Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sprutt/Archive

24 June 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

All four accounts were registered throughout October-November 2011 and almost simultaneously became active in Armenia-Azerbaijan-related articles, heavily engaging in edit-warring and supporting each other's position on talkpages in an identical manner. Two of the accounts (User:Winterbliss and User:Dehr) violated the new user restriction placed on the article Nagorno-Karabakh and were subsequently banned:. Following that, User:Sprutt and User:Zimmarod instantly increased their activity. There are ten articles where at least two of the listed accounts proved active, of which two articles involved all four accounts:. Time-wise the activity of the remaining two accounts (Sprutt and Zimmarod) clearly alternates: one does not edit when the other is active. Furthermore, both make identical reverts and edits aiming at ridding articles of mentioning Azerbaijan:,. Parishan (talk) 08:19, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

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

All mentioned accounts, including mine, have already been checked this year more than once and found ❌ in all cases:
 * Yet another misuse of SP harassment fishing by Parishan
 * . Result: ❌
 * . Result: ❌


 * . Result: ❌

Instead of assuming good faith and cooperating on resolving the differences, some editors pursue harassment tactics to supress the edits of other contributors. Sprutt (talk) 15:26, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Parishan hasn't had the politeness to inform Sprutt that this fishing expedition is going on. I have placed a note on his talk page. So far, this particular expedition is relying on the common administrator trait of having (to quote one particular administrator) "no content interest". The "I have no content interest in the article" allows for all sorts of playing-the-system. Supposing a sequence of editors had, over time, repeatedly corrected an article that that had stated 2+2=5, and had edited it to correctly say 2+2=4. Are such edits "enough of a connection" to make a sockpuppetry accusation strong enough to be endorsed? DroD would seem to think so.
 * Statement by Meowy

Parishan has given a group of diffs, trying to make out that there is something special about them when in fact their only common connection is that they are all "2+2=4" type of edits. They are edits to correct content errors, the sort of edits that ANY concientious editor would make if he or she found then in an article. None of the articles mentioned currently contain the content that these supposed sockpuppets removed. This confirms my opinion that this is just a fishing expedition to remove editors who have been editing properly. Parishan wants the unsuitable content to remain, but can't make a case for that in the articles - so is trying the alternative route of just getting rid of the editors, knowing that there are always administrators around needing their power fix.

Take this one that Parishan cites:. It is an edit to move an article to its correct title - and subsequent edits were made to reverse a repeated and unjustified change back to the wrong title by angel670. I have also been working on that article and have found Sprutt's edits there to be postive. You can see my comment on angel670's edits here:. There is not the tinyest chance that Sprutt's edits will be legitimately reversed.

And here:,. All that has happened is that an extreme example of unacademic wording and undue weight has been removed. Any editor would have removed that content - are we ALL going to be called sockpuppets for saying 2+2=4? Six months after those edits were made, that deleted content has not been restored, a fair indication of how unsuitable it was. And here:,. These are just a case of editors expressing opinions (that an item can't be removed from an arbitration archive to be ressurected), so you can't draw anything from this. If you dig further into the history of those particular edits, you will find that on that occasion I opposed their opinions and reverted one of the edits. If I had supported their opinion via edits, would I now also be accused of being a sockpuppet?

Andhere:, ,. In what way are they "identical" as Parishan claims. The last, an edit by Zimarod, is completely different, is restoring a huge chunk of deleted contnet, content that should not have been removed, was non-topic, and that was properly referenced. In fact, I think I may have made an identical edit when that content was removed on another occasion. Maybe I am a sockpuppet!! Add my name to your list, Parishan. Meowy 15:01, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - In order to facilitate and expedite your request, please provide diffs to support your case. Please give two or more diffs meeting the following format:
 * 1) At least one diff is from the sockmaster (or an account already blocked as a confirmed sockpuppet of the sockmaster), showing the behaviour characteristic of the sockmaster.
 * 2) At least one diff per suspected sockpuppet, showing the suspected sockpuppet emulating the behaviour of the sockmaster given in the first diff.
 * 3) In situations where it is not immediately obvious from the diffs what the characteristic behaviour is, a short explanation must be provided. Around one sentence is enough for this. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 12:11, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * That Winterbliss and Dehr could be the same person was noted noted by administrator Golbez, as it is unlikely that two unrelated people could come up with the idea of gaming the system by creating articles on a "one-word-at-a-time" basis to exceed the edit limit forbidding them access to some AA2 articles. As for sockmastery diffs:
 * Here is an instance of both User:Sprutt and User:Zimmarod reverting unarchiving at AE: ,
 * An example of Sprutt, Zimmarod and the banned account User:Dehr making identical reverts on the same page:, ,
 * Same activity involving only Dehr and Sprutt: ,
 * And very recently, identical reverts by Sprutt and Zimmarod here:, . Parishan (talk) 18:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)


 * All these accounts were already checked as many as FOUR TIMES and found to be ❌:,, , . Sprutt (talk) 15:43, 27 June 2012 (UTC)


 * - There is enough of a connection for me to endorse this. Let's get a confirmation, please. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 21:04, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Endorsement revoked and case closed. Yes, I was unaware of the earlier cases where these accounts were checked and was indeed led to the wrong conclusion. My apologies. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 16:04, 27 June 2012 (UTC)