Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Storm598/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
For background, Storm598 was AP topic banned.

They requested to have that ban lifted, which was declined. Storm598 withdrew the request after wider sanctions were proposed.

In late January 2022, Storm598 announced plans to stop editing after wider sanctions were, again, being considered, and has not edited since. Any new account from this user is both avoiding scrutiny and evading a topic ban.

Mureungdowon's account was created in late August 2022. There are many, many overlapping articles. Both accounts also love creating categories and redirects related to liberalism and related political issues.

Here's a sample, but there are a lot more available on request.


 * Ensemble Citoyens

Storm598 removed 'centre-right' from Ensemble Citoyens.

Multiple similar edits from Mureungdowon, such as this one, and also many on the article's talk page.
 * Justice Party (South Korea)

Many, many edits from both accounts. As one example, compare these edit summaries:

Storm598: There are liberals and even social conservatives in the party. Like the Labor Party (South Korea) document, it is recommended to indicate only social democracy, an official ideology, and at least enough mention of liberalism is made in 'See also'.The debate in Talk in the past was only whether JP was social democracy

Mureungdowon: Rv. 1. There are democratic socialists in the U.S. Democratic House of Representatives, but none of the six members of the South Korean Justice Party is a socialist. 2. Justice Party is usually considered a 'liberal party' rather than a 'social democratic party' in the English media. 3. Justice Party is the only major political party in South Korea to support cultural liberal. This was Mureungdowon's first edit to that article.

Both accounts use WP:OR to discredit sources and support specific opinions about a party's ideological status. This pattern applies to multiple articles. Both accounts are very focused on fine-tuning the listed ideology of these parties.


 * Talk:People Party (South Korea)

This comment from Mureungdowon argues that Even relatively moderate politicians within the PPP are extremely hostile to LGBT rights. This is specifically in relation to the party being categorized as 'centre-right'.

Storm598 argues that Mainstream politicians in PPP oppose feminism. The same goes for Yoon, the presidential candidate, and Lee, the current party leader. You are generalizing very few cases as if they were mainstream opinions. And Wikipedia has marked the ideology of many party articles as social conservatism based on opposition to LGBTQ human rights and anti-feminism.

Again, many edits by both accounts
 * Liberal conservatism

Compare this edit summary from Mureungdowon: Rv. The most recent source is 2011, which does not represent the current ideology of the LDP. Whether the LDP is a liberal party has been controversial since the 1990s.

to this one from Storm598: Turkey's mainstream conservative AKP is also written in Former parties, not Current parties. Bring the source that Japan's LDP in 2021 is liberal conservatism. Rather, in recent years, LDP has only been described as social conservatism or ultra-nationalism.


 * Sunshine Policy

Storm598 added mentions of 'liberalism' to Sunshine Policy.

Mureungdowon added content which further emphasized this connection.

Mureungdowon also specifically mentions this policy on their user page specifically as it relates to the Democratic Socialists of America.

As I said, there is plenty more available on request. Grayfell (talk) 02:47, 18 May 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

 * Blocked, tagged, closing. Bbb23 (talk) 13:12, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets

 * ( original case name)

Special:Diff/1157691856 &#8209;&#8209;Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 14:13, 30 May 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

 * Merged case to correct title. Spicy (talk) 18:21, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The account and the IP are blocked - closing.  Girth Summit  (blether)  08:42, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Pretty sure Mohamed Boris Xaviet was made as a sock to edit articles related to the Arab world, then later to Thailand-related articles. Another sock of Storm598's, Mureungdowon was made to sock edit Korea-related articles specifically.

Evidence wise some dead give aways are Storm598 and Mohamed Boris Xaviet both habitually using their user pages to draft articles, rather than their sandboxes or the draft space. They also both tend to add political labels to infoboxes specifically (nothing to article bodies), without sources, and then attempt to justify their edit in the edit summary by saying something along the lines of it's obviously true, it's so clear if you just consider it from their point of view, it's "de facto" true or "in practice", etc.

Compare with Mureungdowon's edits (edit interaction tool):
 * Mohamed Boris Xaviet says: "In practice, United Thai Nation Party has a far-right stance."
 * Mureungdowon says: "The WPK is a clear nationalist party, but it is different from the general Korean nationalism perceived in South Korea."

Or try explaining this: Mohamed Boris Xaviet edits mostly Thailand-related or SEA-related articles for months, and suddenly there's one edit to a Korea-related article, Democratic Republican Party (South Korea). It's a pretty obscure subject if you ask me; I wouldn't have noticed if it was a seasoned editor or at least an editor with a bit of variety, but this quite an interesting one-off. So what did each user edit? Both users specifically added nationalism to the infobox.

They also tend to add incomplete citations (bare URLs) and have occasional diversions into Sinophilia and Sinophobia (the original research kind), for which Mureungdowon received a warning, as did Mohamed Boris Xaviet from me. Yue 🌙 06:47, 4 August 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

 * These accounts are technically ❌. Closing. – bradv  22:47, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
ZlatanSweden10's recent move of footnotes from a dedicated article section to the infobox of Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea caught my eye because it is an unconventional way to display footnotes (as it contradicts MOS:INFOBOX and MOS:FOOTERS). To my knowledge, the only editor in recent memory who has advocated such a change was Storm598, who aggressively pushed this across several political party-related articles, particularly those about liberal, conservative, or Korean parties.

I used the Editor Interaction Analyser to compare the two accounts and they have significant overlap, but that doesn't mean anything necessarily because I'm sure I have a lot of overlap with the two as well.

One thing Storm598 and their sock Mureungdowon were known for was making original arguments in articles and talk pages to discredit sources. They also cited sources that did not verify their claims, especially Korean language sources for Korea-related articles.

The nature of the original arguments tend to be "This is [ideology] in [X country], but internationally it's [another ideology]. Compare with [party in another country]." You can check for more details in the archived investigation for Storm598, but I find these edits from ZlatanSweden10 to be pretty damning: Compare the language in the edits above to the examples laid out by Grayfell on 18 May 2023.
 * edit to Democratic Party of Korea
 * edits to Justice Party (South Korea)

Now you might point to the latter edit and say, "Wait a minute didn't the sock Mureungdowon revert part of that edit by ZlatanSweden10 and argue against it? Why would a sockpuppeteer revert their own sockpuppet?" I'm pretty sure this was to cover their own tracks because if you look at just the edit summary, you may think Mureungdowon took issue with what ZlatanSweden10 added. However, if you actually check the edit, all Mureungdowon did was do a meaningless move of the ideologies in the infobox. If they were actually against what ZlatanSweden10 added, why didn't they do a full revert? Also note how both ZlatanSweden10 and Mureungdowon cite primarily or exclusively Korean language sources or English language articles from South Korean publications. Yue 🌙 19:38, 9 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Adding Lazt9312. Lots of overlapping articles and topic areas for their edits. Here's a very suspicious example made a few minutes after edits by ZlatanSweden10 and Mureungdowon. Yue 🌙 06:56, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Not going to bother looking for anything solid for Jeff6045 because it is a dormant account, but it's suspicious because:
 * Same overlapping articles and topics (near exact same)
 * Same grammatical mistakes and awkward phrasing in edit summaries and talk page comments
 * Unnatural diction ("Please see the sources better")
 * Same citation of Korean language / Korea-originated sources
 * Same username format
 * Am I claiming that Jeff6045 is a sock of Storm598 and that Storm598 is arguing with themself on another account (Mureungdowon) to avoid suspicion? Yes.
 * Is it just a strange coincidence that suddenly around 2019, right after Storm598 vows to retire, that a bunch of accounts popped up which focus on Korean politics, give their own interpretations of liberalism and conservatism, and have very strong political views which they make clear on their user pages? Maybe it's all a coincidence and I'm completely wrong and they're all unrelated, in which case, I'd withdraw from making any further accusations about Storm598 in the future. Or, it's one person LARPing and socking instead of building an encyclopedia.
 * I'd love for any of the accounts I tagged to defend themselves and make a case for why I might be going off the rails; honestly I think I might be reading too much into these heavily topic-driven accounts which are active sporadically. Yue 🌙 07:09, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding Pomchi-Inu87:
 * Same overlapping articles and topics, specifically with definitions of progressivism that Storm598 and ZlatanSweden10 argue(d) about
 * Same grammatical mistakes and awkward phrasing in edit summaries and talk page comments
 * Unnatural diction ("Please see the sources better")
 * Same citation of Korean language / Korea-originated sources
 * Same username format
 * Mureungdowon gets banned in May 2023 and two months later Pomchi-Inu87 adds a note that Mureungdowon wrote in Justice Party (South Korea) to List of South Korean political parties.
 * Also if you check everyone's edits to the latter, ZlatanSweden10 and Pomchi-Inu87 both seem to not understand how WP:RS works. Here Pomchi-Inu87 removes all citations for ideologies with the explanation "each party's current position according to each party's wiki page", and then, after the citations are eventually readded by other users, ZlatanSweden10 does the exact same thing with the explanation "Sources should be left for the actual page of the party themselves".
 * Yue 🌙 23:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
 * This account @대한민국 정치 reminds me a bit of Storm's activity.
 * They recently made a deletion request for a former Storm-made category,, where they even mention Storm's ban. The request contains numerous grammar issues and original research. The user seems to edit on political pages, although their activity has seemingly so far been related to mostly this category. toobigtokale (talk) 06:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.

I've found some copyright violations by Storm598, which I've been documenting in my sandbox with an eye toward possibly opening a CCI. I know SPI is chronically backlogged, but I believe this case should be a high priority for that reason and I respectfully request that this report be evaluated as soon as possible. — SamX &#91;talk · contribs&#93; 16:15, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Storm598 also had another account that was created in 2017, they stopped using it in 2020. This year, I also remember seeing South Korean IPs (before and after Storm598 got blocked) making the same or similar edits as this user. I'll try to find the account and IPs once I find time this week. --Vacant0 (talk) 22:30, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The account was . — SamX &#91;talk · contribs&#93; 04:52, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes! I remember that the IPs made edits to the Blue Dog Coalition, Republican Governance Group, and Nippon Kaigi articles. Here are some of them:
 * July 2023:, ,
 * February 2023: ,
 * January 2023:, , ,
 * I remember seeing more of these South Korean IPs at different article but I cannot find them now. Vacant0 (talk) 08:25, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the type of footnotes mentioned further up, ZlatanSweden10 did indeed just add that exact format of footnotes to the party infobox of Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. Does fit the earlier description. Vif12vf/Tiberius (talk) 01:29, 4 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Agreed. A CheckUser could confirm whether this is the same user not. Vacant0 (talk) 10:51, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - I'm sorry for the lack of action, but this case is very hard to parse. Please, provide a concise summary of evidence, preferably with bullet points, and for each bit of evidence, include direct links to diffs comparing both reported socks and previous socks. There are many references in this report to previous behavior that is not obvious for anyone new to the case. Thank you. MarioGom (talk) 17:17, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * No additional evidence provided, closing. Bbb23 (talk) 14:22, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
SPA/sporadic accounts restoring and reinforcing edits on Korean ethnic nationalism and various other Korean-related articles made by the sockmaster, particularly from Mureungdowon. The Ipv6s also exhibits identical behaviors to Mureungdowon/Storm598, all of which geolocates to South Korea. John Yunshire (talk) 21:57, 11 December 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

 * No evidence in the form of diffs provided. Closing. Bbb23 (talk) 14:24, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
Significant topic overlap and the same behaviour among Storm598's socks of making several small edits in quick succession. AustroHungarian568's behaviour is less cut-and-dry, but the account has a very similar naming scheme to Storm598's proven socks and also one of Storm598's focus topics is Austria-Hungary, so I see a duck. Yue 🌙 16:41, 6 May 2024 (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

 * This SPI is lacking in diffs but I checked MagyarNavy1918 mainly due to this . They are ❌ to Storm598. AustroHungarian568 did not show up in my checks and I do not see sufficient evidence to check them. Closing. Spicy (talk) 15:21, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppets
South Korean–based IP with a significant overlap with the sockmaster, including election/geopolitical articles, with a pro-South Korean boosterism slant. 180.46.4.136 (talk) 11:21, 23 May 2024 (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

 * IP hasn't edited since May 31. Filer is a probable proxy. Closing. Bbb23 (talk) 15:30, 9 June 2024 (UTC)