Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tomgglass/Archive

07 August 2014

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I've already blocked everyone, but I figured it was getting to be too many users without a report and a confirmation. The edits involve articles that are related to libertarian Kathie Glass, and include most recently  Texas gubernatorial election, 2014. In November 2010, an uninvolved editor redirected the Glass article to Texas gubernatorial election, 2010 here. In July 2014, Tgglass reverted the redirect here (also stripping out some other material with the end result an unencyclopedic ad). Tomgglass added Glass's picture here. That picture is a source of tremendous controversy as you'll see a bit later in this recital. Another editor restored the redirect. Tgglass changed the redirect to point to the 2014 election article. The last edit to Glass was me reverting based on the disruption and my belief that socking was going on.

We now move to the 2014 article where things became very heated. All the socks were involved in this one, and there was a lot of edit warring between the socks and other editors about Glass and about Glass's picture. I'll just give a few examples:
 * Tomgglass adding Glass and her picture to the infobox
 * Tgglass restoring the same material after the master was reverted
 * Joncmaxwell adding material about Glass to the body
 * Joncmaxwell adding Glass and her picture to the infobox
 * An edit war ensued after Jon's last edit with Jon reverting three times, including this one where he reverted who was trying to maintain some order (a little more on that in a moment)
 * Finally, CarlJJarvis, who has made only one edit, yes, you guessed it, restoring the material and image to the infobox

Last is the really strange discussion at C.Fred's talk page here with Jon only among the socks because the first two had been blocked and the latest one hadn't yet made an appearance.

And I'm sure you noticed the similarity between Tomgglass and Tgglass's user names. It is, as usual, possible that the other users are meat puppets or libertarians or Glass partisans or whatever. I'll leave that to the CU. Bbb23 (talk) 01:24, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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 * A couple of things happened in the span of a few minutes early this morning (UTC). First, User:Joncmaxwell‎ requested his account be unblocked. Almost immediately thereafter, an IP address posted to Talk:Texas gubernatorial election, 2014. Then, Joncmaxwell replied (logged in). Finally, a second IP posted to the article talk.


 * The innocent explanation is that three separate and unrelated people are using Wikipedia. The slightly-less-innocent explanation is that three people, possibly stirred by discussion elsewhere on the internet, have all come to Wikipedia regarding the article. The least-innocent explanation is that one person is at the controls for all three, but that would require some major proxying, since the two IPs resolve to separate geographical locations and different ISPs. —C.Fred (talk) 04:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * and are ✅.  and  are  matches based on a very close geolocation. I find the names (First name, middle initial, last name), combined with the edit/article overlap, particularly duckish.--Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots  16:54, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I've changed the tags of the master and Tgglass based on the CU. I'm leaving the other two accounts tagged as suspected. Because I opened this report, I'll leave it to someone else to close it.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:19, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Based on discussions with (and the input of others), I've decided that the probability is that neither Joncmaxwell nor CarlJJarvis is a sock puppet. I've therefore unblocked them and removed the tags. For efficiency sake, I'm going to close this report. Whoever looks at archiving it can reopen it if they wish to.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)