editing style, intentions and the articles edited by the two, it's very consistent and often contiguous. Even if we discount that, it shows that the user had a clear conflict of interest when writing the article. It seems very likely that both accounts are in fact run by Manveermalhi, the latter perhaps on behalf of the namesake of the account. --RaviC (talk) 22:11, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm going to ask for a CheckUser to look at this. If you look at this report it shows that all 4 accounts (the two alleged here, Manveermalhi, and the previously-blocked sock Shabazmalik) have a great deal of overlap. In particular, the strongest overlap is between Manveermalhi and Ankitagaba, who have 8 different pages in common. More than half (59 out of 92) of Ankitagaba's edits have been to articles that Manveermalhi also edited. It's worth noting that the oldest account out of all of these is Ankitagaba, which was created and began editing a year earlier than Manveermalhi. The 3 accounts, Manveermalhi, Ankitagaba, and Modifanclub have all edited in relatively recent time periods so they should have data that can be checked.


 * I think the history of Rajnath Singh is telling. You'll see Manveermalhi, Ankitagaba, and Modifanclub all editing together on the same day, with strikingly similar edit summaries (terse, with no ending punctuation and no beginning capitalization). This looks like strong behavioral evidence to me. Another similarity... None of these accounts have ever contributed to a user talk page or article talk page, which is unfortunate because it gives me less to compare (people who communicate in a free-form manner tend to have certain idiosyncrasies that can be matched) but that itself is an indication of behavioral similarity. In any case I think it's at least enough to warrant a check, if not quite enough for me to block anyone per WP:DUCK. --  At am a  頭 21:57, 17 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Checkuser comment: Results are that  and  are the same person; however, it appears that the first may be an abandoned account as it did not edit after the creation of the second account.  It seems a polite discussion with the user about the appropriate method of changing accounts or account names is more in order here.

on the relationship with - indications are that the users know each other, not that they're the same person. Technical evidence neither supports nor refutes the possibility of socking. The user agent is just far too common to be useful, and the IP ranges are highly dynamic and populated with many other similar-appearing accounts editing a range of topics. Two editors from the same geographic area editing within a very popular topic area about which they would have knowledge and ready access to material is not surprising; most Wikipedians edit in that way, especially when it comes to political articles. Suggest removing all the "sockpuppet" tags from the user pages. Risker (talk) 04:50, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the SPI report. Whilst I'm sure many accounts on this IP range are editing a range of topics, the political inclination, and method of editing is particularly suspicious, particularly in the method that both showered praise on members of the ruling INC, and attempted to demonise members of the opposition BJP, and all three have a shared interest in editing a non-political article, Confederation of Indian Industry. Anyway, regardless, we'll have to continue to be vigil for any more such edits. --RaviC (talk) 08:33, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The newer likely account has been soft username blocked so I think I'm just going to drop the stick and archive this. RaviC noted but it's not unlikely that they share an interest in this area. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 13:32, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

10 August 2015

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These accounts have all repeatedly added promotional material about Indian companies and it is fairly obvious that there is sockpuppetry going on. None of them are here to contribute and the edit summary of "To help with SEO" by one of the users sums up why they are here. Some of these are ducks (and there is probably meat as well) but I think there is sufficient deceptiveness to merit a sleeper check.

Manveermalhi created Raj Sharma (Market Research Entrepreneur) which RoshniDonny (already blocked "Repeatedly re-creating promotional pages" but stale) recreated once at that title and then again as Raj_Sharma_(entrepreneur) and Tassie.203 recreated as Raj_Sharma_(Entrepreneur) to which Manveermal added a photo.

Manveermal edited and then removed an AFD tag from Rakesh Jain (businessman) and then Manveermalhi recreated it at Rakesh Jain (CEO Reliance General Insurance).

Ankitagaba and Manveermalhi both edited a deleted version of Wonder_Cement 11 minutes apart:  and then Manveermal recreated it. Between them, both Manve__ accounts have written the entirety of Ankita Gaba who is a described as a "thought leader in Indian social media industry" (guess what, that completely fails V).

The link here is more tenuous, but the behaviour matches and there is crossover between accounts on the same article. Parthtaylor created Tarun_Singh_Chauhan and Rahuldigital removed a speedy tag before recreating it at Tarun chauhan. Rahuldigital added a link to the article to Wonder_Cement (he is their Management Advisor). SmartSE (talk) 23:01, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

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 * - to compare those accounts to each other (master and RoshniDonny are stale, others are not). Provided evidence is enough to run a CU check.  Vanjagenije  (talk)  21:05, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The master is still fresh - they edited 8 days ago. SmartSE (talk) 12:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Group 1 – The following accounts are ✅:
 * Group 2 – The following accounts are and  as to Group 1:
 * Group 3 – The following accounts are to each other and to Groups 1 and 2:
 * The technical evidence, even with respect to Groups 1 and 2, is not necessarily reliable. Behavioral evidence must be considered. Meat puppetry is a distinct possibility.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:21, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the check. The results aren't so surprising and I'm happy to block them all regardless per the evidence above, but it would be good if someone else could review it as well. SmartSE (talk) 16:47, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * , as I've gone through all this earlier I thought the behavior was a strong link and in conjunction with the technical evidence while probably suggesting meat puppetry in addition to the socking is strong enough for blocks all around. &mdash; Spaceman  Spiff  07:48, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok. Blocking all of them as sock/meat/promo. SmartSE (talk) 09:35, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Closing as all accounts have been blocked. &mdash; Spaceman  Spiff  17:46, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The technical evidence, even with respect to Groups 1 and 2, is not necessarily reliable. Behavioral evidence must be considered. Meat puppetry is a distinct possibility.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:21, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the check. The results aren't so surprising and I'm happy to block them all regardless per the evidence above, but it would be good if someone else could review it as well. SmartSE (talk) 16:47, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * , as I've gone through all this earlier I thought the behavior was a strong link and in conjunction with the technical evidence while probably suggesting meat puppetry in addition to the socking is strong enough for blocks all around. &mdash; Spaceman  Spiff  07:48, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok. Blocking all of them as sock/meat/promo. SmartSE (talk) 09:35, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Closing as all accounts have been blocked. &mdash; Spaceman  Spiff  17:46, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Closing as all accounts have been blocked. &mdash; Spaceman  Spiff  17:46, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Belated comment
For the record, this group of socks appears to be this Indian company: http://triature.co/ Several of the clients match and there is other evidence that I can't share due to WP:OUTING. SmartSE (talk) 11:29, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

27 September 2015

 * Suspected sockpuppets
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Vishipedia user recreated Raj Sharma as a repost of previously deleted versions of the same article by this group of socks. Please see the evidence from last time for the previous versions. SmartSE (talk) 13:15, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

I've also added Rvaidikar as they created Daniel_Fernandes_(comedian) which Vishipedia then edited 8 hours later. SmartSE (talk) 13:19, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

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 * and are ✅ to each other and  to the master. Blocked, tagged, closing.--Bbb23 (talk) 04:40, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

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Both engaged in WP:PROMOTION only creating Praveen Kenneth to bypass WP:AFC as Draft:Praveen Kenneth was declined and  has not edited beyond Draft:Praveen Kenneth — Amkgp  💬  16:21, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Courtesy for further help regarding the case. — Amkgp  💬  16:24, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

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 * Tassie 244 is stale. I think they're both sock or meat puppets of User:Manveermalhi, though.  They're all basically saying the same stuff about this guy.  Could a clerk move this to that case? NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:08, 12 December 2020 (UTC)


 * So moved, closing. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:50, 12 December 2020 (UTC)