Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Miacek/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Note: please also see SPI:Lokalkosmopolit as that is the same user although I can't remember if an explicit connection was ever made to that effect on-wiki. The user also edited under the username Estlandia for awhile. Background: User:Miacek was indefinetly topic banned from anything related to Poland (and also received a one way IBAN with another user) in December 2013. Here's the AE that led to that. He basically stopped editing as Miacek at that point (note the break between Dec 2013 and April 2018 in the edit history switched to editing as User:Lokalkosmopolit for awhile. Except he managed to get himself indef banned as Lokalkosmopolit  in April 2014. A whole slew of sock puppets followed (see the Lokalkosmopolit SPI) the most relevant of which are these: Advice Polack (he does like to use Polish-themed user names as a way to troll other users, since a lot of his edits are vehemently anti-Polish (and also anti-Muslim, anti-women, anti-etc.) and Dorpater. Note that the Dorpater sock was banned May 29 2016. "Polska Jest Najwazniejsza" was created May 30, 2016, the day after. Miacek then returned in April 2018 and quickly got himself into trouble over some Gamergate/Incel stuff and got indef banned for good by User:Courcelles

I'm the one who filed most of the SPIs against Lokalkosmpolit's socks and I've also called out Miacek/Lokalkosmopolit/Estlandia out on Wikipediocracy for his continuous socking. He's used these socks to basically follow me around, pick fights in the hope that one of them can be leveraged into sanctions (he doesn't care if he gets banned too, he'll just start another account), and repeatedly call for me (and occasionally a couple other Polish editors) to be banned for some imagined wrongs. PJN has been following the exact same modus operandi (see diffs below).

PJN's user name translates as "Poland is the greatest!" or "Poland is the most important!". It's a trollish account name meant ironically since the account mostly picks fights with Polish users.

PJN's very first edit was to revert me. Here are other diffs which prove the pretty obvious connection:
 * The article on Anton Maegerle a left wing journalist writing about far-right movements. Over 11 years the article has been edited by only about 25 users (59 if you count bots and IPs). It's a low traffic article that gets a couple views per week, probably from Wiki-bots . Both PjN  and Miacek    are in that group of the 25 editors over 10 years that have edited the article. In fact, if you look at the nature of the edits, PjN is editing the exact same section (Reactions) as Miacek and is in fact copy-editing the section that Miacek originally introduced

Mmm, ok, that's just one article, even if one that very very few people edited. On an obscure topic. Is there more? Of course there is.


 * The article on Jerzy Andrzejewski, about a Polish journalist. This article is a little bit more high profile but not much. ~150 users over 17 years, but that's including bots and IPs so it may very well be less than the Maegerle one. It gets about similar number of (very few) views as the Maegerle one. Both PjN and Miacek are in the small group of editors that have edited this article. And not only are they both editing the same obscure article, once again, they're editing the exact same section and changing the exact same sentence (regarding the subject's sexuality). Here is Miacek    . Here is PjN.

So another obscure article with both accounts editing the same section in the same way many years apart. Here's more


 * On War in Abkhazia (1992–1993) both accounts make edits which point out that the relevant country wasn't "Soviet" anymore but Russia: (Miacek) and (PjN). These two diffs entail exactly the same thing (correcting the name of the council to "Russian Supreme Soviet").

Ok so that's three very distinct articles (a German left winger, a Polish journalist and a Russian war), two of them very obscure, the other one not all that high traffic either, and the two accounts are making pretty similar edits. At this point there's no way in hey they're not the same person.

But there's at least a dozen or more obscure articles that the two accounts have edited together which by their nature could not have happened by chance. In interest of brevity I will be brief (in # of editors I'm not counting bots or ips):
 * Technical Group of Independents (1999–2001) Only ~13 editors over 13 years. 2 of them Miacek and PjN. Miacek PjN
 * International Front of the Working People of Latvia Also only about ~15 editors over 14 years. Miacek PjN
 * Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami This one is significant because it's completely out of both account's usual editing topics. Yet they both show up there
 * Ligue des Patriotes Only ~19 editors over 16 years. Our friends: PjN

Other articles where the two over lap can easily be found via the interaction tool. There's about a dozen more. A lot of PjN's edits are fairly minor but that's what you do when you're trying to reach the threshold for the 500/30 restriction. But all these articles span several different topics and most of them are obscure with only a dozen or two distinct editors over a decade+. There's just absolutely no way that these two showing up to all of these articles together could be a coincidence.

There's behavioral evidence as well. Witness Miacek's angry outburst and similar (though heavily slurred) from PjN. There's also the shared paranoid mindset that there is a conspiracy of Polish users. Here was Miacek apparently ranting about it to someone in an email:. Note the stuff about "biased Polish sources" and personal references to myself. Now compare that with PjN here: where he rants about "academic nobodys (almost all are Polish)" and makes derogatory references to "Team Poland" (i.e. Wikipedia's Polish users) which was also a frequent gripe of Miacek.

Oh wait. Looking through these diffs I just found another smoking gun. Look at this diff and how Miacek uses     to break up his long comments. Welp, here is PjN doing exactly the same thing and here and and here (and a few other places). This is an old "tick" from old school users who were editing Wikipedia back in the day before it automatically used blank lines as separators. On top of everything else both of these accounts do it. Ok. That's it. That should be more than enough. This is indef banned (and Poland-topic banned) user Miacek.  Volunteer Marek  05:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)   Volunteer Marek   05:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I’ve also included User:Potugin here because the statements that PjN makes at the recent AfD are very much the same as the rants that Potugin posted on the talk page prior to his indef ban, so this looks very much like Miacek/Potugin coming back for round two with another account. Also more overlap on obscure articles;, ,   Volunteer Marek   14:09, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

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

One necessary thing to note is that the PJN account has been created on May 30, 2016 reverting VM but then basically stood unused for 5 years until October 6, 2021  where almost immediately found his way to ! vote contrary to VM at this discussion. Yes, PJN is undoubtedly a sock puppet following VM around. Please also notice a blocked sock puppet of Icewhiz named Droid I am participating in the same conversation !voting in line with PJN. These folks team up there to follow and harass VM as usual. - GizzyCatBella  🍁  08:09, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Note: I've written this before reading the comments above to avoid being influenced by them (I still haven't read them and intend to do so later). My thoughts: In summary, I am not sure who PjN is, but they are clearly not a new editor in this TA, and they do have some very old axes to grind. What action should be taken, perhaps with WP:NOTHERE, likely ban evasion or dubious Clean start to consider, I'll leave up to others. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * PjN is not Icewhiz :P And frankly, without reading what others think, I don't know if this is Miacek as I don't recall interacting much with that editor in the past. But a few things stand out:
 * their username is very POINTy and borderline offensive. Seriously, who makes a super nationalistic name (lit. Poland is the Most Important) only to make edits, some of which are not particularly friendly to the said nationality? This also indicates some kind of grudge against the Polish people and a possible issue with WP:USERNAME. Also, some arrogance, taunting everyone involved with a hint that something is wrong but really, it's so borderline it's not enough to do much about.
 * PjN was not a new editor at the time it was created. They had to have prior experience with Wikipedia to, in their first edit, use and edit summary, do a correct revert and say something like " section removed for no valid reasons" - this indicates they were at that point familiar with history, the concept of edit summaries and reading them, possibly checked the talk page AND think they know what valid reasons exist on Wikipedia for adding or removing sections. NOT a new user.
 * After a few dozen edits they are familiar with wiki edit summary jargon like, after a few more they find their way to BLPN, then there is this, showing more familiarity with intricate concepts and jargon like 3RR policy or inline referencing, they post at RSN, they report a copyvio (all within their first 100 or so edits). Oh, and they appear familiar with Icewhiz, Miacek and their editing styles  or the ins and outs of the other ongoing Wikipedia controversies such as the Warsaw concentration camp/Icewhiz affair (and that's while professing that they don't edit this TA much: (edit summary)). Plenty of tells that they are not a new user.
 * their usage of terms like "Team Poland" (and earlier like "now before you resort to your fave tactics, you tag-teamer fellas") does suggest familiarity with decade+ old Wikipedia conflicts like. An editor with less than 700 edits referencing past ArbCom cases  or making an ArbCom statement like this, suggesting deep familiarity with long-standing contents, is yet another tell this is some old "colleague".

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Based on CU log data and editing interests, pretty confident PjN == Potugin, slightly less confident that both == Miacek (just due to the age of the data). Blocked, no tags. GeneralNotability (talk) 14:45, 24 December 2021 (UTC)