Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/New Elmin/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
On 16 April blocked  for persistent disruptive editing, namely unattributed translations, copy-pasting machine translations with improper syntax into articles, and adding unsourced content, despite being given multiple warnings from several editors about these issues. After the weekend finished, a new account,, began making exactly the same sorts of edits as New Elmin had been doing, at about the same speed, and with exactly the same issues. I alerted JBW to this, and the block on New Elmin was extended to indefinite. Their response to this seems to have been to create yet another sockpuppet. Now we have, and given the fact that I had previously interacted with this editor, it isn't hard to see where the new username pattern came from. Of course that's just speculative, but this lot below isn't.


 * Adding unsourced information within an unattributed machine translation. New Elmin: Ms Alex Re:  Helga008:


 * Adding machine translated text without verifying that the syntax is actually correct, or that it even makes sense in any way, or that it doesn't duplicate existing content. New Elmin: Ms Alex Re: Helga008:


 * Adding refs to an article without adding any content, typically to books. New Elmin: Ms Alex Re: Helga008:

Other common behaviours include:
 * Persistent failure to provide any edit summary
 * Blanks some warnings from talk page whilst keeping others.
 * Generally fails to take heed to any advice given

Whilst I think that this will be a familiar enough pattern for JBW to block them, I would like to get a checkuser onto this, to see what can be done to help avoid more socks appearing. For some further evidence, the Ms Alex Re account made its last edit at 12:08, at about the time when I was trawling their contribs and trying to clean up the mess that they were leaving behind. At 12:21 Helga008 was created, and resumed where Ms Alex had left off. Also note the large number of different language wikipedias where all these accounts are registered, which is rather atypical for a new user. Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 13:02, 19 April 2022 (UTC)


 * As JBW has clarified, Helga was created before Ms Alex was blocked.
 * To make it clearer, the trigger for the Helga account being created seems to have been that the other account was attracting too much scrutiny, rather than the other account being blocked. Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 14:41, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * The behavioural evidence is pretty dammning, even if CU isn't helping. @RoySmith: Proxies? Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 22:23, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * It is possible there are proxies in use here, but even with that, there's some clues that these three accounts are located in different countries. That's about all I can give you. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:40, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

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

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * As Mako001 has suggested, both of the sockpuppets are WP:DUCK socks, and I've blocked them both. However, since the latest sockpuppet (Helga008) was created before the previous one (Ms Alex Re) was blocked, and before the master account's block was made indefinite, it may be worth a CU for possible sleepers etc. JBW (talk) 14:21, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * - -- RoySmith (talk) 15:43, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * CU says all three of these are ❌. Given that, I didn't do any sleeper hunting. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:46, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * That's odd. The behaviour looks like it could be an editathon or something like that. I'm not sure this is sockpuppetry, but since they are all editing disruptively in a similar manner and ignoring warnings, they should probably remain blocked until they explain what's going on. Closing, no tags. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 14:05, 21 April 2022 (UTC)