Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mermaid2008/Archive

02 April 2013

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Users all have a history of editing Cyberoam. At the least the accounts are WP:SPA and WP:COI's. Tech editor007 has more reasonable activity, but still has an interesting interest in Unified Threat Management technologies that Cyberoam deals with. Deleted articles on technologies in the arena. Sephiroth storm (talk) 19:23, 2 April 2013 (UTC), ,  Sephiroth storm (talk) 19:23, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * For some reason this didnt appear when I looked previously, the edits are old, but you can clearly see the Cyberoam edits, in addition the user contributed to User:Cyberoam's sandbox. Probably not a violation, but of note I think, user appears to have straighted out perhaps? Peter Mahen's edits are of the Cyberoam article, are active and relevant. Older accounts may not be active currently but could be linked (which is why I requested Check User), and could go active. Sephiroth storm (talk) 11:33, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment No problem, but what doesnt make sense? All the users have a history of editing the same article and appear to be single purpose accounts, primarily existing to edit articles related to Cyberoam. I've never spent much time at SPI so I wasnt aware the old accounts would be an issue, I also figured that they would be blocked to prevent future promotional edits. Sephiroth storm (talk) 11:09, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
I'm thoroughly confused here. All the accounts are stale except for Pete Mahen and 203.88.128.94, and I don't see any connection between the editing of these last two. If there is something else I'm missing, please supply specifics; otherwise, I'm inclined to close this SPI without taking any action. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 05:08, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * - and subsequent comments do not make sense. Rschen7754 08:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm closing this. We can't rule out that the Pete Mahen account may be related to Mermaid2008, or that the IP was used by Mermaid2008 back in 2008. That by itself however wouldn't be all that problematic. Alternate accounts were not used to deceive/disrupt/mislead, and casual users in particular often don't log in (see WP:ILLEGIT for what is considered inappropriate use). Blocking any of those accounts would not be appropriate (or helpful) at this point either: the first step would be to educate them that what they are doing is problematic. Nonetheless, the article was a blatant and copyright violation so I had no choice but to delete it. Amalthea 16:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)