Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Papaursa/Archive

26 January 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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Astudent0 (including earliest edits: ); Papaursa (again, including earliest edits: ); Mdtemp; Jakejr (once again, account starts right off with the same style of AFd editing as the other three: )
 * Basic or non-existent userpage: Astudent0, User:Papaursa, Mdtemp, Jakejr.
 * Edit history consists largely of just commenting in AfDs and templating articles for notability:

In fact, they tend to follow each other with astonishingly similar worded comments in AfDs. For example: Mdtemp ("Delete all These events all lack signficant coverage and fail WP:ROUTINE and WP:SPORTSEVENT"; then, Papaursa ("Delete all These fail to meet WP:GNG since all of the coverage is WP:ROUTINE. The first events of a new MMA organization are not notable. There events decided no championships and received only routine sports coverage, so they also fail WP:SPORTSEVENT"); and Atudent0 ("Delete all This is not a vote and no valid reasons have yet been given for keeping, but WP:ROUTINE and WP:SPORTSEVENT are valid for deleting"). In discussion after discussion these accounts seem to show up just to support each other's call to delete or redirect. Notice how Astudent0 follows Papursa's redirect vote with practically the same comment, while in this case Papaursa follows Astudent0's lead. In fact if you compare practically any of the Afds they all comment in, you see that shared common thread, i.e. that these accounts seem to have the sole purpose to sporadically show up in the same MMA related AfDs to do nothing more than vote to delete with practically copy and paste rationales. Given the striking similarity in style (first edits of these accounts are to nominate or comment in MMA related Afds), userpage (blank or says in a sentence how they want to delete MMA articles), following each other in MMA Afds and saying to delete or redirect as each other says, etc., it is just too much to be mere coincidence and thus they seem to be vote stacking AfDs presenting a false sense of consensus. Temporary for Bonaparte (talk) 16:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I also added an IP, whose's sole edits are to vote delete in the same fashion in an AFD in which the other suspected sock accounts commented. --Temporary for Bonaparte (talk) 21:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I am in part concerned because they seem to be indiscriminately nominating articles for deletion and even saying to delete after sources have been presented. Articles for deletion/Edvin Hebovija is an example of one of their bulk nominations of fighters with widely varying degrees of verifiability and notability. You can see in the discussion that Papaursa, AStudent0 and Mdtemp all repeatedly badger everyone who disagrees with them by boilerplate repeating the same MMA not comments. --Temporary for Bonaparte (talk) 16:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

TreyGeek, I do not think it is really comparable to say that by the same standard your account is similar to Papaursa et al. You have a distinct userpage versus these suspect sock or single purpose accounts. Your edits go back to 2008 and include article building contributions without diving into AfDs. Papaursa's FIRST edit was to an AfD:. Jakejr's SECOND edit was to an AfD:. Astudent0's SECOND edit was to an Afd:. The IP's only edits were to an AfD. Mdtemp's FIRST edit was to an AfD:. The Mdtemp account per its userpage even seems to be admittedly a single-purpose account with the sole intent of trying to delete MMA related articles, which is the similar behavior to other accounts listed above. I did not and would not accuse you or the others who said to delete in some of these discussions, because you have other and actual contributions to the project. The other accounts, by contrast, seem interested in doing little more than trying to get rid of as many MMA related articles as they can with essentially copy and paste rationales. So we have dozens of discussions where almost all of the comments are from these same four accounts saying to delete and little to no additional comments. Seeing as these accounts have demonstrated neither interest nor knowledge of article contributions, I don't really think many of these AfDs actually reflect community consensus. Afds in which only four accounts participated and its four accounts who do nothing but say to delete MMA related articles is a bit troublesome. --Temporary for Bonaparte (talk) 16:39, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * I worked with several of these editors (Papaursa, Astudent0) in the WikiProject Martial arts/Article Review. Although I have very often disagreed with them Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Martial arts/archive 14Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Martial arts, I respect them for their good effort and logic. I will be very surprised to find any of these editors to be sock puppets. jmcw (talk) 15:39, 27 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I am not surprised that a Check User was inconclusive. I have strong reasons to believe that not all of these accounts are used by the same person.  The argument that the accounts are socks are that they do very little editing other than agreeing with each other on AfDs.  In that case, I should be listed as the Sock Master since I very often agree on the same AfDs (just about 200 of them it seems) and use the same lines of reasoning as them and am somewhat active in editing (more so than the account accused of socking).  I would like to WP:AGF on the part of the person who started this investigation, but I think there is nothing to really be found here.  --TreyGeek (talk) 16:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's hard to follow the recommendation to not take this personally. I don't know how to defend myself since it's generally impossible to prove a negative--try to PROVE that you never cheated on your taxes or were never unfaithful to your spouse.  So let me comment on some of the accusations.  The fact that I have no user page may be a bit unusual, but I have no reason to post about myself (if I didn't want privacy I'd use my real name)--there are many editors with little on their user page.  It is not my purpose to delete MMA articles--you can see on my talk page that I was asked to get involved in drawing up some MMA guidelines.  If you look at my talk page you can see I've been attacked (even threatened) for my views, including a DRV (see Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_13).  You'll notice that none of my supposed socks posted there, probably because they weren't aware of it, but that certainly seems like a place someone would use socks to help defend themselves.  I would like to point out a quote on BigzMMA's talk page by Ultraexactzz concerning my previous experience--"... the only issue is that Papaursa disagrees with you. And that's not an offense that requires any administrator action."  The charge of similar wording is probably inevitable--how many different ways can you say something isn't notable or lacks good sources?  The supposed socks don't post very frequently--2 days each this month for Astudent0 and Mdtemp, no postings in almost a month for Jakejr, and no postings since last October for 92.28.13.191, while I post on many different days.  I also see that all postings by Astudent0 and Mdtemp are in the middle of the day.  I've spent my career at a company that fires people for "misuse of company property" for being on the internet.  How likely is it that I'd jeopardize my job to pad the vote at an AfD?  Please note that, except for weekends, all of my posts are at night.  It's also not clear why I'd be using sockpuppets when I'd decided to quit WP--users like TreyGeek and Hasteur helped convince me to stay, but I decided to narrowly focus my efforts.  In real life, I'm a not unknown martial artist who frequently comments on martial arts topics both in person and by writing and I've found a number of people agree with me.  I don't know, or care, if those people post on WP but that's a long way from running sockpuppets (and I've never given anyone my username).  Finally, I want to thank TreyGeek for letting me know about this--it seems like it would have been common courtesy to inform the accused he was on trial. Papaursa (talk) 21:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Were talking about the same arguements on AFD + Papaursa and Astudent0 overlap at 340 AfDs and there's more overlap info + None of these look new, they all dive into AfD. Like I know there is either collusion or socking going on here, i'm leaning more towards socking here. I also have this gut suspicion that if they've gotten away with it this long, then we've got more we don't know about. -- DQ  (ʞlɐʇ)  20:45, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * IP was added after endorsement FYI. There will be no comment on it. -- DQ  (ʞlɐʇ)  22:00, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I am unable to find anything conclusive enough for action on a technical basis, but I do think there are connections to be made here. I'd like another CU to take a look, so I'm not marking this case as checked. Frank &#124;  talk  15:27, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Neither do I, and from technical evidence alone I would also say . Perhaps these editors know each other or share common interests elsewhere, but till then there isn't much to go further for now. - Mailer Diablo 13:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced now that I've read the statements and seen the CU results (which are right above, not an actual CU result) on this case. -- DQ  on the road  (ʞlɐʇ)  21:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC) Modified --  DQ  (ʞlɐʇ)  16:08, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

08 June 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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Both users seem to do nothing except vote to delete martial arts articles. They both vote exactly the same, and in almost all of the same articles. Astudent0 created his/her account in 2010 and immediately began voting in deletion discussions to delete martial arts pages (which is an odd way to start editing on Wikipedia), and Mdtemp created his/her account in 2011 and started voting in the SAME articles as Astudent0 in the same way, from then all the way up to now. Their user contributions are almost identical. I think Astudent0 may actually even be an alternate account as well because who starts editing by voting in afd discussions? But I have no evidence of that particular claim. So this is about Mdtemp being a sock of Astudent0.

In addition to that, the dates of their user contributions seem to be very similar. For example, on the first page of their most recent user contributions, Astudent0 had a 7 day break between May 9 to May 16. Mdtemp had a 7 day break from May 11 to May 18, and on the day before their 7 day break, they voted on the same two articles for deletion in the same exact order. Also, Astudent0 hasn't made a contribution since May 17, and Mdtemp hasn't made a contribution since May 21. So not only are the articles they contribute to extremely similar, and the way they vote is exactly the same, but the timing of their contributions is very similar.

And one more point I'd like to make. Their user pages are eerily similar. Astudent0's user page is blank other than text that reads: "I am interested in martial arts and have done amateur MMA. As I enter the real world I expect to have far less time to devote to Wikipedia, so my contributions will probably become much rarer.". Mdtemp's user page is blank except for text that reads: "I'm an MMA fan that believes Wikipedia should be just for notable things--not a repository for everything."

I just notice a lot of similarities and it seems to be too much for coincidence. Gamezero 05  06:56, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I've added a request and endorsed the use of WP:Checkuser to see if there is a technical connection between these two and possibly others. It will be up to the Checkuser themselves to determine if it should be done.   Dennis Brown  -  2&cent;   &copy;  13:21, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * One other thing that I just realized is that I made a stupid sockpuppet investigation on May 20th here: Sockpuppet investigations/Mtking. I realize now how I was fooled and how that investigation was ludicrous, but Astudent0 and Mdtemp were included in that investigation. However, due to the rediculousness of the investigation as a whole, it wasn't looked into more. And if you notice, the accounts Astudent0 and Mdtemp haven't been used since that sockpuppet investigation. So that leads me to believe whoever is controlling those accounts realized that people were possibly "onto him" and he decided to either ditch those accounts or wait a while before using them again. Gamezero  05  20:44, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - I may have found another user that may actually be the puppet master. User_talk:Papaursa is another user with almost the exact same edits on the exact same pages. This account was created in 2009. The dates of the edits are also similar. Gamezero  05  20:54, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * It would be interesting to find out why the last CU at Sockpuppet investigations/Papaursa/Archive was, has something changed ? Mt  king  (edits)  08:06, 9 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Not Sockpuppets Please note that these users participated in the WikiProject Martial arts article review in 2010 WikiProject_Martial_arts/Article_Review where a backlog of MA articles with questionable notability were review and many deleted. This could account for the similar statistics. The above link can be followed to view a sample of their comments on article deletions. I believe them not to be sock puppets but rather just of similar philosophy. jmcw (talk) 09:48, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Ditto on the above comment - based on writing style and comments I really don't think they are the same. The martial arts AfD nominations have been pretty good with respect to targeting problematic articles so the statistic quoted reflect the keep/delete record rather than similar views of comments.  Of course we could just ask them.Peter Rehse (talk) 03:17, 10 June 2012 (UTC)


 * We didn't find the prior SPI until last night, when we swapped out the Master for this check (Papaursa was added late in the SPI, as a sock instead of a master). It doesn't change the results of this CU, but I've asked another Checkuser, DQ to take a look and he has agreed to.  He has seen the last CU results as well, and this should shed some light.  (My mistake, he isn't a CU and didn't see the previous results)  The current CU results that shows them all in the exact same geographical area, the number of "coincidences" pushes the meaning of the word to the breaking point.  I've done a great deal of technical comparisons that likely were not done last SPI as well, including time of day comparisons.  If the current CU holds, it is difficult not to draw conclusions here.   Dennis Brown  -  2&cent;   &copy;  10:57, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - I see 95 common articles between Astudent0 and Mdtemp, over 90 of them AFDs. Astudent0 record  of voting at AFDs is 87.7% (213) to delete, 5.3% (13) to keep. Mdtemp's record  is 89.8% (97) to delete and 1.9% (2) to keep, and accounting for time, is consistent.  Also considering that Mdtemp has participated in 110 AFDs, including 91 that Astudent0 has participated in.  Astuden0 has participated in a whopping 542 AFDs, but has been here longer.  I can't quite put my finger on it, but it does look meaty or socky or something, and there are some similarities in style.  I would support a closer look with a check for other accounts as well, considering both the coincidences here and the long and thick history of sockpuppetry at MMA discussions in general.   Dennis Brown  -  2&cent;   &copy;  13:19, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Papaursa has 648 AFD votes, 86% delete, and 494 common articles with alleged puppet master. 3063 total edits.  Didn't compare styles, only statistics.  Dennis Brown  -  2&cent;   &copy;  21:01, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

on all three counts. Although they all edit from the same city, there is no direct overlap. However, Mdtemp is : although he is from the same city, his ISP is different. These may be three people with the same interests, although I don't think so. AGK [•] 23:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC) I have labored over this for days, consulted two Checkusers, other editors previously involved, and have poured over reams of contribs going back a couple of years. It is very, very possible for all three of these to be the same person: Singular focus, the time of day that edits are made line up without conflict, and the number of "coincidences" are too much to ignore, added to the fact that all three edit from the exact same geolocation, even if on different IPs. If I were to be a sockpuppet with the goal of getting away with it, this is a textbook example of how to do it right. But in this case, there is just enough ancillary evidence to show reasonable doubt, so I can't take action at this time. My educated guess is that there is a high likelihood of coordination between the users, perhaps off-wiki, which is a bit beyond the scope of this WP:SPI, but doesn't bar further action by any administrator should they decide to block these users. You might note this decision if they all !vote in a single discussion. This should not be seen as proof that they aren't connected, but rather an inability to definitively connect the accounts at this time, after an exhaustive investigation. Dennis Brown -  2&cent;   &copy;  13:03, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Mdtemp seems to edit primarily 15:00 to 22:00 UTC. Papaursa is mainly after 19:00 to 3:00 UTC.  Astudent0 edits mainly from 12:00 to 18:00 UTC.  I don't want to say this looks like school, home and work, but it could be school, home and work.  That would explain the different ISPs.  This is still ducky to me, would have to test overlaps a bit to call it.  Dennis Brown  -  2&cent;   &copy;  00:18, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

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Filing an "empty" case to be committed to Papaursa's SPI Archive to provide a reference pointing to Sockpuppet investigations/Astudent0's archive where a long case analyzing Papaursa and three other accounts was just concluded today without action w/r/t Papaursa. ☺ ·  Salvidrim!   ·  &#9993;  17:17, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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