Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Msa1701/Archive

Report date March 25 2010, 21:28 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets

Both users have a similar editing style (most edits marked 'minor', the occasional edit war) and edit similar articles (most notably ships and a non-notable town in Britain). Most recently User:Msa1701 has reverted an edit that itself was a revert of User:Zippyandgeorge. User:Msa1701 reverting to User:Zippyandgeorge's edits after that edit was reverted:  raseaC talk to me 21:28, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Evidence submitted by  raseaC talk to me


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.


 * Comments by other users
 * Same edit-warring pattern for "screws" vs "propellers" on ships. Msa1701 got himself blocked for that specific behavior I think. DMacks (talk) 21:38, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this certainly appears fairly suspicious but it's not quite blatant enough to be sure. I think a checkuser would be helpful here; if multiple accounts are involved here it's definitely for disruptive purposes. ~ mazca  talk 21:51, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

is a suspected sockpuppet of Msa1701 that I blocked indefinitely. — Kralizec! (talk) 23:34, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Requested by  raseaC talk to me 21:28, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * CheckUser requests

, looks highly likely to me, the "screw > propeller" edits are particularly incriminating, as is the style of writing on user talk pages, and other edits. I would appreciate it if a checkuser could please take a look at this. Regards, SpitfireTally-ho! 21:59, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
 * ✅ --jpgordon:==( o ) 05:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

All 3 accounts now blocked indefinitely for disruptive sockpuppetry, as confirmed by the checkuser. ~ mazca  talk 09:06, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Conclusions
 * seems that is still unblocked, was this intentional? Regards, SpitfireTally-ho! 10:23, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Very much not intentional, incompetence now corrected! ~ mazca  talk 10:40, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much, accounts are all tagged, SpitfireTally-ho! 10:42, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Benea
A few days after Msa1701's last sockpuppet, and Msa1701 himself were indefinitely blocked for sockpuppetry, Vibrating-goats appeared. V-g has a history of making very similar edits to Msa and his socks, such as edits to the Ruislip article (Zippyandgeorge and Vibrating-goats), edits to British band and other music-related articles - particularly changing 'band' to 'group' (Vibrating-goats and Zippyandgeorge), Star Trek related articles, and most distinctively, arabic numerals to words (Vibrating-goats, and Msa) and 'screws' to 'propellers' (Vibrating-goats, Zippyandgeorge, and Msa). Benea (talk) 15:38, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
Blocked and tagged by MBK004.  E lockid  ( Talk ) 01:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Benea
Shortly after Msa1701's last sock, User:Vibrating-goats was blocked (16 April), User:Jimmy-tarbuck appears (19 April). Same pattern of edits as Msa and his other socks, edits to ship articles, including changing screws to propellers, edits to the Ruislip article, edits to British band (edits changing band to group have been a common feature of these socks) and television personality articles, edits to change Arabic numerals to words, and edits to Star Trek related pages. User:Brave-new-start has also appeared recently, and has been active on the Ruislip article, working with Jimmy-tarbuck to remove a certain piece of information both users refer to as 'estate agent' bullshit/rubbish (Jimmy-tarbuck and Brave-new-start). Both Jimmy-tarbuck and Brave-new-start have been editing Doctor Who and other British television related articles, in some cases to change Arabic numerals to words. Benea (talk) 17:09, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Comments by other users
Judging from the edit summaries, I believe they are the same person. They share simple habits like adding "correction" on a edit summary and then raising it up another number after every consecutive edit. So it would be "correction 3" then the next edit is "correction 4" and so on. User:Vibrating-goats shares that habit with the 2 suspected socks. In general, their edit summaries are extremely similar. So i would think the duck would be a simple solution. wiooiw (talk) 02:48, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
They look like ducks to me. Blocked and tagged.  E lockid  ( Talk ) 01:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Owain.davies
Continuation of agressive reversion in minor article Ruislip and addition of similar commercial information to previously blocked socks of Msa1701. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 08:29, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments

 * IP blocked for one week. Tiptoety  talk 04:13, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by Benea
Shortly after Msa1701's last socks were blocked, poison-piglett appears, editing the same types of articles, including the Ruislip and related articles (, (note the tendency to use capitals in edit summaries, which appeared in previous socks, eg here). Other edits to British tv series, Star Trek articles, edits to ships (particularly to historic liners and cruise ships, and both pp and Msa often edited RMS Queen Elizabeth). PP also follows a common habit of all the previous socks, of writing numbers as words -, , etc. Benea (talk) 16:56, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
Blocked and tagged.  E lockid  ( Talk ) 01:28, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by MRSC
Sock of blocked. Based on editing behaviour, similar/identical edits to London articles. Note an unblocking request was recently rejected at User talk:Msa1701. MRSC (talk) 10:32, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Auto-generated every six hours.
 * User compare report

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
Apart from a general interest in the Ruislip area I'm not seeing a really obvious connection here - could you point to a few specific similarities? Some of the really obvious features (strangely capitalised edit summaries and specific word changes) don't seem to be present, and given that Msa1701 seemed to be doing well at avoiding sockpuppetry and seemed well-intentioned at the recent unblock request, I'm cautious to avoid a false positive here. ~ mazca  talk 12:37, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I wasn't sure at first, but inserting "West London" over "west London" in the same set of articles was the behaviour that alerted me:

MRSC (talk) 13:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * 
 * 
 * Sorry, but I'm just not seeing any kind of compelling connection beyond a vague interest in a similar area. As nobody else has elected to do anything about this report for a week I think i'm going to mark it as closed. Not saying it's categorically not Msa1701, but I'm definitely not convinced. ~ mazca  talk 20:32, 12 November 2010 (UTC)