Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ted Shackelford/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
This filing came about because I noticed that on Runabout's user page, they said: "This isn't my first account, and I still use my older accounts but they are rather disorganized so I will not be linking them here. Also I plan on transitioning over to using this account more than those others but I will still keep the others around." (since removed with this edit). I did a little investigating on my own and, based on article intersection, which is quite extensive (see interaction analyzer), topics (various kinds of lists, anatomy-related articles), and the kind of activity (creating new pages, many of which are anatomy-related, using their sandboxes before publishing the articles - rarely using draft space) and uncovered the two other accounts. Because the edits by the three accounts were not obviously/blatantly disruptive, I thought the user might have a reasonable explanation for using at least three undeclared accounts for four years, so I asked them to disclose, and they clearly did not want to do that. See User talk:Runabout5921, which brings us more or less up-to-date.

I am asking for a check because I want to confirm the three accounts and look for others. There's enough diversity in their edits that I might not have found all of them. Bbb23 (talk) 20:56, 4 October 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 haven't had time to look at this closely, and it's mostly academic as the accounts are probably stale, but I wonder if, and by extension and , are also the same person. Same interest in obscure genetic syndromes and same mucking about with alt accounts. Both groups are also active on Commons. Spicy (talk) 22:03, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it looks like the same pattern, i.e., a very large number of sandbox edits before publishing each of the many articles. There's also some article intersection when you add Rollcloud to edit analyzer. Pretty safe in this instance to declare the alts as they didn't do anything.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:55, 4 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The three accounts originally named in the filing are all ✅ to one another. The interaction analyser lists about 40 different articles where the accounts' editing intersects, and I do not consider a vague statement along the lines of 'I have some use other accounts but I'm not going to list them' to be sufficient notification to satisfy WP:ALTACCN, and the use of undeclared alt accounts on so many of the same articles is decidedly fishy. I'm blocking all, but would not necessarily be opposed to an unblock with a one-account restriction. Of the accounts that Spicy listed, two of them are stale, and is in  territory from what I can see on enwiki activity - there isn't much to go on, but what litte there is appears to be coming from a different country from the originally reported group. Closing.   Girth Summit  (blether)  10:32, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Runabout5921 has been unblocked, subject to a one-account restriction. Spicy (talk) 21:11, 12 October 2023 (UTC)