Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Paule Gaelle/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
These are either two (disclosed) paid editors or, more likely, one person. There is no temporal overlap; the second account was created after the first stopped editing. However, there was no reason to create a second (undeclared) account. In addition, I'm concerned there may be more. Although no sanctions have been leveled on either account, the second account created Attack of August 7, 1932 in Rennes, which was tagged as WP:G1 and which I deleted. Considering the obvious expertise in creating new articles, I doubt this vandalism was accidental. I am requesting CU to confirm and look for others. Bbb23 (talk) 23:42, 9 August 2023 (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

 * - the two accounts have disclosed receiving funding from the Open Knowledge Association, a nonprofit that provides funding for Wikipedia editors to edit topics in under-represented subjects; the group and both accounts are listed at List of paid editing companies. They're not editing commercially: both accounts have been translating articles on history topics from French Wikipedia, and the page you deleted (appropriately, it was gibberish) is now a pretty decent article. They probably are the same editor, but abandoning an account and creating a new one is not forbidden, and I don't see anything else wrong here. I'm leaving open in case anyone else has a different opinion. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:00, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Given the donor scheme they describe in their website, I have doubts they do not edit commercially (effectively for Wikipedia policies), since their model would accept a tobacco company to pay for editing in tobacco-related articles (donors can choose areas). And while editors are supposed to not be influenced by donors, this situation could create implicit mandates to maintain donors. However, this is something that could be taken elsewhere such as WP:COIN, or just ask OKA coordinators directly. But for now, let's ignore that and let's go into sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry policy:OKA editors are tightly coordinated by a central party. Their contributions are tracked by OKA in a single spreadsheet, and OKA oversees the whole thing, because they pay for it, and it is their operation. I think we should ignore the sockpuppetry angle for now, but hold all OKA editors (not just the 2 named here) to WP:MEAT standards. If one editor re-creates deleted material by any other editor in the same meat group, I do not care if they are the same person or not, because OKA leadership is coordinating that article re-creation (or any other action). Any admin can deliver a warning to them, demand explanations, or eventually apply sanctions. However, I think these are judgement calls for an admin to make, and above my paygrade as a non-admin clerk. So I am without prejudice of admins following up this issue. MarioGom (talk) 18:13, 25 August 2023 (UTC)