Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rajesh56om/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
The master, as early as 2020, has been adding information to their userpage about "Rajesh Kumar Ram", an Indian musician who appears to fall quite short of notability guidelines. According to a message on the user's talk page and a related deletion log, this draft expired in February 2021 and was deleted by.

The first five socks are all ducks:

I am requesting a checkuser because I suspect that (as evidenced by the existence of Josh Franklins husky) there are sleeper accounts that could be used to further disruption. Attempts to get onto the English Wikipedia have been sustained and persistent. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 19:37, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) has made one edit to Wikipedia (as far as I can tell) and that edit was to insert Rajesh Kumar ram well know as Devilraj born in 5/4/2004 is an Indian musical artist into their user sandbox. This edit was in March 2022.
 * 2) uploaded this file of Rajesh Kumar Ram to commons, labeling it as "own work". The user proceded to create a draft article on Ram that was speedy deleted as promotional by  on May 23rd.
 * , following the deletion of the promotional draft, made a subsequent promotional draft that has since been deleted. The user made several edits to *ram* content on Rajesh Kumar Ram into the mainspace when they could not get the draft approved. These include:
 * 1) Hijacking a redirect;
 * 2) Replacing a hijacked redirect with content of Rajesh Kumar Ram (including the photograph uploaded by ;
 * 3) Hijacking the redirect again;
 * 4) Hijacking Rajesh;
 * 5) Hijacking Rajesh (name).
 * 6) has "devilraj" in the user's name (Devilraj is apparently the current stage name of the musician). This user has already been blocked on enwiki, but their contributions to Hindi Wikipedia indicate strongly that this user is related.
 * 7) attempted to repeatedly create vanity pages for Rajesh Kumar Ram in early 2021.


 * Update: A sixth sock has appeared while this has been awaiting a clerk/CU to look into it. has made two edits: insert Rajesh Kumar Ram into Rajesh, while the second edit was to create yet another draft article about Rajesh Kumar Ram. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:30, 25 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Update: A seventh sock has emerged and been blocked by  for being a promotion-only account. The account has uploaded pictures to commons under the name of "Rajesh Kumar Ram" and marked them as "own work". — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 17:15, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I hate to do this at this point,, but it looks like there was a user from 2010 who created a page called "devilraj". I can't view the deleted content of that page to see if this was unrelated (which I suspect), but are you willing to check to make sure that this isn't a 12-year-long LTA? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 18:15, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for letting me know. I've opened an AN thread on commons, since this involves cross-wiki sockpuppetry. Salting the mainspace articles for "DevilRaj", "Devilraj", "Rajesh Kumar Ram", "Rajesh Kumar ram", and "Rajesh (Devilraj)" seem to be a way to confine future disruption to the draft namespace, while also allowing us to catch future socks relatively easily once they start editing the same draftspace pages as previous accounts. Might also want to apply semi-protection to Rajesh and Rajeshkumar (seeing multiple hijacking attempts). Does this work for you? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 18:58, 27 May 2022 (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

 * I wasn't aware of this report or the socking allegations. I'll take a look at the evidence and run some checks if warranted.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 17:18, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Here you go:
 * ,  and  are ✅ to each other
 * is but quacks to high heaven to the above accounts
 * is to the first group
 * is to the first group
 * is to the first group, but could be WP:MEAT


 * I'd be liberal with protections as needed; ping me if I can help.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 17:36, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * is unrelated. Their deleted draft is about a different individual born decades earlier.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 18:19, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Once the Clerks work their magic I'll see what's left to do.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 19:05, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm blocking, , and as socks of  (who I'm also blocking) on the basis that they are either quacking socks or meatpuppets (which can be treated in identical fashion). I'm not bothering to reblock any of the other accounts, as I don't think it really matters.
 * I don't think salting anything is a good idea, as that often just pushes disruption elsewhere where it's harder to find. Given that there has been no more of this nonsense since the report, I'm not going to (re)protect any of the pages at the moment, however I will gladly do so if it resumes. Closing. firefly  ( t · c ) 10:09, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

 * like other socks, has repeatedly created Draft:Devilraj. See this log for more information.
 * mobile edit + mobile web edit tags on edits
 * like other socks, has significant contributions on other wikis &mdash; Ingenuity (talk &bull; contribs) 18:44, 12 November 2022 (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

 * - See cross-wiki activity, also compare username to Bruhking56om. . Please, indef the account. Thank you. MarioGom (talk) 21:29, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * . DatGuyTalkContribs 12:41, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Usual sock behaviour, promoting "Devilraj". See User:Ravi shreevastava/sandbox. Started editing just after previous sock was blocked. &mdash; Ingenuity (talk &bull; contribs) 15:21, 8 December 2022 (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

 * -, please, block the account as suspected. Thank you. MarioGom (talk) 16:59, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeffed as suggested,, particularly per this. Will leave tagging to you if I may. Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:35, 9 December 2022 (UTC)


 * as suspected. . Closing. MarioGom (talk) 10:39, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Much like all other accounts in this cluster, the account has taken an interest in Rajesh Kumar Ram (a.k.a. Devilraj), an Indian musician. The user created Draft:Rajesh Kumar ram, wikidata:Q121540823, and uploaded several images to Commons as "own work" that depict this individual (as well as an image of this individual's signature). Many of the same sources that had been used by previous sockpuppets of this user were also used by this user when creating the draft article (compare the sourcing at w:fr:Special:Diff/199253290 with those of Special:Diff/1166304994, seven of the eight sources in the french userspace draft appear in the diff of the current draft on the English Wikipedia. Also like other socks, the user attempted to move a promotional draft to mainspace, even after an earlier draft had been declined by.

Similar to other accounts, this user has created a userpage with a number of false claims about their relationship to new page creation (they claim to be an NPR and an AfC reviewer, while claimed to be an account whose job was to move "notable, pending Drafts to Article space"). This is a common thing among sockpuppets generally, since it aims to increase their appearance of legitimacy, so as to make it more likely for their promotional draft to stick. This sockpuppet appears to have advanced a strategy previously adopted by the sockmaster in editing articles about things other than Devilraj (, for example, edited Draft:Alexandr Wang in addition to Devilraj stuff).

In light of the above, this would be clear abuse of multiple accounts if this account were to be connected to the sockmaster. I would request checkuser but for it appearing that all known socks are stale.

(I'm also somewhat suspicious that this is simply a UPE firm with the same interest, which would complicate things. If the original sockmaster, who by all accounts appears to be closely connected to the musician, became frustrated and hired a UPE firm to do this, then I'm not sure what the best place to categorize this sock is, but I'm filing here based on the behavioral promotional similarity to the prior master). — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 22:43, 3 September 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 account reported here is quacking, IMHO; shared interest in one non-notable musician could just about be coincidence, two is sure as hell not. Given the history of sleepers, I'm requesting a CU, and I'll leave the tagging be until that's actioned. I'm seeing edits across four wikis, so I'm requesting a lock; this is my first time doing so, if the next person along could double check that, it would be much appreciated. Vanamonde (Talk) 01:30, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
 * . Closing since the account is already blocked. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:29, 27 September 2023 (UTC)