Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rajeshbhatt director/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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For the hell of it last night I decided to tip toe through the logs and see which of the old red linked articles went blue in the last few months, and to make sure that those that did go blue went blue legitimately instead of being recreated without anyone being the wiser. Rajesh Bhatt is one of those articles, its had a troubled history of copyright deletions and non notability claims. When I saw that it was blue again I went looking for the history and made an interesting discover: it looks like a sock farm is working to promote this man. This got started when the parent account created the article in question. This account made a point of creating the article and adding a link to the director in question here. Fortunately, this account got blocked very quickly by in August 2014. In 2015, Mgkfilms took up the cause of the article's creation, but after three edits of self promotion was quickly blocked on username grounds. That takes us to 2016, when Mdnt recreated the article and edited it along with several other Indian articles. This account got swatted in March 2016 for repeatedly removing the afd tag in a misguided attempt to close the associated article for deletion discussion on the article, and the article was itself deleted as a result of the afd by. Not a few days after the afd a new account (Dhirukim) suddenly appears and starts recreating the article with all the old information that got it deleted in the first place. Now I see that there are several similarly themed burner accounts its seems working the article to keep it here, including but not limited to (all edits on or related to the director),  (single purpose account, note removal of csd template, which is what got Mdnt blocked),  (single purpose account),  (three edits, two to the article in question, another to an Indian article). In every case this article seems to be the target of accounts who have a vested interest in the director, and the newest accounts with the red linked name space and talk pages raise a number of red flags. Aside from my deletion of the article and MelanieN's deletion, two others - and  - have previously deleted this article on G11 and G12 grounds, respectively. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:40, 22 July 2016 (UTC) TomStar81 (Talk) 08:40, 22 July 2016 (UTC)




 * Adding these - I'd definitely recommend a checkuser for any other accounts since we're likely missing some. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  10:02, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.'' Initially I thought that these are all socks of, however it looks like this might be a separate set of socks. Here's the timeline:
 * It looks like this is related to the SPI for, so these might just be new socks of this account. I've been asked to take a look, so I'll see what I can find and then give my opinion in a few moments. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  09:42, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

In August 2014 the page was originally created by, who was later linked to Chigurula via a checkuser search at this SPI. The editing style was different, although this account used some of the same overall promotion tactics. Attempts to recreate the page after various deletions were done by Mdnt and Mkgfilms prior to the article's deletion at AfD on March 6.

The page was re-created about 20 days later by and was subsequently edited by, , and. Here is a breakdown of their editing styles:


 * Dhirukim signed up on 24 March 2016. His edits are solely Bhatt related.
 * Naveenritesh signed up on 28 March 2016, a few days later. His edits are predominantly about Bhatt, however they did make some edits to other articles - most noticeably that of Satyapal Chandra with this edit.
 * Soniagill2035 signed up on 1 May 2016. Her edits are few, but she edited Bhatt's article as well as the Chandra article, which was edited by Naveenritesh and created by Mdnt.
 * Rakeskumarraj signed up on 28 April 2016 and has made some edits to the article. They also made the article Kaun Hai Jo Sapno Mein Aaya, one of Bhatt's films.

I don't think that this is sockpuppetry as much as this is meatpuppetry and undisclosed paid editing. The past edits by Chigurula were found to be different from the others, which gives credence to the idea that this is yet another group of marketing people who were hired to go spruce up clients' pages on Wikipedia. I'm going to delete the pages that were previously deleted at AfD and salt the entries.

As far as the marketing people go, I'd recommend that you not take on clients whose articles have been deleted at AfD. This rarely works out well, as the page would then show that not only were the articles deleted due to a lack of notability. If they're repeatedly created enough to warrant salting, then it would also show that the recreations were seen as a general nuisance, which makes the client appear even worse.

I'm going to add these names to the SPI since I've mentioned them here. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  10:01, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I decided to look at some of the other pages and it looks like Mnt and Naveenritesh have both edited Sandeep Garg, which was created by Mnt. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  03:07, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Concur with the editors above that all of these accounts are likely undisclosed paid editors, whether a single person or a group, and recommend blocking all, considering deleting or AFD'ing the involved articles, and if they are deleted, salting them. All relevant accounts are so cannot be checked against each other.  Risker (talk) 03:07, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Closing without prejudice because of the time elapsed since the last edits. If there's future related disruption, it can be reopened.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:50, 15 September 2016 (UTC)