Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Thaleia.mtz/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
There is a very weird pattern of several accounts that I have observed over the past few weeks, which definitely qualifies as sockpuppetry: accounts that are named similarly (Greek names with an abbreviated or full surname), and active in translating articles from the Greek WP (and doing a similarly bad job at it) on topics related to the Greek War of Independence.

For example, the first five accounts listed here appear active in the same article, Panagiotis Sophianopoulos, only. NoniPapavlasopoulou and GeorgiaAntoniou are very clearly linked by edits like this, and all three of the last accounts have edited at Dimitrakis Deligiannis (and EvaggeliaPalla in particular in practically nothing else).

The last three may not be directly linked to the first five accounts, but the naming pattern (all three are female Greek names) and their edit topics suggests so.

The motivation behind the sockpuppeting, TBH, escapes me. They appear to be active, as said, in (mis)translating articles related to the Greek War of Independence, but that in itself is not a problematic area (apart from WP:COMPETENCE concerns). And then the user page for NoniPapavlasopoulou contains simply 'Η μανα σου.', Greek for 'Your mom', which in Greek has about the same connotations as in English. Normally I would not be concerned, but this is clearly the same person hiding behind multiple accounts (the English and poor editing skills are similarly bad in all cases, the naming pattern is also oddly peculiar), so I would bet they know they are doing something improper (possibly a previously banned user returning?). Constantine  ✍  10:47, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Moved case to oldest account. I had a hunch about what was going on here, so I went looking. On the Greek Wikipedia, two of these users say that they are college students: . The editing pattern is typical of student projects (e.g. encyclopedic subject matter, seemingly good-faith editing but lacking in competence, accounts editing each others' sandboxes, the usernames, etc.) I am pretty confident that these are not sockpuppets, just students working together. (As evidence that they're not all the same person, note that some of these accounts have figured out how to cite sources, while others apparently haven't).That's not to say that a bunch of accounts making poor-quality edits is not disruptive. However, since none of these accounts have edited in a while I'm guessing the school project is over now and we won't be hearing from them again. For that reason, I am closing this case without action. If issues recur, you might consider asking for help at the WP:Education noticeboard. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 23:47, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh, of course. Goes to show how jaded one becomes after dealing with sockpuppets for years... Thanks ! Constantine  ✍  12:16, 10 March 2022 (UTC)