Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Shivarjun Das/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) article has been plagued for years by sockpuppets, one example that received news coverage (and documented in the article) being User:Wifione, who gained adminship and was subsequently defrocked and blocked when it was discovered he was an IIPM representative. Even before he became an admin, there was evidence of Wifione editing from an IIPM address.

The same thing seems to be happening again. The sockmaster Shivarjun Das is a single-purpose account intent on adding information to the IIPM lead, in some cases changing the meaning of sentences and misrepresenting cited sources. That information would be fine if worded better but he was going about it the wrong way and I haven't yet gotten around to incorporating it properly. This is being discussed on the article talk page.

Shivarjun Das has denied any COI or paid editing, but there is off-wiki evidence that he is also a representative of IIPM, which isn't surprising considering the dishonesty IIPM sockpuppets have exhibited previously. He is currently blocked 1 week for edit warring by.

Since Shivarjun Das was blocked, two other single-purpose accounts have appeared to disrupt the lead section of the article, Myndmegs and MMITSO. They are making nearly identical edits to those of Shivarjun Das. I have semi-protected the IIPM article for now.

Pinging who has some familiarity with the issue also. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:47, 10 March 2023 (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

 * I've blocked and tagged the socks and the master, and increased the master's block to indefinite. I'll leave the CU request in case someone feels a check is needed. Bbb23 (talk) 20:45, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I am puzzled why someone whose 1-week block has only one more day to go would bother creating sockpuppets. It could be meatpuppetry, or just unrelated COI editors. I guess I don't understand the mindset; I'm also puzzled why someone with a COI doesn't simply disclose it. It isn't against the rules to have a COI and transparency is appreciated by the community. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:22, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that meat puppetry is indeed possible, but that too is a policy violation. However, I think "unrelated COI editors" is much less likely. As for the rest of your puzzlement, I think you are imposing your rational view of things on an often not-so-rational world.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:27, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * paid-en has the off-wiki evidence for the Das account, which also supports a direct connection with the other two named accounts (directly, not solely via the IITM locus). DMacks (talk) 11:05, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What is "paid-en"? It sounds like something I should be aware of as an administrator. ~Anachronist (talk) 02:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * See Paid-contribution_disclosure. Access is limited to CUs. DMacks (talk) 03:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I briefly started looking into this from a CheckUser angle, but the data is not straightforward and would require a bit of time to analyze. Since the accounts are already blocked, and we have a pretty healthy backlog of CU requests, I will stop here and close this case without further action. Mz7 (talk) 22:28, 11 March 2023 (UTC)