Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nuada79/Archive

Report date March 27 2009, 05:52 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by Wronkiew (talk)

All accounts and IPs show some of the following characteristics: Some examples: I can add more detail if needed. In general, the most counterproductive and combative edits are made while logged out. The named socks tend to engage in collaborative editing and discussions among themselves to influence consensus. Also see this AN/I report about legal threats from Josepheaglefeather. Wronkiew (talk) 06:17, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Similarity of usernames
 * User or talk page created by another sock
 * Edits to the user or talk page of another sock
 * Interest in John Corapi, Eternal Word Television Network, Raymond Arroyo, and George Weigel
 * Similarity in edit summaries, which almost always start with a capital letter and end with a period whether or not it forms a complete sentence
 * Removing redlinks with the edit summary "Fixed link."
 * Minimal user page, often consisting of "."
 * Awareness of IP addresses used
 * Agreeing with other socks in discussions
 * Removing talk page comments
 * SayWhatRollerCoasterUhUhUh of a discussion among three other sockpuppet accounts
 * TheOilPrivateer about the edit war on the page while he participates in it while logged out
 * 12.64.126.13, using an edit summary characteristic of this editor
 * 204.186.88.252 participated in three edit wars at the same time in December and January, other edit summaries are characteristic of this editor

More diffs: More later. Wronkiew (talk) 17:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC) That's all for now. Wronkiew (talk) 06:59, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Edit war on George Weigel
 * 01:00, 18 February 2009 by
 * 00:48, 27 February 2009 by
 * 21:59, 27 February 2009 by
 * 19:51, 1 March 2009 by
 * 01:36, 2 March 2009 by
 * Combative editing on John Corapi
 * 16:13, 3 November 2008 by  about donations to Republican party, later reverted
 * 07:12, 4 December 2008 account created
 * 07:23, 4 December 2008  using the same source
 * 23:06, 26 December 2008 user page created by
 * Blanking other socks' talk pages
 * 12.64.146.30 of JoeE.F.
 * ToronadoMan89 of JoeE.F.
 * Jacobhamtheman of JoeE.F.
 * ToronadoMan89 of Paladin78
 * OfficialVaticanJanitor of Paladin78
 * 12.64.240.81 of OfficialVaticanJanitor
 * Off Vat Jan of OfficialVaticanJanitor
 * Admitted alternate accounts
 * Off Vat Jan of OfficialVaticanJanitor
 * SayWhatRollerCoasterUhUhUh of TakeMyRollerCoaster
 * My72.name225is.502.2 of My72.name225is.205.5


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.

Wow. This is just incredible. I don’t know what to do.

I guess situations like this have something to do with the figure I once read that close to 90% of all edits are done by a relatively small number of editors. Why would a casual editor need this kind of drama in their life? I know I don’t.

Where to start? In terms of the “charges” against me, the word “dragnet” comes to mind. As I still don’t know that much about Wiki, I don’t know where to start. I guess there is no defense advocate or public defender, is there?

First of all, most of the anon id addys that start with the numbers “12.65” or “12.64” are SOMETIMES me. As we all know, anon id address can belong to different people in one general geographical location. So, not every edit by one particular addy can be attributed to me solely based on that fact. But I will admit that at least some portion of the edits made by anons with addys starting with “12.65” or “12.64” are me.

But keeping all of that in mind, how could most of those addys belong to me sometimes….AND addys like “72” something, “74” something, “128” something, “134” something, “216” something and “2o4” something also belong to me? Is this not a geographically impossibility? Unless of course, I am flying around the country just so I can make Wiki edits.

In addition, some of the behaviors that are used as supposed evidence of links between various accounts are quite common ones. Blanking pages, either as an act of purposefully vandalism or accidental vandalism, apparently happens all the time.

Also, it is my understanding that sock puppet behavior can be best described as using multiple identities in order to influence a discussion or argument. To “influence consensus”, as has been said. This behavior is not allowed. But many of the examples given, (you will excuse me but I don’t know enough about wiki to understand everything on this page), do not look like logical sock puppetry.

A registered user posts a comment on a talk page, regarding an issue. Months later, after the issue is resolved, another registered user posts a comment in agreement. Why in God’s name would one person do this? The argument is over, dead and buried. In most cases, the argument went in favor of the commenter in question. This makes no sense, using the one person premise. A single commenter would have nothing to gain by any sock puppetry in such a case.

Also, as sock puppetry is against the rules, if one was going to engage in it, the logical thing to do would be to try and conceal it. Makes sense, does it not? So why would I create multiple accounts with almost the exact same name? I mean, to create one sock puppet account and then create a new, second account that is almost identical. That is seemingly raising a red “sock puppet” flag on yourself. Jeez, I am a college graduate.

And in some of these accounts in question, the user even admits to creating both accounts.

Then there are these weird edits that don’t make any sense. Why would any one person edit a large number of ancient talk pages of sock puppets they once used…..particularly when the pages in question had no actual content on them? Especially if they risked a sock puppet charge? There is nothing to gain from any of it!

Furthermore, I have been charged with using sock puppet accounts to participate in edit wars. Or I have been charged with doing the same thing with anon accounts, I’m not sure, the verbosity of this all is confusing. If I am correct in my thinking, edit wars are characterized as 3 reverts, on the same issue, in a short amount of time.

Can any of my accusers find 1 example of my participating in a edit war wither either this user name, Nuada79, or any of the anon accounts that I have admitted that are sometimes me, the ones involving the numbers “12.65” or “12.64”.

To the contrary, there is historical evidence, with both my user name and anon accounts, that I have abided by decisions that have gone against me. There is also similar evidence that I have followed procedures during discussions / arguments over various issues by making my case clear on the discussion pages of articles. I’m not sure how to find all of this but I’m hoping some more experienced editor will be fair enough to present such evidence.

Furthermore, even some of these accounts characterized as sock puppets that are accused of edit warring, show little evidence of actual edit warring. So again, the purpose of these sock puppets are what?

The height of confusion, (for me anyway), comes in instances where a particular edit is made. This edit is not being subscribed to me in any way, clearly someone else made it. Yet I create one or more sock puppets to agree with the fact that the edit is made? Why?

I’m not exactly sure what the hell is going on here. It seems to me that a few pages have some controversy from time to time.

Some of these pages I have indeed edited, some I have not. But it seems to me that some clear mistakes have been made, perhaps in haste to accuse.

Some of these controversies involve anon users that clearly can not be me due to geography, which I have discussed above.

Other cases get linked to me solely because I edit one page that has some controversy. The controversy is because of the unconstructive edits of an anon editor who isn’t me and this anon editor makes other unconstructive edits on other pages I also edit, thus creating more controversy. In other words, I make a slight edit to a link and they vandalize an article around the same time. But I end up taking all of the blame.

Even worse, this rouge editor makes changes on pages I have never visited, and I get blamed for that as well. I think the “George Weigel” article is an example of this.

The fact that I, either with this user account or one of the anon IDs that are sometimes me, fixes and/or criticizes the vandalism, seems to have been omitted in any of this. So I have been accusing, criticizing and reverting myself now?

Or why would I give a “Welcome to Wiki” form letter or a “hello” message to someone if they are indeed really just my own sock puppet…a sock puppet account that I abandoned months ago? That is seemingly putting a gun to my own head and for no reason! Wouldn’t it be more effective to create a half-dozen sock puppets, give them a history of good faith edits and then start edit wars? And I would never dream of linking them up with totally useless edits to user or talk pages. This looks more like a frame up job, either that or some bizarre coincidence. Or I am asking to get caught. If you want to contradict that, again, I ask you to…no, I plead to you…so me where I benefited, show me where my view was propped up and I won an argument by using sock puppets.

I am tired. At this point, I’m not sure that I even care anymore if anyone believes me or not. There are only a few pages I put considerable work into but I am proud of that work.

I do hope that I have illustrated that some of these charges of sock puppetry just don’t make any sense, as there is nothing to gain by the edits in question. Thusly, they must be different people. I hope this is clear just to show that such specious charges should not be made it such an aggressive fashion.

If this all came about from edits on the following pages; “John Corapi, Eternal Word Television Network, Raymond Arroyo, and George Weigel”, pages with a history of edit warring and controversies, I will never dare to edit the pages again. I’ll weave that statement into a tapestry! Even though I am not behind the controversies or edit wars, I have been put in my place regarding those pages. If editing controversial pages leads to an in-depth examination of everything weird in the history of those pages…and that somehow leads to a charge of "sock puppetry" against me…then I will be extra cautious before I dare to edit.

I do not think that I have done anything wrong. I am happy to be judged by the behavior of this account, Nuada79…and the anon accounts starting with “12.65” or “12.64”, provided that it is remembered that I do not have complete control over them. Those are the only ways that I have ever made any edits. Perhaps I stumbled upon someone else’s sock puppet, (or sock puppets???), by an edit on an article or a message on their talk page. I’m not saying there is no sock puppetry afoot. In my relatively amateur opinion, there clearly is. But this user account, Nuada79 and the instances that I have used the “12.65” or “12.64” anon accounts, are not involved.

So what do I do now? And if I am cleared, how do I get my good name back?

~N.
 * You make some good points about the links between the listed IP addresses and the named accounts, and the link between you and this nonsense. I was following the links back from the obvious SayWhatRollerCoasterUhUhUh, and Nuada79 happened to be the earliest account created in the list. That said, your editing patterns are very similar to these other accounts, including the message you posted to my talk page. I hope we can see some resolution to this soon, and, if the evidence clears your account, you can go back to having fun on Wikipedia. My only intent here is to stop the disruption coming from these accounts. Wronkiew (talk) 07:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by other users

- See bottom of my analysis for reasons why cu would be helpful. ——  nix eagle email me 22:40, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
 * Hmm. We may need a checkuser here, though I am still uncertain. A number of accounts are stale, and are just SPA/throwaways. We just need to determine if new accounts are currently being disruptive to pages other than their own (possibly their own) userpages, and are activley violating policy.  Syn  ergy 16:36, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * True, many of the accounts are throwaways, and several incidents are very old. The most recent disruption was by SayWhatRollerCoasterUhUhUh at Talk:John Corapi on March 26. Half of the users commenting on that page are socks of Nuada79. I don't think he has participated in any edit wars since the beginning of March. Wronkiew (talk) 17:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * For convenience only, I have noted which cases are stale (approx. 3 months old, or older).  Syn  ergy 18:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm removing all the stale accounts from the list atm, I'm going to review this case now. ——  nix eagle email me 21:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Based on names alone, of the active accounts, we can be sure that     are the same person.
 * I can say its fairly likely that is  logged out given the edit behavior on John Corapi.
 * The blanking behavior likely is enough for me to say the accounts doing the blanking are related and the accounts who have been blanked are probable socks. eg see Special:Contributions/ToronadoMan89 and Special:Contributions/Off_Vat_Jan. Notice on Off_Vat_Jan that many of the IP addresses used in this nonsense get their pages blanked. Especially notice that 12.65.30.24 is blanked by Off Vat Jan, which given the behavior pattern likely implies that Off_Vat_Jan is a sock of Nuada79.
 * The IPs originating from 12.64.0.0/16 and 12.65.0.0/16 likely to be him.
 * The IPs not originating from 12.64.0.0/16 and 12.65.0.0/16 are unlikely to be him based on behavior evidence.
 * User:OfficialVaticanJanitor == User:Off_Vat_Jan likely User:Nuada79
 * likely likely
 * are possible Nuada79. (I don't have much evidence to back this one up aside from similar comments when forgetting passwords).
 * The listed stale accounts were not investigated by myself, any account not mentioned as likely or probable above means I do not see a strong enough link.
 * Getting a checkuser to look for sleepers would probably be helpful as I can't even spot or confirm all of these. There *are* socks here and it is very likely most listed accounts belong to Nuada79.


 * I am leaving blocking to another admin as I wish them to review the work here and confirm my thoughts. In addition I do believe a checkuser may be of assistance as far as getting a bit more technical evidence, it is clear to me that Nuada79 owns some of the listed accounts and there are links to the others listed. ——  nix eagle email me 22:20, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Conclusions
 * The following are highly the same user:

Too much collateral damage for a rangeblock. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 18:04, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Anything left to do? Tiptoety talk 18:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * All blocked (indef) and tagged. Tiptoety  talk 18:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Doesn't appear to be, archiving. Foxy Loxy  Pounce! 09:04, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Report date May 13 2009, 16:57 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Evidence submitted by Wronkiew

Blanked the sockpuppet notice on User:Nuada79, and admitted that this is an alternate account. Edits so far have not been blatantly disruptive, but this account was created to evade an indef block on the main one. Wronkiew (talk) 16:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.


 * Comments by other users


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments


 * Conclusions
 * Blocked and tagged. Cheers, Tiptoety  talk 23:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC)