Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sythans27/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
Three beauty pageant SPAs active in many of the same articles. Name similarities in socks. Editing overlaps as little as 5 seconds at Reina Hispanoamericana 2022. Timeline of sock editing on 25 April aligns well post block of master: 16:15 block, 16:21 editing on sock account. Other technical evidence related to proxy use/claimed nationality, further details withheld per BEANS. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:20, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Added new socks: coordinated use of two socks's sandboxes as own . Both sandboxes appear to be about the same (fictional?) event "Miss Parlor 2022". ☆ Bri (talk) 18:31, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Note for investigator - one of the account's drafts was edited by an IP . The IP has been blocked as a sock of AnimeLover129. I think this is in the time window for checkuser. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:30, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

Putting this up here for someone else to review.
 * Behaviourally, it's fairly obvious that Ayamano2021, Ichihufano2022, and AshtenSagittarius2023 are all the same person. In all three users' sandboxes you will find a draft of an annual "Miss Parlor" competition, corresponding to the year embedded in the account's username. Ayamano is the main account obviously, the other two accounts each only have one edit, which is creating the sandbox. However, this behaviour on its own doesn't violate the policy, at least not to the level where I think a block is warranted.
 * Most of the other evidence can be explained by coincidence, for example the very closely timed edits at Reina Hispanoamericana 2022 happened during that pageant's airing, presumably at the moment the winner was announced as both editors were trying to update it. The usual red flag of edits following the first account's block are negated by checkuser data. I don't believe there's enough to go on there.
 * -- Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:52, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * There's something strange going on here.  someone else taking a look, please.  Courcelles (talk) 16:27, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * due to proxies, but leaning . Of the three accounts that aren't stale, each is using a different set of proxy services, and geolocates consistently when the proxy is turned off, so I'm fairly confident in this result.
 * , and note that this is a subject area that is plagued with commercial meatpuppetry (see WP:GS/PAGEANT). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:35, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * After further review leading to my comments in the "other users" section above, I'm changing this finding to ❌ for the non-stale accounts; for Ichihufano2022 and AshtenSagittarius2023 as they are stale. Checkuser cannot rule out meatpuppetry, of course. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:52, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's anything actionable here. I'm aware of the allegations of meatpuppetry etc. in this topic area but it always seemed to me like pageants are simply a topic that attracts a lot of younger users with limited English proficiency and little experience with editing Wikipedia outside of that content niche, leading to a lot of disruptive editing, blocks and subsequent evasion, etc. It doesn't help that this is a topic that is of approximately zero interest to the average English Wikipedia editor, which makes it difficult to assess what kind of editing is suspicious vs. what is likely to be a coincidence or the product of shared interests (you probably wouldn't think it's all that suspicious if two different accounts edited a draft about an upcoming Hollywood movie or AAA video game, for example). This is all to say that I'm not convinced that Sythans27/Ayocarty/Ayamano2021 are working together, and I agree with Ivanvector that the 2021/2022/2023 accounts are likely the same person but I don't think that is an actionable violation of the socking policy. Closing. Spicy (talk) 22:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)