Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rachel Josephson/Archive

23 June 2015

 * Suspected sockpuppets


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I originally wasn't going to file this right away and initially I'd started writing a post on the talk page asking whether or not I should open up an SPI. However the closer I looked at everything, the more obvious it became that there was some sort of socking or meating going on here. I think what I've ultimately discovered is a marketing company that's set on creating extremely promotional articles.

I'd started out by coming across the article for Simon Phillips (author) at AfD. It was created by Coldairplay and it was pretty unambiguously promotional. I've cleaned out the article but you can see its original state here. I initially figured that I'd just leave him a warning about paid editing and be done with it, but I also discovered an extremely unambiguously promotional article in his userspace, which I speedied as promotional. (User:Coldairplay/sandbox) One thing I noticed was that he had a tendency to bold sentences in his article as a form of creating subsections.

I also noticed that he tried to re-create Jonathan Gabay in March of this year. It was identical to the version created by Gemigem and by Roundout. Gemigem's version is still in the draftspace at Draft:Jonathan Gabay and it's pretty unambiguously promotional as well, in my opinion. I noticed that Spinner500 tried to remove the speedy on Coldairplay's version of the article, claiming that they would fix the article. A look at their edits shows that they've created the article for Anthony Kasozi, which has a similar editing style in that there's a bolded sentence in one of the sections and similar extremely promotional overtones to the article.

Rachel Josephson comes into this because she also tried to edit the draft version of Gabay's article and tried to move it into the mainspace with this edit. Her article for Hannah Fielding also shows similar promotional tones, bolded areas as subsections, and so on. Her article at Mark Ellis (author) isn't as bad, but it also shows a similar editing style. The same thing goes for Wallstreet100, as he also edited the draft article and also created a slightly promotional article at Mark Gallagher.

Another similarity I've noticed with all of the editors is that they all tend to put the personal section at the bottom and it's usually the last section, as you can see with Kasozi's article and with Phillips' article. I've also that many, but not all, like to start in their sandbox and then move it to the mainspace. Many also prefer raw links.

I don't think that these are all the same person- the difference in promotional tones does differ depending on the editor. I do, however, think that I've stumbled upon a marketing company trying to use Wikipedia to promote various clients, so it looks like a clear case of meatpuppetry. I don't think that I got them all, so I would recommend a check for sleepers. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  04:41, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * What makes this all troublesome is that on Rachel Josephson's talk page there is some talk that gives off the impression that she is a paid editor (although it's not clearly stated) and she has been given some instruction on editing, however I don't see where this has been passed on to the other editors or where she's really looked over the various policies all that closely. Also, some of these editors are stale, but I'm listing them mostly to show that there does seem to be a strong connection between them all, which gives off the idea of a company. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  04:45, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've started editing some of the pages to see if they can be salvaged, so I'll try to post the original versions here as I edit them. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  05:01, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Mark Ellis (author)
 * Anthony Kasozi
 * Hannah Fielding
 * Mark Gallagher
 * Charles Elvin


 * I'm adding an additional name to this list. I was looking at the article for Fielding and noticed a redlinked editor, User:Yogiyo10. A little investigation brought up Doug Strycharczyck, which has similar issues as the above articles did: some sections are bolded, a penchant for putting in entire book synopses, and some fairly promotional tones. I took a look at the AfD for a page the editor is involved with (Articles for deletion/Colin Barrow) and it's starting to come together now: many of the pages are about authors who have published works through Kogan Page. The ones who have published with Kogan are as follows: Phillips, Strycharczyck, Gallagher, Kasozi, Rupert Morrison (the one that was at User:Coldairplay/sandbox), and Gabay. There's also another publishing company involved, London Wall Publishing. Here are the authors for that publisher: Fielding and Ellis. You can see the publisher listings at the above early versions that I've linked to or via a deleted history search. My suspicions that this is a marketing company working on behalf of someone (likely these two publishers) is now stronger than ever. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  05:55, 23 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I found another. This one is User:Booleey, who has created the article Charles Elvin, also an editor who has published through Kogan Page. What I'm finding is that many editors are interacting with others' works, tweaking articles here and there. This shows some sort of communication between the users, so there's no reason for them to be completely unaware of policy, given that Gemigem and Rachel have both had editors talk to them about GNG, sourcing, and so on. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  06:04, 23 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I've just gotten to the point where I'm starting to look at the main article for Kogan Page. I'm going to assume that many of the editors that have made substantial contributions are part of this group- and there's a lot of authors with links, so I'll have to check those out as well. This is getting pretty extensive. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  06:12, 23 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Here are more editors that have created pages related to Kogan Page and the articles they've edited, all of which seem to fall within the same editing style as above:
 * User:Singo66: Paul Hopkin (now deleted), Kogan Page
 * User:Roller1001: Robin Ryde (now deleted), AfD for Hopkin
 * User:Tinker1001: Simon Phillips (author) (minor edit), Norman Pickavance
 * User:Stewart Noble: Robin Ryde (now deleted)


 * There are more on the main page for Kogan Page, but those are a little too old to really warrant being added. As it is many of these accounts are pretty much stale, so I don't want to add more stale accounts to this list. I'll see if I can find any for London Wall Publishing, but that doesn't have an entry so it'll be a bit tougher. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  06:20, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * Add editor:
 * User:Momononu: who expanded Ralph Cleland Tiffin, commented on AfD for Tiffin, and commented on AfD for Kogan Page
 * User:Dicer1001: Alan Cutler, AfD for Cutler
 * Worldbruce (talk) 06:29, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Tokyogirl79 hello. Very scary and having read the various guidelines I completely understand why you have posted this. I am not a marketing company, I am just a person and definitely no mal-intent or desire to cause any problem whatsoever or make pages for promotional purposes. You are absolutely right that these are published authors - I made a page for Hannah Fielding and Mark Ellis and really enjoyed doing it. I wanted to make pages for other authors and didn't know how to make more than one page at a time within my own account. I had no idea about 'sock puppetry'. Not all the user names you have listed are connected to me. Working really hard to get my editing up to scratch and understand all the guidelines and work within them as I love writing on wiki. Please can you help me and advise what my next step should be? Thank you. rachelj 08:20, 23 June 2015 (UTC)rachel josephsonrachelj 08:20, 23 June 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rachel Josephson (talk • contribs)
 * I've moved this to the appropriate area. I have to say that if you aren't part of a marketing company (or some other company that does paid editing) then that actually makes things a little more serious since there's clearly some coordinated editing going on here. It's more than a little hard to believe that multiple unrelated people would start creating articles on people who have published through these specific publishers, especially with a nearly identical editing style. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  08:53, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Rachel Josephson: are you a paid editor? By this I am directly asking if you are someone that has received some sort of compensation for creating articles, whether it be as a freelance author or as part of a company. If so, which company? How were you hired? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  08:55, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Tokyogirl79 - no - I do it because I enjoy it and am a voracious reader. I used to work in publishing hence my interest. I created a page years ago and wanted to get back into it. re the editing style: when I started making pages I looked at various other author pages that were good and wrote in a similar layout. I re-iterate that there is absolutely no bad intent here or willful breaking of guidelines. I am new and asking for help.Thank you. p.s. where have you moved this to? rachelj 10:39, 23 June 2015 (UTC)rachel josephsonrachelj

Tokyogirl79 should I firstly retire accounts that were used just to make a single page. happy to do this. thanks. rachelj 11:37, 23 June 2015 (UTC)racheljrachelj 11:37, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Rachel Josephson: As a start, how about stating for the record what accounts you used, and which of the user names above have no connection to you. Worldbruce (talk) 18:36, 23 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't know if it's entirely kosher to link to an outside website so I won't. What I will say is that I found Marketplace and Linkedin profiles for someone by the same name as Rachel Josephson that works as a marketing consultant - and offers her services to private clients. I'm not entirely sure if this is the same person or not, but if it isn't then it'd be a pretty small coincidence. Rachel, paid editing is not something that is against the rules - you can still take on clients and create pages, but you need to be transparent about everything and follow rules pretty closely. You're blocked now so there's not much that can be done, but I have to say that your number one mistake (other than opening multiple accounts) was to lie about having done so. Things like this can be pretty easily checked and verified, as is shown below. If you'd openly copped to being a paid editor then you'd still have had to explain everything but there's a chance that you could have come out of this with at least one account remaining. I don't think that anyone doubted that you were a paid editor from the start, so trying to claim that you weren't actually did more harm than good. Claiming that you were unaware of the rules wasn't entirely a good thing to do either since you've been on Wikipedia for years and multiple people have tried to help you. At some point the whole "me no good at Wikipedia" thing will stop being something that would give some protection, so even if you *had* remained behind I have to admit that I'd be doubtful as to your effectiveness. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  03:50, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * The following accounts are ✅:
 * The following accounts are but may be blocked based on behavioral evidence:
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. Mike V • Talk 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The following accounts are but may be blocked based on behavioral evidence:
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. Mike V • Talk 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The following accounts are but may be blocked based on behavioral evidence:
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. Mike V • Talk 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The following accounts are but may be blocked based on behavioral evidence:
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. Mike V • Talk 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The following accounts are but may be blocked based on behavioral evidence:
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. <b style="color:#151B54">Mike V</b> • <b style="color:#C16C16">Talk</b> 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. <b style="color:#151B54">Mike V</b> • <b style="color:#C16C16">Talk</b> 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. <b style="color:#151B54">Mike V</b> • <b style="color:#C16C16">Talk</b> 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I will block and tag all confirmed accounts shortly.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the stale accounts based upon the behavior. <b style="color:#151B54">Mike V</b> • <b style="color:#C16C16">Talk</b> 17:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)