Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rajendranwiki/Archive

Report date March 25 2009, 14:18 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * Evidence submitted by ShivNarayanan (talk)

Ravichandar84 uses a variety socks like good hand-bad hand accounts, straw man puppets to stir up controversies, conflicts and push POV primarily in various Indian caste articles such as Bhumihar, Nadar_(caste), Kallar_(caste), Pallar, Mukkulathor, Sengunthar, Vanniyar, etc. and articles related to south Indian dynasties like Chola_Dynasty etc. I've outlined my evidence and concerns below.

1., a new user started pushing POV in article Kallar_(caste) without any sources and using very weak arguments that various south Indian dynasties like Chola_Dynasty, Pallava etc., all belonged to Kallar_(caste) since some of the persons of Kallar_(caste) use the same surnames. From the Kallar_(caste) article, I discovered multiple articles such as Malayaman, Thondaiman, Paluvettaraiyar, Adigaman created and edited by throwaway socks recently where a flurry of new accounts like ,,, , , , ,  pushed the same POV with the same reasoning as Tamilvendan. is an obvious sock of as he just reverted article Thondaiman and supported the latter's POV when  was blocked for 3RR violation. is another sock who does the same edits and continues the Kallar caste propaganda in the series of articles related to the Chola_Dynasty:, ,. Rajendranwiki now pushes the same POV as Tamilvendan in article Kallar_(caste), Malayaman, etc. :. Throwaway, ,  attempts to mimic me yesterday. He does this in order to discredit me. Ravichandar84 was blocked on this very range 59.*.*.* as coming from an open proxy, see. But he talked his way out of it. Ravichandar84 goes around adding NPOV tags to various articles, but readily does a U-turn and deletes the tag from Kallar (. The reason being Tamilvendan requested it even though Tamilvendan provides no references pertinent to the dispute. Tamilvendan employs a clever ploy by saying "References added" in the summary of his edits while he reverts but the refs he adds are either junk or there are no refs at all.

2. All the new accounts mentioned in 1 above have shown considerable expertise in editing wikipedia, creating new articles, adding references and adding Tamil font into the articles:, within the first few edits. There is a high correlation between, an experienced user and these accounts , even though he pretends to do trivial edits. I found that Ravichandar84 has pushed the same POV as Tamilvendan that the various dynasties were Kallar when he created the (List of Thevars/Kallars). Also, the image of "Raja raja chola", a popular royal from the Chola_Dynasty included by him in is the same image uploaded by Tamilvendan here. He used a clever ploy to add the img of the Chola king to a collage and uploaded and named the collage "Image:Prominent.Kallars.JPG" thus pushing his POV. He has also been artificially stirring up conflicts in other Indian caste articles such as Nadar_(caste) (, [Vanniyar, Pallar, Bhumihar . etc. regarding the Tamil dynasties. For eg: shows that kings of Pallava and Chola_Dynasty have been included at the bottom of the Vanniyar article. A few days later they disappear . Again in Pallar article the Cholas and Pallava claim exists in . A throwaway  deletes the refs and modifies the section. Somedays later, Ravichandar84 adds the POV tag. follows suit with the OR-tag. This is definitely not random. Sureshmaran is just another sock, see:, who pushes POV along with other socks in Mudaliar and Sengunthar and Vettuva_gounder articles.

3. Ravichandar84 and his sock are stirring up controveries and conflicts in Nadar_(caste). He has employed a classic "straw |puppet" and a flurry of throwaway ips and proxies to push his POV in the fake RfC. Basically he wants to remove the Pandya dynasty from Nadar_(caste). So he uses a straw puppet and a score of throwaway ips, ,  to make weak arguments that he then dismisses easily along with sock Docku. Initially Bake1987 makes lousy arguments, , and keeps reverting the article, ,  and thus gets the article protected. Then Ravichandar84 starts a fake RfC and rigs it with the edits of anonymous ips 122.164.154.93, 122.164.172.164. These ips readily agree with Docku and Ravichandar84. Note that these are from the same range of ips 122.164.*.*, 59.*.*.* that go around deleting sections from other caste articles.

4. again pushes POV in the Chola_Dynasty article. He primarily quotes "http://www.whatisindia.com/inscriptions/" website as a source, the same source quoted by Rajendranwiki in Malayaman article:. Again, quoted by the throwaway account in Paluvettaraiyar article:  and by Tamilvendan and his socks in the Kallar_(caste) article: and again by   He also uses socks to push POV in articles Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy and C._N._Annadurai. The correlation is very high between, , , in article Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy:  and again between  and  in article C._N._Annadurai:. These all appear to be socks as they push the same POV as Ravichandar84. But they either take a break or keep a low profile when the other socks are pushing POV. For example Wikiality123 keeps a low profile or takes a break precisely when Ravichandar84 and Docku push POV. Lordeaswar another meat puppet, just scan the user page of Lordeaswar and view the number of edits by Ravichandar84.

Please do the needful. Thank you, ShivNarayanan (talk) 14:18, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

'''PS: YellowMonkey, you have concluded that from past data Ravichandar84 is unrelated to users Srirangam, Wiki_Raja, Wikiality, Pharaoh or Docku. Could you elaborate on this? Has a check user ever been filed against the other users you have said? Moreover, the flurry of new accounts pushing POV in the Kallar, Thondaiman, Malayaman and related articles are obvious socks which don't require a CU at all. Are established users exempt from sock puppet investigations? Does wikipedia have a rule that says if a user has made more than a certain number of edits then he/she is exempt from sock puppet investigations. Wiki_Raja is an example of a well established user who was blocked for socking. This is definitely not a disruptive request. Also conclusions must be based on today's check user results. How can you conclude using past data? This also does not prove that the other users are unrelated. I think your comment would be more appropriate in the "Comments by other users" section rather than conclusions.''' ShivNarayanan (talk) 01:24, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

'''Request another party other than YellowMonkey to handle this request. Thanks.''' ShivNarayanan (talk) 01:38, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.

The only thing I agree with this preposterous, pointless and defective CU request is that made some lousy arguments in Nadar (caste) article. well, while I tend to agree with User:Ravichandar84 in Nadar (caste) article, we locked horns in Periyar E. V. Ramasamy article. makes no sense. Pls start the CU and show User:ShivNarayanan his way. -- Docku:  What's up?  17:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments by User:Docku

Interestingly, I have suspected one of "my socks", User:Bake1987 to be a sock of some IPs which showed up in Nadar (caste) article and opined on the talk page of User:YellowMonkey, user with CU privilege. -- Docku:  What's up?  22:25, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I find a surprising correlation between User:Bake1987 and User:ShivNarayanan. The removal of Image:ProminentKallars.JPG appears to be User:ShivNarayanan's first edit after banned User:Bake1987 accuses me of fuelling conflicts between Nadars and Thevars (of whom, Kallars form a clan). See this and this. Interestingly, ShivNarayanan's complaint that I am trying to fuel caste conflicts in Wikipedia is strikingly similar to this edit by Bake1987. Now, User:Bake1987 himself accepts that there is Talk:Nadar (caste) that there is intense rivalry between the Thevars and Nadars.


 * User:ShivNarayanan has strong hatred for some communities of Tamil Nadu as is evident from his posting of copyvio content from some anti-Brahmanical literature in Iyer article (See, , , ) and selectively attacking certain community as the Kallars, see here. Almost all of User:ShivNarayanan's edits appear to be to caste-related articles. See here. I do not wish to raise an CU on ShivNarayanan based on mere suspicion, but his actions do seem controversial- The Enforcer Office of the secret service 01:12, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by User:Ravichandar84
 * Ha! Ha! That's funny, indeed. In case, you are not aware 59.*.*.* is the broadband range provided by India's government-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. It is used by millions of users all over India. Now coming to the point. I removed the tag from Kallar article because User:Tamilvendan assured me that he would add refs. So, as per WP:AGF, I removed the tag.


 * By the way, why did you not tag User:Nichalp, too. You see I had conversed with them in their talkpage. So, they too are socks of mine you see. And by the way, I access Wikipedia simultaneously from India, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Canada. Well, friends, User ShivNarayanan, too, is a sock of mine because I awarded him a barnstar. Now, this is getting ridiculous. All that User:ShivNarayanan does is to disrupt Wikipedia by making ridiculous accusations. I've been contributing to this project for a long time. And caste-based articles are not the only ones I contribute to. I've also contributed to WikiProject Computing and WikiProject Iran. Now, User:ShivNarayan is trying to game the system. I feel he is either prejudiced against me and doing this to score a personal point over me. Half of the users he has mentioned here are well-established editors. Also, please note that User:ShivNarayanan has been recently blocked for violating WP:3RR. So, I suspect malicious intentions in starting this case. - The Enforcer Office of the secret service 18:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * User:Docku and myself got involved with Nadar (caste) article because of this discussion that we had in WP:IN discussion page.- The Enforcer Office of the secret service 18:19, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Evidence No 1

My reply: I removed the tags assuming good faith as  User:Tamilvendan explained things here and promised to add references. Does this constitute evidence of sockpuppetry?


 * Evidence 2:

Yeah, these diffs do indicate that these new users know very well how to add words in Tamil to Wikipedia. So what? I haven't made a single edit to Thondaiman, Malayaman, Paluvettaraiyar or Adigaman articles as you can verify from the edit history.

Let me reproduce what you've actually said: "There is a high correlation between Ravichandar84 (talk · contribs), an experienced user and these accounts, even though he pretends to do trivial edits."

Unfortunately, the links you've reproduced point to edit diffs and not user accounts, a clever and malicious ploy to mislead administrators here.

In the next line, you've said:  "I found that Ravichandar84 has pushed the same POV as Tamilvendan that the various dynasties were Kallar when he created the (List of Thevars/Kallars) " 

Again, I wasn't making any statement of my own. I only moved the "List of Thevars" from Mukkulathors to a separate article List of Thevars for maintenance reasons and while doing so I copy-pasted existing stuff. As I did not wish to pass judgement on the issue of Thevars having descended from Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas, I reworded the sentence from "Most Chola Chola kings are Thevar" to "according to tradition, Cheras, CHolas and Pandyas hailed from the Thevar community". If you bdo not believe that such traditions exist amongst the Thevars I can very well help you bout with the book "Castes and Tribes of Southern India" by Edgar Thurston.

 "Also, the image of "Raja raja chola", a popular royal from the Chola_Dynasty included by him in  is the same image uploaded by Tamilvendan here. He used a clever ploy to add the img of the Chola king to a collage and uploaded and named the collage "Image:Prominent.Kallars.JPG" thus pushing his POV. He has also been artificially stirring up conflicts in other Indian caste articles such as Nadar_(caste) (, [Vanniyar, Pallar, Bhumihar . etc. regarding the Tamil dynasties." 

Again, List of Thevars was only created by moving stuff from Mukkulathor. I moved the existing images to the article and nothing new. These images and  which, ShivNarayanan claims,  were added to the Chola collage weren't uploaded by me.

I did work to cleanup those articles. If you do not want me to, then well and fine. But then, the only reason why I got involved was that numerous IPs were vandalising them. And I do feel that you have something to do with all these vandals.

'' "Again in Pallar article the Cholas and Pallava claim exists in . A throwaway 122.172.17.158 (talk · contribs) deletes the refs and modifies the section. Somedays later, Ravichandar84 adds the POV tag . Docku (talk · contribs) follows suit with the OR-tag . This is definitely not random. Sureshmaran is just another sock, see:[31], who pushes POV along with other socks in Mudaliar and Sengunthar and Vettuva_gounder articles." ''

Just because User:Docku and myself worked on cleaning up the same article that does not mean that we are socks or sockpuppeteers.


 * Evidence 3:

'' "Ravichandar84 and his sock are stirring up controveries and conflicts in Nadar_(caste) . He has employed a classic "straw |puppet" and a flurry of throwaway ips and proxies to push his POV in the fake RfC. Basically he wants to remove the Pandya dynasty from Nadar_(caste). So he uses a straw puppet  and a score of throwaway ips, ,  to make weak arguments that he then dismisses easily along with sock Docku. Initially Bake1987 makes lousy arguments , ,  and keeps reverting the article, ,  and thus gets the article protected. Then Ravichandar84 starts a fake RfC and rigs it with the edits of anonymous ips 122.164.154.93, 122.164.172.164. These ips readily agree with Docku and Ravichandar84. Note that these are from the same range of ips 122.164.*.*, 59.*.*.* that go around deleting sections from other caste articles. " ''

This is the most ridiculous. There are two well-established users User:Abecedare and User:RegentsPark and they did not suspect anything. Either you suspect everything and everyone around here. 59.*.*.* is an IP range provided by BSNL and its connections covers 196 cities. See here. I do not know about the IP 122.*.*.*; neither have I used it.


 * Evidence 4:

'' " again pushes POV in the Chola_Dynasty article. He primarily quotes "http://www.whatisindia.com/inscriptions/" website as a source, the same source quoted by Rajendranwiki in Malayaman article:. Again, quoted by the throwaway account in Paluvettaraiyar article:  and by Tamilvendan and his socks in the Kallar_(caste) article: and again by   He also uses socks to push POV in articles Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy and C._N._Annadurai. The correlation is very high between, , ,  in article Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy:  and again between  and  in article C._N._Annadurai:. These all appear to be socks as they push the same POV as Ravichandar84. But they either take a break or keep a low profile when the other socks are pushing POV. For example Wikiality123 keeps a low profile or takes a break precisely when Ravichandar84 and Docku push POV. Lordeaswar another meat puppet, just scan the user page of Lordeaswar and view the number of edits by Ravichandar84." ''

It scarcely makes any logic. I don't even know who User:Srirangam99 is nor have I prolifically edited Chola Dynasty article. Yeah, User:Wiki Raja and myself have edited Periyar E. V. Ramasamy article a great deal. That doesnt prove we're sockpuppets. How come do you conclude we are my sockpuppets? And what sort of correlation are you speaking of? The diffs you suggested don't appear to be correlations in the first place. The links you have points out are to the history of each article. And that doesn;t prove a correlation in any way. User:Lordeaswar has made just 100 odd edits to the project. He hasn't even edited any caste-related article. He is a personal friend of mine and I helped him in designing his userpage. This is perfectly permissible in Wikipedia. As long as User:Lordeaswar isn't editing why bother.- The Enforcer Office of the secret service 22:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

'''I strongly insist that the concerned abitrators check each and every diff which User:ShivNarayanan has posted before considering this issue. There appears to be strong evidence of foul play here. I just viewed the diffs of edits made by me that has been submitted as an evidence of sockpuppetry and find that they are in no way related to the accusations User:ShivNarayanan has made.'''- The Enforcer Office of the secret service 22:18, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I've also been editing the following articles in Wikipedia and no one has made any accusation of POV-pushing or sockpuppetry against me. Caste-articles only form a minute fraction of my edits:

Aaron Baker, Abirami Pattar, Adaviyar, Adisaivar,  Agarathur, O. V. Alagesan, Alavan,  Alexander Cardew, Ambikapathy (1937 film),  Ammachatram,  Ammangudi, Annalagraharam,  Anandabharati Aiyangar,  Andaka Kaviviraraghava Mudaliar,  Andrew Cogan,  Amarsingh,  Amrutanjan,  Anandacharlu,  Ananda Ranga Pillai,  L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer,  S. Anantharamakrishnan,  Anbil P. Dharmalingam,  Anuppan,  Anuradha Sriram, Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar,  Ari Gowder,  Ariyapadaiveedu,  Ashok Kumar (1941 film),  ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool, Asur, Athiyur,  Audrey Stubbart,  Avadhanum Paupiah,  T. S. Avinashilingam Chettiar,  A. V. Meiyappan,  Baburajapuram,  Barashnûm,  Bhashyam Aiyangar,  Byzan Systems, Thomas Chambers,  Chandralekha (1948 film),  Chintamani (1937 film),  Coja Petrus Uscan,  Database Console Commands (Transact-SQL),  Devanancheri,  Duncan Greenlees, S. A. K. Durga,  Eardley Norton, Edward Harrison, Edmund Montague,  Edward Winter,  Ekoji I,  Ekoji II, Elandurai,  Enanallur, Eraharam,  M. O. H. Farook, Mt. Gandhamadana,  Geography of Orissa,  George Foxcraft,  George Morton Pitt,  George MaCartney,  Gulston Addison,  William Gyfford,  Francis Hastings,  Gilbert Slater, Great Depression in India,  Higginbotham's, Hindu Munnani, Haridas (1944 film)- The Enforcer Office of the secret service  22:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Malayaman

User:ShivNarayanan claims that I impersonated him in Malayaman article. Now, I haven't ever edited this article in the five odd months it has been around. My only edit to Kallar was an unreferenced tag which I removed on User:Tamilvendan's assurance that he will add references. I, then, suggested on the talkpage urging its editors to add more references. That was back in early March. Since then, I had been involving myself in building Portal:Orissa, Portal:Puducherry and Template:Thanjavur district and Template:Thiruvarur district and concentrating on increasing my DYK count. The Nadar talk page is the only caste-related thing I was working on and that was because it was in the middle of a WP:RFC. I did have heated discussions with User:WikiRaja and User:Docku in Periyar E. V. Ramasamy. But that does not mean I had created User:WikiRaja and User:Docku. I had also discussions with various other users and it had frequently become heated ones.- The Enforcer Office of the secret service 01:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by other users

Requested by ShivNarayanan (talk) 14:18, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * CheckUser requests

As per D: Tamilvendan was blocked according to 3RR 03:02, 20 March 2009, 04:38, 20 March 2009, 10:13, 20 March 2009,20:46, 20 March 2009. He evaded the block by reverting article Thondaiman through throwaway ip. Thondaiman is one of the related articles where has been pushing POV.

As per F: Again, a check user is necessary as explained in the evidence section above. The user has woven a complex web of socks. For eg; accounts A1,B1 from ip1 and A2,B2 from ip2 push POV in a such a way that A1,A2 war on article 1 and B1,B2 support one another in article 2. When A1,A2 push POV B1,B2 keep a low profile. For eg: Wikiality123 lies low when Ravichandar84 and Docku push POV. So each of the accounts must be checked against all the others and ips. Please see below for more diffs.

Diffs:
 * Ravichandar84:, , , ,
 * Tamilvendan:, , ,
 * Pandiavendan:, ,
 * Pughalraj: ,
 * Rajendranwiki:, , , , ,
 * Chola2010:, , ,
 * Prakash2019:, ,
 * Tamilarasanp: ,
 * Amendermis:, ,
 * Kalingan2008:, , ,
 * Arunprabu1981: ,
 * Senthilvasans:
 * Sureshmaran:, , , ,
 * Gowrishankars:
 * Redlance:, ,
 * Mayasutra:, ,
 * Srirangam99:, ,
 * Wikiality123:, , , ,
 * Pharaoh_of_the_Wizards:, ,
 * Docku:, , ,
 * Wiki_Raja:, ,
 * Pinecar:, , ,
 * Lordeaswar:
 * Bake1987:, , ,
 * 59.92.104.66: ,
 * 59.92.30.57:, , (He has used this ip to mimic me yesterday. He does this in order to discredit me.Ravichandar84 was blocked as an open-proxy on this very range )
 * 66.171.169.157:, ,
 * 192.138.111.176:, ,
 * 122.167.5.211:
 * 122.172.17.158:
 * 122.164.106.146:, ,
 * 122.164.172.164:, ,
 * 122.164.29.55:, ,
 * 122.164.219.239:
 * 122.164.188.8:
 * 122.164.154.93:
 * 117.193.166.26:
 * 117.193.168.51:
 * 116.75.83.66:, ,
 * 59.165.215.15: ,

 Syn  ergy 16:35, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments


 * Conclusions
 * This is a joke/disruptive request. Anyway, from past data, Ravichandar is most definitely not Srirangam, WikiRaja, Wikiality, Pharaoh or Docku... YellowMonkey  ( click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model! ) 00:46, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with YellowMonkey here. Maybe to you, the evidence seems to add up, but as an outsider, I don't find the evidence convincing. There's far too many assumptions here. Parsimony, please! Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 05:21, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I did do some investigating with regards to Kallar (caste). I have ✅ the following:

Some tag-team edit warring, possible POV pushing spread amongst multiple accounts, etc. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 05:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * to look at the farm above. Case will be renamed on completion. Mayalld (talk) 09:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * as the reporter has decided to file an Arbcom case, alleging collusion between the subject and CU YellowMonkey, and is then accusing Nishkid64 of not doing a proper job as a result, and me of accepting shoddy work from Nishkid, I'm recusing from further clerking of this case. Mayalld (talk) 12:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I have just completed an investigation of the various allegations made here of collusion and cover-ups; and found no evidence to support them. I also asked an independent checkuser to review the findings from first principles. The reviewer has broadly endorsed Nishkid's findings (the difference being that the reviewer concluded some findings were "possible/likely" instead of "confirmed"). This is normal interpretive variation. I suggest this case now is now dealt with as swiftly as possible through the normal channels. Roger Davies talk 06:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment by investigating arbitrator
 * Done and archiving. Tagged as first account created (Rajendranwiki) and moved casename to the same. I did however, leave the redirect behind for block logs.  Syn  ergy 13:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)