Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Pleriche/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Compare these edits  with this edit. The time of day of the contributions is suspicious. If they turn out to be the same person, implies that it was bad-faith (the edit summary implies that Pleriche does not use multiple accounts). The writing style is not very similar, other than both users saying the word "appear" similarly (at least more similarly than to the nominator's usage of the word). w umbolo  ^^^  20:58, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

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

May I defend myself. There was absolutely no bad faith on my part, and any infraction was purely due to ignorance. If sanctions are to be taken on the basis of a single alleged violation then Wikipedia is not the friendly place I thought it was.

To be clear, yes, GillDotElliott is known to me and someone I see on a fairly regular basis. She is an administrator of the choir's official website and so I not unnaturally mentioned to her that I was working on a Wikipedia article about the choir. When the AfD was raised, this came as a shock to me and so, yes, I mentioned that to her as well. What more natural? I left it to her what (if anything) she might do about it. I had no idea she was going to create a Wikipedia account for the purpose - obviously not a good look - her decision alone and certainly not on my advice. As an experienced internaut I imagined she might well already have one. At that point I'd never heard of sockpuppetry, and indeed, I only learned about meatpuppetry when I was notified of this investigation. Neither were mentioned in the guidance articles I read before embarking on the page, and the mention of sockpuppetry in the fairly long WP:GD article hadn't caught my attention as I had no intention of doing anything other than act in good faith. (Full disclosure: I am a former admininstrator of the choir's website but no more, though the domain registration is still in my name as we haven't got around to deciding which officer of the choir should take it on.)

I don't know whether GillDotElliott uses the same ISP as me, but if so it's possible we could be on similar IP address ranges. I changed to a faster broadband package a month or so ago which may have changed my subnet. She lives in the next town to me so IP geolocation may give similar results, since the uncertainty of geolocation is greater, often much greater than the distance between us. Since we were both new to the AfD procedure, she evidently copied my Oppose/Keep form of vote, not knowing any different. As for common use of the word "appear", this is a common English word, frequently used to indicate something less than certainty. In fact, we both copied the AfD's originator's style on this point. No other stylistic similarities have been asserted. To draw conclusions about timing of edits is unjustified - the urgency implied by a 7 day deadline simply caused a flurry of activity.

Finally, I would add that no impartial reviewer of the AfD could think that GillDotElliott's contribution would be likely to significantly sway the discussion since she doesn't really address the criticisms raised. Had I been engaging in deliberate meatpuppetry I hope I would have been able to do better than that! And do you imagine I only have one friend I could have leaned on if that had been my intent?

(Note: I have deliberately refrained from tagging GillDotElliott in the above. I don't know whether she will also have been notified of this investigation - I presume so - but I shall not mention or discuss it with her until after it is concluded. Any response she makes is 100% hers.) Pleriche (talk) 11:55, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

'''Response by GillDotElliott to the email sent by Wumbolo. '''

Being new to all of this, I'm not entirely sure how to respond; if this is inappropriate, please let me know what I should be doing. I'm a friend of Philip LeRiche; we both sing in the St Albans Bach Choir, and he has been and I am one of its website's administrators. When Philip mentioned to me that he had set a Wikipedia page for the choir I (as a voracious user of Wikipedia) was very pleased; however, when he then told me that it had been marked to be deleted I created a Wikipedia account in order to support the page by providing references, documentation etc. It did not occur to me that there was anything wrong in joining Wikipedia for this purpose. There is no reason why I should shouldn't edit any other articles if I ever manage to find the spare time in my very busy life.

If the way I am using Wikipedia editing is similar to Philip's, it's because these are my first edits and I learn by copying before branching out into my own thing. My only other encounter with Wiki editing is using a work Wiki setup which is considerably less formal that this. Being in paid employment, any edits I carry out will be during the UK's lunchtimes or evenings or at weekends. GillDotElliott 1322 20181129 —Preceding undated comment added 13:23, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Whatever this is, it isn't socking. Technically ❌.  Recommend closing with no action.  Courcelles (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Going to go ahead and do so now. Case closed. Courcelles (talk) 20:04, 29 November 2018 (UTC)