Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rovers Forever/Archive

30 August 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

There has been a great amount of unfocused and decentralized vandalism from IP editors in the area of football on Wikipedia and this is nothing new. This is no different for the area of Irish football than it is for any of the other regional varieties out there. Football fans are passionate and while this can lead to productive and helpful edits it can also lead to a great deal of aggression and vandalism (especially from those who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia's policies and are unwilling to learn them or are incapable of understanding them). Such is the case before us today.

The person at the center of this discussion is an editor who has been active at Wikipedia off and on since 2007. Not all of his edits violate the rules of Wikipedia. Indeed, assuming goodfaith it might be fair to say that most of his edits are intended to improve the encyclopedia. Sadly it appears to be the case that when this editor has run into issues where his vision is at odds with Wikipedia's rules, he has adopted an underhanded method of dealing with the issue.

I see this case as a potentially textbook example of the good-hand-bad-hand editor. There are a number of telling clues that have led me to suspect that User:Rovers Forever is the (mostly) good-hand central account connected to a startling number of obnoxiously aggressive and unrelenting bad-hand IP vandal accounts. To cover WP:SIGNS briefly:
 * The IP editors involved display precocious edit histories insofar as their most common kind of edit is a reversion (something that many new editors do not know how to do or that they refrain from to avoid conflict while they are uncertain of the rules)
 * The IP editors repeat the same disapproved activity ad nauseam. The edit wars on some of the pages attacked by this editor have gone on for 20 or 30 repetitions. Other edits such as the addition of celebrities' favorite football teams (an edit shared by the IPs and Rovers Forever) have been explicitly rejected by the community yet they continue. This will be explained in greater detail below.
 * The chronology of edit matches closely. All edits are consistent with normal daytime hours in Ireland (although this may not be the best evidence given the explicitly single-purpose nature of all of the accounts mentioned). And most of the IP editors have edited in concentrated bursts of 20-30 edits in one day yet fewer than 50 total edits.
 * Geographically, all editors locate to Ireland (again, not particularly surprising or damning in this case).
 * Similar writing/editing styles is apparent in both Rovers Forever as well as the IP editors including use of the same insults, use of the same nonstandard reference-formatting, and removal of the same markup tags. This will be explained in greater detail below.
 * IP sock puppetry appears clear in this case.
 * Single-purpose accounts again appear clear in all of the accounts discussed here. All editors in question edit articles related to Irish football, and the vast bulk of them edit articles relate somehow to the Shamrock Rovers Football Club.

It is helpful to examine a number of specific similarities between the edits made by Rovers Forever and the cloud of IP editors. In both cases, certain characteristics are noted to be shared by the editors in question. These are laid out hereunder:
 * Use of the pejorative term "pedant" to insult fellow editors.
 * Exhibit A (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit B (reference to a Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit C (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit D (86.44.102.9 edit)
 * Exhibit E (178.167.138.211 edit)
 * Exhibit F (86.44.90.187 edit)
 * Penchant for blanking markup tags and especially "stub" designations.
 * Exhibit G (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit H (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit I (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit J (82.198.140.206 edit)
 * Exhibit K (178.167.146.149 edit)
 * Exhibit L (92.251.228.154 edit)
 * Exhibit M (178.167.200.195 edit)
 * Addition of identically hand-formatted (i.e. non-standard) references to the "The Hoops" book - an offline source that is used to back up the majority of these editors' claims when they can be cowed into providing one.
 * Exhibit N (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit O (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit P (92.251.165.97 edit)
 * Exhibit Q (92.251.165.97 edit)
 * Exhibit R (193.120.73.223 edit)
 * Exhibit S (213.94.254.41 edit)
 * Common interest in adding which team irish politicians and celebrities root for.
 * Exhibit T (Rovers Forever edit)
 * Exhibit U (92.251.173.195 edit) - Note: This page has been semi-protected against this edit 3 times.
 * Exhibit V (86.44.120.50 edit) - Note: This page has been semi-protected against this edit 6 times.
 * Common use of User:Rovers Forever's talk page to communicate with other editors. Here we see several examples of un-objected-to edits by one of the many IP vandals to User:Rovers Forever's talk page.
 * Exhibit W (86.44.106.144 edit)
 * Exhibit X (92.251.231.51 edit)
 * Exhibit Y (86.43.213.47 edit)

The last piece of evidence I wish to present is the following conversation that took place between Rovers Forever and me: Here we see a conversation between Rovers Forever, a number of IP editors who seem to speaking for Rovers Forever, and me. There is reference made to this earlier conversation I had earlier engaged in solely with the IPs a few months earlier. Specifically, the conversation covers an offline unpublished architect's sketch that had been claimed as the basis for an earlier disputed claim. By admitting knowledge of this previous conversation, Rovers Forever seems to have implicitly acknowledged that he is the same as the editors that I had been conversing with several months earlier.
 * July 2012 conversation that has since been blanked by User:Rovers Forever

The above 20 ip addresses are the merest tip of the iceberg related to these accounts. There are probably hundreds of them that have been used on and off since 2007. I'm not sure what can be done about this problem because frankly Rovers Forever is generally much better behaved than the IPs that have been used to anonymously abuse Wikipedia. If there was a way to block his use of all IPs then I'd say that would be the best option but this seems like overkill to me. At this point, if my suspicions are confirmed then I think it would be best to block the main account (i.e. User:Rovers Forever) and the primary IP vandal account, (i.e. User:82.198.140.206) and then we'll just have to remain vigilant against future abuse on these articles.

Thanks for your time. Thibbs (talk) 23:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * In the last week there have been a few more developments worthy of brief note:
 * here we can see Rovers Forever's response to my SPI warning.
 * here we can see another IP sock (31.200.146.3) revealing knowledge of the open SPI filing associated with Rovers Forever (Note that this IP's comment regarding sockpuppetry comes several days after Rovers Forever blanked his page and my filing here would already have been on page 2 of my edit history so it's extremely unlikely that the IP editor would have known of the filing unless he was Rovers Forever).
 * Thanks. -Thibbs (talk) 13:34, 8 September 2012 (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

 * Thank you for the set of diffs, although I didn't look through most of them, it sets the precident for future investigations and range blocks. Sadly they are all block stale right now. I have blocked the master for a month, and the latest IP for 72 hours on behavoiral grounds. -- DQ  (ʞlɐʇ)  20:38, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

09 November 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

I was alerted to the strange editing relationship of the 178.167.219.247 and MusstMike by another user - the IP would make an edit and MusstMike would revert with no rationale. After I posted on MusstMike's talk page, the other three user appeared out of nowhere in his defence. It was another user who suggested it might be linked to Rovers Forever. Given the strange behaviour of all involved, I feel a checkuser should shed some light, and hopefully find other linked accounts. GiantSnowman 23:57, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''
 * Comment - The amount of fighting I see between 178.167.219.247 and the others leads me to think that the others are all a different editor. 178.167.219.247 looks to me to be acting very similarly to Rovers Forever, but I think he may be the only sockpuppet of that puppet master. On the other hand, MusstMike, DamagedLark, UberUnderwear, and YearlyLumberjack appear pretty DUCKish to me as well. I have a feeling they are all the same person, although a different person than Rovers Forever. -Thibbs (talk) 01:07, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note, specific dif evidence for 178.167.219.247's similarities to Rovers Forever includes edits like this. Note the edit summary where he characterizes the editor he disagrees as a vandal while simultaneously blanking both the BLP-sources tag and the stub tag. All three of these things are typical Rovers Forever behavior (when editing as an IP), and then of course there's the subject matter. 90% of the articles 178.167.219.247 touched have some connection to the Shamrock Rovers - Rovers Forever's favorite team. -Thibbs (talk) 13:06, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So looks like we have 2 editors using (at least) six accounts? GiantSnowman 13:26, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah that's what it looks like to me. MusstMike, DamagedLark, UberUnderwear, and YearlyLumberjack all seem to be the same person just based on the sudden appearance of the latter 3 to bolster MusstMike on his page, the similar binary nature of their names, the time period separating the creation of the accounts, and their complete lack of edits apart from their backup on MusstMike's talk. MusstMike would be the puppetmaster I guess, though he has very few edits himself and they are nearly all reversions of 178.167.219.247. As a side note, 178.167.219.247 has now hopped to 31.200.168.45. If this is the same guy that I suspect it is, he's really fond of IP-hopping which makes it hard to stop him... -Thibbs (talk) 13:44, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Now he's moved to 31.200.166.69. -Thibbs (talk) 17:01, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
— Berean Hunter   (talk)  03:15, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * No comment on whether the IPs are Rovers Forever, but all of:
 * are the same joker. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.
 * are the same joker. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.
 * are the same joker. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.
 * are the same joker. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.
 * are the same joker. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.
 * are the same joker. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.
 * are the same joker. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.
 * Indeffing master along with sock farm and giving IP 1 month. Closing.

13 July 2013

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.
 * Editor interaction utility

Compare this edit by sockpuppet "Rovers Forever2" to this edit by HitchHikedtoAthlone. This editor also uses hand-formatted refs to the offline The Hoops by Paul Doolan and Robert Goggins in a manner identical with User:Rovers Forever (see above evidence from 30 August 2012). He uses this and online pay sites as his primary sources which make it hard to verify his claims (most of which he claims originate in this book) and more significantly the The Hoops book is a source very rarely used by anybody but User:Rovers Forever and his socks.

Add to this an obsessive interest in the Shamrock Rovers football team, removal of cleanup tags using misleading edit summaries, and a complete inability to format refs - all three common Rovers Forever traits. Pretty obvious quacking...

He seems to have given his real name and his email address here which could be helpful if this ever has to escalate in the future to WP:ABUSE. I have no interest in knowing his personal details and it's probably best not to go too far in outing him, but User:Arbitrarily0 (the recipient of User:Rovers Forever's email) is an admin and can be trusted to act with discretion. I'm not sure if a CU is needed as I have little evidence of further username socking. (Obviously this guy uses loads of throwaway IP socks including User:178.167.254.177, User:178.167.254.13, the team of IPs currently edit warring at Paul Bannon, and the most recent User:178.167.254.28), but seeing as this HitchHikedtoAthlone account has been used pretty infrequently despite being created several months ago, and judging from his large stable of previous sleeper socks, a CU may be warranted. I'll leave that decision to an SPI investigator more experienced than I. Thibbs (talk) 17:34, 13 July 2013 (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

 * - - Diffs provided show a very likely link. Requesting CU for a sleeper check, due to history of this particular master. Dennis Brown &#124; 2¢ &#124;  WER  22:31, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Nothing to report that isn't already apparent. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 14:33, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Blocks and tags as needed. Closing. Dennis Brown &#124; 2¢ &#124;  WER  15:01, 14 July 2013 (UTC)