Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Shadowxgov/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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This is a strange case. The article 7th Floor Group, now up for deletion, was created by on October 17. Shadowxgov has no other contributions to Wikipedia. is the next major contributor and goes on to make many more edits to the page. , a wikipedian since August, also contributes. There are disputes over content, that only Knowledgebattle is involved in.

Knowledgebattle starts the talk page with a post titled "contested deletion", arguing that "This article should not be speedy deleted as being recently created, having no relevant page history and duplicating an existing English Wikipedia topic, because..." and proceeds with an explanation. Then, a bunch of IPs go to the talk page and make entries that with the same "contested deletion" subheading and almost identical language. Datacorrecto makes a nearly identical edit. also signs up to Wikipedia only to post almost the same thing.

I feel bad accusing Knowledgebattle of anything - maybe they're the target of trolling - but I have to say this looks hella suspicious. Anybody both innocent and competent would have been alarmed that their posts were being duplicated by an army of IPs and sock-type accounts.

An alternative is that Knowledgebattle isn't involved, but their post was replicated by Datacorrecto and associated socks. -Darouet (talk) 22:15, 26 October 2016 (UTC) Darouet (talk) 22:15, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Am pinging they have also seen the article and talk page. -Darouet (talk) 22:17, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

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

When you click "contest deletion" on the Speedy tag, it generates those pre-loaded comments. So if a handful of users click "contest deletion" and don't add anything, the comments that are left on the talk page are pretty much identical. I'm amazed there's so much interest in that article. Geogene (talk) 23:27, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Since the oldest account is Knowledgebattle, so the master it should be Knowledgebattle is it? SA 13 Bro (talk) 23:52, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Ah, thanks for the clarification. -Darouet (talk) 00:03, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Response from the accused
Just logged in and saw these messages. I was going to reply with indignace, as I don't get involved in sockpuppetry – everything I do, I just do from my own account.

You said, "I'm amazed there's so much interest in that article. To answer that, the reason for so much interest in the article is that it exploded on Twitter. I have since deleted my Twitter account, but if you check on Twitter from those dates, there was a lot of conversation going on about it. It wasn't being widely reported on by the MSM, but there were a few articles, of course.

I was actually bummed out that someone else had already created the page, since the information had just been leaked, and I really did hope to start the page. Oh sure, that's not a big deal, but I would have viewed starting that page as a gem. Since User:Shadowxgov started the page, I went ahead and began adding as much information as I could find. Went over to WikiLeaks and started searching their archives for related keywords, but nothing popped up, over there. Then used Google's advanced search to cover past timespans, to see if Google had ever indexed the term before – strangely, there had never even been any conspiracy theory websites using the term, before the report was released. Guess those conspiracy theorists don't really know anything, after all. The FBI report and the news articles were the only real source of information. I don't know other people's motivation for wishing to keep the article, but mine is that I don't want the term and the information to be deleted, fall off the face of the interwebz, and go back into hiding. If it's a notable, designated, high-ranking group with influence in the government – even if there's not a lot of information on them – I feel it should be kept. More information may be released later, but if we remove it, and the term comes up again far into the future, people might say, "We've never heard of this before, it must not be worth our time," and then the information may get deleted again.

I did thank a couple other people for contesting the deletion, but obviously it would've been pointless for me to thank IP addresses, because I couldn't even know if they were active users. It would've been preferable if they had created accounts. Also, I don't think they were "trolling", either. There was a lot of interest in this, going around on Twitter. I think it was, most likely, a bunch of people who checked Wikipedia when it was being discussed.

KnowledgeBattle (Talk) | GodlessInfidel ︻╦╤── 02:07, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Katietalk 22:57, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Katie, we crossed paths, but I'll post my findings anyway. Feel free to add or disagree.
 * The accounts are ❌.
 * The following accounts are ✅ to each other:
 * Blocked Shadowxgov. The oldest account is Knowledgebattle.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I got it exactly right – I'm not totally hopeless! Yay me! :-) As always, no comment on the IPs.  Please move this to Shadowxgov, as that account is the master and DataCorrecto is unrelated. Katietalk 23:12, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Blocked Shadowxgov. The oldest account is Knowledgebattle.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I got it exactly right – I'm not totally hopeless! Yay me! :-) As always, no comment on the IPs.  Please move this to Shadowxgov, as that account is the master and DataCorrecto is unrelated. Katietalk 23:12, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅. GABgab 03:17, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Nothing more to do here. Closing. Bbb23 (talk) 10:25, 27 October 2016 (UTC)