Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ScholarBlue/Archive

07 November 2015

 * Suspected sockpuppets




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Uncannily timed, anonymous support for controversial edits on a slow moving, semi-protected article. Puppetmaster account is less than a year old, with few edits, but displays a remarkable familiarity with using Wikipedia's punitive processes to silence dissent  against a contentious POV. Puppetmaster account also exhibits disruptive behavior and willfully engages in edit wars and removes requests for citations of unsupported assertions. Given the disposable nature of puppetmaster account, I suspect other sockpuppets exist. Windkin (talk) 03:05, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Since my filing of this request for investigation, the puppetmaster has edited the wikipedia page of a university  retrieved from a (potentially inaccurate) WHOIS  of one of the IPs the puppetmaster believes associated with my account. The information edited pertains to the physical location of the university and the action seems intended to harass or intimidate. Windkin (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See [Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Guidance#Defending yourself against claims|Defending yourself against claims].''

1. I have no control over what my colleagues at the University Library may or may not wish to write on Wikipedia, though I appreciate that I can not prove nor disprove whether the edit was indeed made by myself, and so I'll gladly leave this in the hands of those who have the authority to make decisions.

2. My account is a little over a year old, with some "good faith" edits which were reverted by more experienced, knowledgeable, and (importantly) competent editors; and so I did not argue with them, as can be seen by my deference to | Victor Chmara here | (reversion of my edit by Victor which I did not argue against). Note that Victor has been recogised by a | Anthon.Eff (a reputable contributor to Wikipedia) for the quality of his revisions and work on the "Heritability of IQ" article; as well as his relative lack of bias. I realise now that I should have made a "Request for Comment" submission.

3. It seems odd that a report of sock-puppetry against Windkin is considered improper if there was no wrongdoing. It must be brought to attention the possibility, as mentioned on the | Defending yourself against claims section of the Sockpuppet investigation guidance article that "If an accusation on this page is "bad faith" (an editor making a fake case for an "attack" or to prevent their own editing being examined) then you may wish to say so briefly" (which is what I am doing here).

4. Requesting protection of a page against IP editors who often lack competence in such controversial topics isn't exactly a bad thing to do, especially when deletions and insertions are made which more experienced members, such as Victor (aforementioned), did not deem unnecessary or inappropriate.

5. The edits which Windkin has made to the "Heritability of IQ" article make claims which were often not supported by the publications cited, and when publications did have figures claimed they were misrepresented, for example, presenting a heritability score of a small number of Caucasian samples from a handful of countries as being the upper estimate of heritability for representative samples of many Ethnic backgrounds and a large number of countries. Furthermore, claiming that information which opposes the narrative portrayed by Windkin is inappropriate, whilst presenting information out of context, even when I try to place it in context as a middle-ground, leaves me with a bad impression of the intentions behind edits made by Windkin. I'm sure if knowledgeable editors were asked to comment on this, that they would suggest that Windkin lacks sufficient competence on the topic at hand, especially given the absence of edits in his contributions to any field related to IQ or heritability, and the misappropriation of data.

6. The request for citation was made for a claim that data from a small population of ethnic groups must be examined before it can be extrapolated to significantly genetically different populations. Most competent editors would agree this is the case, and it must be mentioned here since the "removes requests for citations of unsupported assertions" is characteristically 'blown out of proportion by Windkin'.

7. It should also be noted that Windkin has a history of making personal attacks on editors | a1 | a2 | a3 | a4 | a5 | a6 | a7 | a8 | a9 | a10 (whilst also being offensive to the editor who warned him) and that obvious misspellings of my username and edits of my userpage have likely been an attempt at antagonising myself (especially since copy and paste exists to avoid misspelling errors)| b | c | d. Again, this information in conjunction with the timing of this Sockpuppet Investigation form submission against me, shortly after my SPI submission against him | e further supports the idea that | "an accusation on this page is "bad faith" (an editor making a fake case for an "attack" or to prevent their own editing being examined)". Note that a3, highlighting an edit made the same day disruptive edits were made to "heritability of IQ" by Windkin, against Warren (who had warned Windkin about attacking users) and fulfilling what can be described as a grudge or vendetta rather than the desire to improve the quality of wikipedia.

8. The shoddiness of the SPI submission made by Windkin (for example, his sparsity of diffs relating to sockpuppetry) and the low quality of edits to the "Heritability of IQ" article such as | the lack of attentiveness to the quality of grammar (see second paragraph) as a product of edits suggests the desire of Windkin to promote only his point-of-view with no regard for overall article quality (by previewing and proof reading edits) or representing data in the correct context (specifically, erroneously asserting that monozygotic twins raised apart have an IQ correlation of 0.86, when the source claims 0.86 for monozygotic twins raised together; an important distinction, seen | here, in figure 1 of the article referenced by Windkin) and a disregard for damaging the reputation and enthusiasm of an editor who hopes to make contributions to articles related to their academic area; namely brain sciences, and by extension the "Heritability of IQ" article.

9. Finally, if Windkin claims that I have many accounts for sockpuppeting and that this account is disposable, then it would not be too difficult to check for accounts associated to my IP which have made edits to this article, or have edited the same article at least once. That an IP check was not requested likely speaks volumes either about the level of competence of Windkin or about the faith Windkin puts in his claim of myself participating in sockpuppetry and using other accounts for sockpuppetry.

I must also add, that I have created a new account (which I would like to remain anonymous), since it seems apparent that Windkin is monitoring my account contributions (otherwise he would not have found my SPI submission), and I would like to rid myself of the burden of having someone potentially scrutinize my edits with malicious intent; as I suspect was inflicted upon Warren (as seen in a3) and potentially others (through anonymous IPs).

To whom it may concern, thank you for taking your time to read my (excessively long) defence. ScholarBlue (talk) 05:19, 7 November 2015 (UTC) ScholarBlue (talk) 05:39, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * With just one edit by this IP, it is hard to prove anything. I'm closing this.  Vanjagenije  (talk)  10:17, 15 November 2015 (UTC)