Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/MarkBA/Archive

Report date July 15 2009, 16:11 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by  B@xter 9

For code letter F see For blocked sockpuppets of MarkBA see: For further suspected sockpuppets: or check the other CU cases. Wladthemlat and Modrajedobra started to edit the same articles (especially the origin of Banská Bystrica's name section by removing or questioning the Hungarian name, ) almost at the same time and manner, but Modrajedobra has become dormant suddenly after he was accused by another user to be a sockpuppet of banned puppetmaster User:MarkBA, but Wladthemlat became very active. Wladthemlat and Modrajedobra's edits include the same prot-Slovak/Hungarian and Banská Bystrica issues, a favourite topic of MarkBA according to an earlier CU request. Tamas52x has only one edit, a comment on the MarkBA's other favorit article: Bratislava. Although his comment is full with anti-Hungarian sentiment, the account has a Hungarian name, "Tamas". And user WiserThanOwl is very much like Wladthemlat, calling constructive contributions of other users vandalism in their edit summaries in the articles connected with Slovakia.

It is also interesting that the "Wladthemlat" account was created shortly after WiserThanOwl had started sleeping.

(WiserThanOwl's very last edit was: --> Wladthemlat's very first edit was: )

The sudden "de-activation" of Modrajedobra after being accused suggest that there may be many more inactive accounts that need to be detected via CheckUser.

User:Baxter9 and User:Nmate are continuosly aggressively accusing Slovak users of sockpuppetry without any evidence to substatiate such a claim. I suspect that these are accusations in bad faith made only to put the editors off.
 * Comments by accused parties See Defending yourself against claims.

Correcting pro-Hungarian biased or otherwise deformed articles is not an evidence of sockpuppetry but merely a disagreement over the perceived quality and content of the article, which can be naturally shared among many independent Slovak or Hungarian editors due to their common 'foundations'. I am a legitimate single-account user with no links whatsoever to other accounts or even other wikipedians for that matter.

In a more concrete fashion - "Wladthemlat and Modrajedobra started to edit the same articles [...] almost at the same time and manner" is plain false, Modrajedobra edited those articles a year ago as well, I see no connection there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wladthemlat (talk • contribs) 12:17, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

The so-called evidence isn't true. If you check the links to my edits, you see that I didn't remove the Hungarian name of Banska Bystrica. I restored deleted citations and did minor copyediting. I don't know user Wladthemlat and I edit only one article in Wikipedia, so it isn't true that we edit the same articles. Users Baxter9 and Nmate have been accusing me of being some MarkBA since I joined Wikipedia, but they do it to every user from Slovakia (for example user Oficeri, see ). User Nmate deletes all contributions from Slovakia and his deletions of my contributions was stopped only by other non-involved users. Is it all right to accuse everyone from one country of being MarkBA and then delete their contributions? Modrajedobra (talk) 01:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I note that user WiserThanOwl was added by me. For what it's worth, it seems that his editing patterns and special interests are very similar to Wladthemlat's one.--Nmate (talk) 13:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments by other users
 * First Modrajedobra was who brought up that i accused him of sockpuppetry without any proof on WP ANI and then even on my talk page. Recently, Baxter9 and i came here to clear those editors of the suspicion, so i do not understand what the problem of Modrajedobra is as this is the proper place for the sockpuppet accusations.--Nmate (talk) 09:39, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "User:Baxter9 and User:Nmate are continuosly aggressively accusing Slovak users of sockpuppetry without any evidence to substatiate such a claim." Please STOP and dont even try to represent this case as a Anti-Slovak campaign by Hungarian users. There are a lot of slovak users on enwiki and there is no problem wit them, only few users make WP:DRAMA. Also as I remember we had common contributions, not? So please, dont say that we are against Slovak wikipedians. Thank you. Furthermore 4 users are listed."Correcting pro-Hungarian biased or otherwise deformed articles is not an evidence of sockpuppetry" You mean this under "Correcting"? Adding fake informations into article ("by the ancestors of the modern Slovaks", which mysteriously changed later to "Slavic", after I asked about it...)? Or the same POV pushing and again the same WP:OR? Or perhaps you belive this was a constructive edit? Dont you want to tell that the english version of your source says nothing about this (nor the slovak) so it is fake? (I forgot that you didnt know about that)"The so-called evidence isn't true. If you check the links to my edits, you see that I didn't remove the Hungarian name of Banska Bystrica." Are you sure ?Conclusion: I dont want to repeat myself, just read "Evidence submitted by B@xter9" section. Thank you.-- B@xter 9 11:31, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * First of all: this place is for investigating sockpuppetry accusations only, I don't see why you bring up specific edits in here.


 * Second: as I am not connected with Modrajedobra in any way I also take no responsibility for his edits. In the accusation, however, the dominant 'evidence' presented by you was that we both edit articles about Slovakia in a way you disagree with. But that's natural for the reasons mentioned.


 * Furthemore, it is true that you are accusing Slovak users specifically and en masse and you are eminently interested in articles about Slovakia, especially about the linguistic and hungary-related aspects. I also suspect those accusations are in bad faith as you are also eminently interested in positive wording of the Jobbik article which makes me question your neutrality. Your edit history also suggests frequent edit wars with the Slovak editors which is another motive for making disruptive bad-faithed accusations. wlad (talk) 12:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "this place is for investigating sockpuppetry accusations only, I don't see why you bring up specific edits in here." These edits are listed here to show the similarity of edits made by user Modrajedobra with the edits of banned user MarkBA. "you are eminently interested in articles about Slovakia" Did you check my contributions? I am not the one here who is interested in only 1-2 slovakia related article. I started to edit that article after Mr.Modrajedobra removed referenced material! After saying "I don't see why you bring up specific edits in here" (LOL!): "eminently interested in positive wording of Jobbik.."What? Are you serious? Did you check my edits? After I added referenced materials and I reverted vandalism, re-added fascism, warned vandal users my neutrality is disputed? Calling someone a fascist is positve discrimination??? OMG! Dont you think that you are the one who makes bad-faithed accusations?-- B@xter 9  12:45, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You started a discussion about the non-NPOV of those edits and this really is not the place to do that, that's why I pointed it out.
 * You are accusing me of being someone's sockpuppet, I am only defending myself here. You presented no significant evidence for such a claim and I honestly believe, that you made it more because of the nature and content of my edits (and the fact that you disagree with them) than because of the fact that you really do suspect me of being a sockpuppet of User:MarkBA. If I am wrong I apologise, but for the time being I stand behind my previous claims. I can give you the Fascism addition though.wlad (talk) 13:18, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, as it may not be true that you (Baxter9) are exclusively interested in articles about Slovakia, it certainly is true about User:Nmate whose edit history is almost entirely about Slovak topics and his edits are strongly pro-Hungarian. This only supports my opinion that there are motives other than genuine suspected sockpuppetry behind these accusations.wlad (talk) 13:47, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments

- noting that MarkBA is stale, checkuser would assist to prove a link between these listed accounts. and may recall checkuser information from the checks done in 2008. Peter Symonds ( talk ) 23:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The two confirmed socks have been blocked. Further action may be prudent on the remaining names based on historical edits. Nja 247 20:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

-- Avi (talk) 05:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Conclusions
 * ✅ Currently available technical evidence indicates the following accounts are related
 * / Currently available technical evidence is, overall, inconclusive regarding relationships between themselves or with those above. The timings of the edits do not rule out any relationship. However, the data is either geographically possible but on different computers, or similar technically but geographically disparate. As the latter may be possible by using a university proxy, the finding is not a straight inconclusive. Decisions need to be made based on behavioral and stylistic analysis.
 * / Currently available technical evidence is, overall, inconclusive regarding relationships between themselves or with those above. The timings of the edits do not rule out any relationship. However, the data is either geographically possible but on different computers, or similar technically but geographically disparate. As the latter may be possible by using a university proxy, the finding is not a straight inconclusive. Decisions need to be made based on behavioral and stylistic analysis.
 * / Currently available technical evidence is, overall, inconclusive regarding relationships between themselves or with those above. The timings of the edits do not rule out any relationship. However, the data is either geographically possible but on different computers, or similar technically but geographically disparate. As the latter may be possible by using a university proxy, the finding is not a straight inconclusive. Decisions need to be made based on behavioral and stylistic analysis.

Relationship with MarkBA is based on historical pages. -- Avi (talk) 05:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)