Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Trowbridge tim/Archive

Evidence submitted by Materialscientist
A hoax was featured through DYK on WP Main Page by an individual with an intimate knowledge of DYK and WP mechanisms. The accounts used for that feat, UTYVB7, Hawkeyed Falcon and Golfing is Poetry, are already indeffed, but. The hoax article was approved at T:TDYK by a new user, Trowbridge tim, who seems to know well the DYK process although only has a few edits. This ANI thread suggests that Trowbridge tim is a hoaxer too. As the case concerns WP image and might involve sleeping accounts, checkuser might be required ASAP. Materialscientist (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
Requested by Materialscientist (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

to check for other accounts and any possible IP blocks. Peter Symonds ( talk ) 09:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅ matches for each other:
 * ✅ matches for each other:
 * matches for second group:
 * I typically would not list this third bunch -- I hate the idea of getting a false positive, here -- but it looks a little bit like somebody trying to autoconfirm some more accounts. I may have more to add, later. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good lord, not a good sign for this drama. One of the nastier CHUs I've seen... NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 15:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ matches for each other:
 * matches for second group:
 * I typically would not list this third bunch -- I hate the idea of getting a false positive, here -- but it looks a little bit like somebody trying to autoconfirm some more accounts. I may have more to add, later. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good lord, not a good sign for this drama. One of the nastier CHUs I've seen... NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 15:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ matches for each other:
 * matches for second group:
 * I typically would not list this third bunch -- I hate the idea of getting a false positive, here -- but it looks a little bit like somebody trying to autoconfirm some more accounts. I may have more to add, later. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good lord, not a good sign for this drama. One of the nastier CHUs I've seen... NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 15:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * matches for second group:
 * I typically would not list this third bunch -- I hate the idea of getting a false positive, here -- but it looks a little bit like somebody trying to autoconfirm some more accounts. I may have more to add, later. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good lord, not a good sign for this drama. One of the nastier CHUs I've seen... NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 15:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I typically would not list this third bunch -- I hate the idea of getting a false positive, here -- but it looks a little bit like somebody trying to autoconfirm some more accounts. I may have more to add, later. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good lord, not a good sign for this drama. One of the nastier CHUs I've seen... NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 15:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I typically would not list this third bunch -- I hate the idea of getting a false positive, here -- but it looks a little bit like somebody trying to autoconfirm some more accounts. I may have more to add, later. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good lord, not a good sign for this drama. One of the nastier CHUs I've seen... NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 15:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good lord, not a good sign for this drama. One of the nastier CHUs I've seen... NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 15:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

All the accounts in the last group indefinitely blocked and tagged. I see similar edits in the third group and in the second group, including prodding BLPs and marking them as minor edits, blindly reverting vandalism, coming back all of a sudden after being dormant for several years, and mucking with wikilinks. –MuZemike 19:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

12 April 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

''Please list evidence below this line. Remember to sign at the end of your section with 4 tilde characters " ~ "''

Trowbridge was blocked and his only edit in more than a month was to support RST. Regards, <b style="color:green;">MacMed</b><sup style="color:red;">talk <sub style="color:black;">stalk 01:37, 12 April 2011 (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
✅ plus



. –MuZemike 01:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

29 April 2011

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

''Please list evidence below this line. Remember to sign at the end of your section with 4 tilde characters " ~ "''

Privacy violation at User:LedRush and User talk:LedRush, the edits in question have already been redacted. told me that he was a victim of such an attack yesterday as well (see my talk page). - Mike Rosoft (talk) 18:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''


 * User:Hipocrite attempted to out me yesterday. .LedRush (talk) 19:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * User:Gratexcape attempted to out me moments ago.LedRush (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Just a note: two of Gratexcape's edits have been suppressed, but the user's very first edit (on Talk:Murder of Meredith Kercher) is outing and has not yet been suppressed. – RobinHood70 talk 19:47, 29 April 2011 (UTC); Stricken: issue has now been addressed. 19:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * In fact, none of the edits have been suppressed. Two of them were redacted by the standard administrator's function; I did the same with the rest. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 19:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I keep forgetting that that's RevisionDelete now instead of suppression. – RobinHood70 talk 20:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * User:Freedoomer attempted to out me moments ago. Is there any way we can speed this up seeing as I am under constant and specific attack?LedRush (talk) 21:14, 29 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It seems odd that someone with only 30 edits from January-February 2010 would choose yesterday to attempt to Out me 4 times yesterday in such a short period. Is there any way to check to see if Trowbridge tim has any connections to any other Wikipedia accounts?  To me, there is obviously something else going on here.LedRush (talk) 13:43, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * All of these accounts are confirmed and blocked. I think the two checkusers would have turned up sleeper accounts. There isn't much else to do for now, but if things happen in the future, we can take stronger actions. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 13:51, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * OK. I am not familiar with how these processes work, but seems very suspicious that there would be an attempt to Out me on the Murder of Meredith Kurcher article, and then someone with no history of editing for the last 14 months begins to harass me with attempted outings on that article and other related sites.  Seeing as off-Wikipedia communications has been confirmed by several editors of the Kercher article, perhaps that's it.  Whatever it is, it is highly doubtful that these attacks spontaneously sprouted without some connection.  If Wikipedia has no ability to look into this, I guess we'll have to wait to see if the attacks continue.LedRush (talk) 14:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * We can only check within the confines of our website; obviously we don't have access to other sites' logs or anything like that. The bottom line is that, given the current state of things, we've done as much as we can do. If there are more attempts at outing, we'll revdel/oversight them, block the accounts and the IPs as necessary. All we can do is block the current accounts' IPs; we can't guess what these people will do next and take steps to thwart them. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 14:20, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Got it. Thank you for your attention to this matter.LedRush (talk) 14:22, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Not convinced this is Hipocrite, but the four new accounts (I just added one) have all made identical edits in an attempted outing. I've locked down Murder of Meredith Kercher and it's talk page from new accounts until we get this sorted. Courcelles 22:25, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * - Endorsing to clarify what's going on here. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 23:15, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * All of the named accounts, excluding Hipocrite, are . As for Hipocrite (and perhaps I'm reading this wrong), but it looks like they were only pointing out edits that needed to be hidden? (I slogged through the ANI discussion after posting this - see below.) I haven't checked Hipocrite yet, as I'd like to make sure of their involvement first. TN <b style="color:midnightblue; font-size:larger;">X</b> Man  03:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * After reading the relevant ANI discussion, I'm still not convinced of Hipocrite's relation to these accounts. Thoughts from others? TN <b style="color:midnightblue; font-size:larger;">X</b> Man  03:12, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * All of these accounts, and others, are ✅ as being - I checked them earlier today. The exception being, who is ❌ -  A l is o n  ❤ 06:26, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Per the findings above I've merged this case into the Trowbridge tim one, and I've updated the tags accordingly. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 13:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)