Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mgifford/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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I opened this AFD which was followed by a vehement objection by which is quite understandable but what has puzzled me greatly is in the aforementioned AFD, several Sleeper accounts, SPA’s & Very new users have all sprung out from thin air to !vote keeps. My evidence are as follows, In the aforementioned AFD we find a sleeper account named who has been present on Wikipedia for 8 years with only 8 edits (averaging 1 edit per year) advocating extensively also for the article to be kept, this can be found here (although has not !voted) but uses almost similar tone as  & since then has gone back to inactivity (side note: as of the time I opened this SPI they have only 8 edits ( I should also mention that  has been here for 14 years) Then we also observe here an IP address: 171.67.77.241, with only one edit which is a keep !vote on that same AFD, and finally we have , a single purpose account created less than 9 hours ago coming straight to that AFD !voting a keep here also. I believe if it swims like a duck & quacks like one it is probably a duck. Also notice how they all keep typing “keep & improve” rather than “Keep” only. If not sock puppetry then there’s a high probability that it is meat puppetry. My main concern is the wrong impact this actions may have on the outcome of this AFD. Using multiple accounts is a bad practice but using them to disrupt & ongoing AFD is even worse. Celestina007 (talk) 00:32, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

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

This is almost funny. Celestina007 seems to have a grudge against me because I made a mistake when editing the article in question. Technically I could certainly do what I was accused of, I'm a web developer after all. That said, I'm also very open about who I am. You can find me using the @mgifford alias (or some other variation of it) on most social media accounts. Other than my business accounts I haven't even set up a Facebook or Instagram account for my dog. Integrity is very important to me as I am a Quaker.

Anyways, none of this is stuff I can prove. What you can see is that I've made a lot of edits to Wikipedia on web accessibility. I think I've contributed some good work on this front.

Someone in the global web accessibility community died. He affected many of us and so there was an effort to gather up what information that we could find to help acknowledge the impact he made in the field. This was all done publicly on Twitter. Not sure that this would make someone a Sockpuppet manufacturer.

I'm not sure why Celestina007 keeps thinking this is some conspiracy. I do not know why folks voted to Keep & Improve, aside from the fact that the article doesn't have enough references, particularly from media. Yes, I should have started the article as a Draft article, but I didn't. There was a misunderstanding as I've said many times. There is no reason to whip this up into anything bigger than that. Mgifford (talk) 10:11, 28 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment If I’m not mistaken Our first dialogue can be found here on my TP. Anyone reading this comment including you yourself @ may choose to go through it & point out where the supposed “Grudge against you” can be found or observed in my comments when replying to you. Since the outcome of this SPI may ultimately determine the outcome of this AFD I am going ahead to ping, who is a check user that is always kind enough to assist in matters such as this SPI. If or not you have abused multiple accounts & multiple used IP addresses  to participate in the aforementioned AFD would be determined ultimately by a checkuser I am merely pointing out my observations & substantiating them with proofs I have gathered.Celestina007 (talk) 14:25, 28 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment: I created my account using an anagram of my social media username, gradualclearing. The Gradualclearing username already exists and my name, Sarah Horton, is the same as an existing article, so Sarahhorton was not allowed. I was inspired to create a Wikipedia account to contribute to an article about a prominent figure in Web accessibility, Joseph Karr O’Connor, who died recently. My plan moving forward is to contribute to web accessibility articles. Glacialgrandeur (talk) 20:02, 28 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment As I already stated on the AfD page, I am a WordPress contributor: I use the same username for Wikipedia and WordPress, as you can see on my user page here. You can also find me on Twitter, where my username is @RyokuhiOnWP, because @Ryokuhi already existed.
 * I first read on Twitter the fact that a Wikipedia page about Joseph Karr O'Connor had been created. Prominent members of the WordPress Community said it was a very nice way to honour Joseph Karr O'Connor's memory: I didn't know about him, so I checked the article and, when I first read it, knowing Wikipedia's guidelines about notability and the fact that only a few day had passed since Joseph Karr O'Connor's death, I was immediately worried that the article might be deleted. Since I hadn't been contributing to Wikipedia for a very long time and since I am an accessibility contributor to the WordPress project, I knew that adding to the article might have appeared suspicious, so I decided not to do anything.
 * On 10th January 2020, Mgifford got in touch with the WordPress accessibility group during the weekly chat, asking for help with the Wikipedia article that got nominated for deletion. Transcripts of the chat are available here (a free account is needed to see them) and Mgifford request can also be found in the meeting notes here. As nobody in the group had any knowledge about Wikipedia, nobody was able to offer any help to Mgifford. After the chat, I checked the AdF discussion and, since there was already a reference to a possible CoI, I decided not to get involved in order not to make the situation worse.
 * After some days, I changed my mind. I only wanted to give voice to many people who are not familiar with Wikipedia policies and who are not able to contribute themselves. I imagined that my contribution to the AfD discussion could cause some issues, but not a sockpuppet investigation.
 * Apart from taking part to the same chat on the 10th January 2020, where we didn't even talk to each other, I didn't know Mgifford before and didn't reach out to him after.
 * I didn't know Glacialgrandeur and had never heard of her before today.
 * Ryokuhi (talk) 00:30, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
I've just closed the AfD discussion this centers around, and without access to technical evidence, I did not really suspect sockpuppetry here. If anything untoward has happened here it seems at worst like some mention of the discussion was made off-wiki amongst people familiar with the subject, who then came to participate individually. On a behavioural basis I don't personally think this is actionable as a sockpuppetry investigation. ~ mazca  talk 17:22, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * . The users involved have explained themselves sufficiently, I think, and the !votes at the AfD are different enough in phrasing to indicate that they've been written by different people. It would be appropriate to leave nicely phrased messages on their talk page about how the Wikipedia community views canvassing on AfDs, but frankly it happens all the time amongst "experienced" Wikipedians (q.v. the level of categorization and links to wikiprojects and similar pages) so let's not be too harsh.  These users would be prime targets for encouragement to participate at a more regularized level.  Risker (talk) 02:22, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Convinced with replies. Nothing left to do here. Closing.. &#8208;&#8208;1997kB (talk) 14:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Convinced with replies. Nothing left to do here. Closing.. &#8208;&#8208;1997kB (talk) 14:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)