Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rp2006/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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

The following editors appear to all be connected in various ways. I'm unsure whether this is sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry, but either way, it is improper.


 * All user pages contain badges from The Wikipedia Adventure.
 * Several user pages are of the same format, with username, interests, and the place they supposedly live. (Boneso, HaraldW1954, Ph2500)
 * The following interaction reports are very striking in the amount of overlap:
 * Many accounts share an interest in "skepticism", which is possibly the origin of their connection if this is meatpuppetry. Selected diffs, one from each editor:
 * Multiple accounts voted !keep on Articles for deletion/Hari Bhimaraju in rapid succession. This covers Mramoeba, Boneso, Rp2006, and Sgerbic. Note that several of them made similar odd formatting decisions for their !votes, offsetting their entire comment from their keep vote on new lines.
 * Many of them have directly edited in the userspaces of others from the list, visible in the interaction reports above.
 * Username similarities between Rp2006 and Ph2500.

There are many other similarities and crossover instances, but these are beyond enough for DUCK blocks. Given the misleading nature of participation in AfD alone, this fails legitimate uses of alternate accounts. If it's meatpuppetry, it violates canvassing and can be treated as sockpuppetry per our existing policies. ~ Rob 13 Talk 03:52, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Pinging . I've been told by a CU this one will need to be by behavior (technical data is unrelated), with meatpuppetry being the only likely way this is occurring. Could you evaluate behavior? ~ Rob 13 Talk 03:59, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

Comment by Krelnik: Hi, I'm an uninvolved editor who is acquainted with some of the people accounts mentioned here. I have never edited Hari Bhimaraju nor have I participated in the current AFD on that article, which I think is what set off this SPI. I'm not outing anyone to tell you that Sgerbic is Susan Gerbic (as you can see from the connected editor banner on the talk page on that article, as well as her own user page). Susan runs a project to train Wikipedia editors. I help advise her project, and believe me she puts tons of time and effort into training people in how to write good articles. Much of the work they do is related to Wikiproject Skepticism, but they also edit in related fields like science - like this particular article. I believe all of the other accounts are people she's trained, but I don't know all of them personally so some may be uninvolved.

I think what happened here is the members of this project got overly excited about trying to make this particular BLP stick, and came to each others aid. There was nothing nefarious here, just editors helping each other out in the normal fashion that happens when people come to know each other on Wikipedia. I know I have other editors that I regularly encounter in my travels here simply because we have overlaps in our watch lists. The same thing happens among editors who work together on Wikiprojects like Wikproject Skepticism - you see the notices the wikiproject bots generate, and go look at the articles. These are good people who are trying to contribute to Wikipedia. Please don't let confirmation bias lead you to see some overlapping edits by a few editors turn the whole thing into some nefarious plot. It isn't.

I've advised them that personally I think this particular BLP probably wasn't a good bet on the basis of notability. Personally I try to be very conservative on creating BLPs, because I know admins and other editors are super wary of promotional articles for living people. But I think their enthusiasm for this very talented kid maybe got the best of them in this case. --Krelnik (talk) 12:23, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Question What exactly am I being accused of here?Sgerbic (talk) 20:59, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * This is silly. As Krelnik points out, there is nothing underhand going on here. Guy (Help!) 09:26, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment--- The speed with which the subjects arrived in the AFD, brought out similar responses and then are found to share a stunning overlap of editing interests---all strongly suggests that there was a collusion somewhere offwiki that brought these editors to this debate.While the overlap could be explained by Krelnik, I don't believe Krelnik that this happened because they all apparently belonging to the same brotherhood-- happened to see the bot postings of the AFD debate within a narrow span of time, grew a heavy interest to save an article hitherto untouched by them and then posted near-similar responses.No way! Winged Blades Godric 10:03, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I recommend you email Sgerbic and ask - I did. Only two of the comments were from GSoW editors, one from the creator and one form an editor who had it on watchlist, I believe from a training session but might have misread that. Sgerbic watched it too, as far as I can tell that's because she's interested in gender balance in science, a historical issue for us. All other comments were completely independent of GSoW, and I am told that GSoW did not talk about this internally because they have rules against that, precisely to avoid this kind of accusation. I suspect that the subject, as a young person with a media presence, may have attracted support as most YouTubers do if they are AfDd. I don't see anything sinister going on here. In any case the result was obvious so I nuked it. Guy (Help!) 22:02, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
I wanted to chime in here that while the rapid votes appeared odd to me, the first thing that truly concerned me about the behavior at AfD was this non-admin closure by an IP with zero other edits on Wikipedia and the subsequent removal of AfD tags by an editor who !voted in the AfD. It looked fishy and I am concerned that there was an attempt to canvass and sweep the AfD under the rug as had I not popped in later this might have gone unnoticed. Also, 67 links for a page are not that many when you consider that many editors/wikiproject have deletion watches (themselves not always heavily visited pages and a number of the inclusion in "x" topic deletion discussions did not occur until after I relisted the AfD due to the improper close and thus would not have existed for some of the early !votes at question here.) Mifter (talk) 18:08, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I checked a few of these users, found them ❌ completely with very little chance of proxy usage, and even if there were some proxy usage, it's not likely all of them are on proxies, meaning different users. -- Amanda  (aka DQ) 04:24, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've found off-wiki evidence that strongly supports a determination of meatpuppetry. It has been forwarded to the functionary mailing list. ~ Rob 13 Talk 23:47, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry to have gotten here so late. I'd be happy to take a look, if you like - I think Krelnik is more knowledgeable about this than I, though. GABgab 14:56, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I certainly can accept that this is a situation caused by a usually-legitimate off-wiki group. It does trend rapidly toward canvassing and meatpuppetry territory when three editors show up at an AFD within hours of each other. Multiple editors who showed up had never edited the article in question, and so the watchlist explanation isn't particularly convincing to me. I think it's clear that there was a "heads up, look at this AfD" message that occurred somewhere off-wiki based on the behavioral evidence (which is probably the only thing that needs evaluated at this point, GAB). If that's the case, all !votes from this group at the AfD should be discounted heavily on the basis of canvassing. You mention a normal "helping each other out" bit. That's not normal when it comes as a result of editors requesting assistance. I'm not really looking for a block to come out of this, but at a minimum, I believe an administrator (or clerk) should make a determination that canvassing/meatpuppetry occurred and strike the related !votes. This undoes the damage caused by the canvassing in the first place. We can then leave things with a warning that coordination on content creation is okay (encouraged even!), but coordination at XfDs or RfCs is not. ~ Rob 13 Talk 16:15, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure 'striking votes' is even necessary under the rules, but I'm not an admin. Policy is clear that Wikipedia is not a democracy and any votes are just to help get consensus. It's up to the closer of the AFD to decide the validity of the votes. I think you've already noted your concerns there. Now that having been said, I would point out that "never edited the article in question" is NOT a valid concern regarding voting on an AFD. If it were, how would we ever AFD a spam article that was entirely written by one person? Would every voter have to go create a trivial pointless edit on the article in order to vote? --Krelnik (talk) 16:29, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The edit history doesn't influence whether they can vote, but it sure shows that they wouldn't have noticed this AfD so quickly without being canvassed. That was the point I was making. It proves the canvassing. The discussion is not a vote, but the quantity of votes obviously do influence consensus, because strength of arguments is partially determined by how many participants find the argument convincing. ~ Rob 13 Talk 16:32, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I disagree - it does not 'prove' the canvassing. I invite you to look at the list of articles that link to that AFD. I count 67 places it is linked, including multiple Wikiprojects, various bot collections, and so on. Anyone watching any of those pages, plus anyone watching the article itself, could have noticed it. And sure, some of these people might have mentioned to their friend, "Hey, this article I like is up for deletion, can you help me fix it?" That is perfectly normal and allowed. Bottom line: I think perhaps you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. Lets get the AFD closed (yes, probably with the result of DELETE), and move on to more productive use of our time. Cheers. --Krelnik (talk) 16:45, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * More importantly, that number of links doesn't explain the speed at which the editors arrived, nor how close together the !keep votes were of the initial three editors from this group. It takes time for AfDs to propogate to those pages. ~ Rob 13 Talk 21:02, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi, responding to your question above: you and the other editors in the list are being accused of recruiting each other to collectively vote at the AfD, in order to create the impression of strong independent support for keeping this article. If this did occur it would be in breach of this policy. At present the evidence strongly suggests that somewhere offwiki there was a "heads up, look at this AfD" message that then brought these editors to this debate. The speed that you all arrived, the similarities in your responses and your obvious links in editing interests does presently suggest this occurred. However, please do indicate if you disagree, and if there's a plausible alternative scenario. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:02, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm convinced that did not happen. I have asked GSoW to help out on articles flagged via OTRS or ANI in the past, and Sgerbic is very careful to ensure there is no canvassing. Guy (Help!) 22:03, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Despite being WP:INVOLVED as the nominator, I'm going to take the obvious action here and close this (with encouragement to a clerk reviewing my action to ensure it is neutral). I believe this is appropriate both as the obviously correct action and due to the fact that, if anything, my prejudice as the editor who made the original report swings in a direction other than toward closing with no action. It has been thoroughly explained that this group of editors operates in a legitimate manner and is a net positive. The potential damage of the coordination here was that an AfD would receive an improper result, but the AfD has since closed as "delete" despite the deluge of "keep" !votes from a single source. With no damage to correct and several administrators noting that the apparent coordination here is very uncharacteristic of this group, there's no administrative action necessary. Again, a clerk is encouraged to review this thoroughly to ensure my close is an accurate statement of fact, but I think this is a very obvious outcome. ~ Rob 13 Talk 17:16, 26 March 2017 (UTC)