Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/UP865399/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Similar formatted usernames, recently been editting Enid Mumford, plus some editted Sociotechnical system. Kj cheetham (talk) 23:00, 3 November 2020 (UTC) P.S. Strong25 and Briliant97 are due to edit summaries starting with "My changes were under the title of " and a similar edit summary style, as well only edits made are to the same two articles. Looking at the edit history for the past month, might be a few others too, such as NathernB, Greenblue12, and Aliciaprestleton. -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:11, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I had another look today, and even more very similar looking accounts created - it's just silly now. I don't intend to keep adding more. Just look at those two articles to find more... -Kj cheetham (talk) 21:37, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

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

 * I took a look, and this is quite the mess. I checked a few of the accounts above, and they're all located in the same general geographic region, spread across a few different ranges. They do all appear to be same person (why someone would go to the trouble of creating all of these throwaway accounts, though, I do not know). As an interim measure, I've semi-protected both articles for 3 weeks. Will leave to another clerk or administrator to determine how to block, if at all. Mz7 (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I struck a part of my comment; after further review, although some of the accounts seem to be sockpuppets of each other, it is entirely possible multiple people are involved here. Could be worth asking some of these accounts whether this is some kind of group assignment for a class. Mz7 (talk) 03:00, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Mz7 - Did any WHOIS information for any IPs come back as belonging to an institution?  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   12:35, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, nothing obvious like that. (Though now that many colleges and schools are meeting remotely nowadays, perhaps that's not as surprising.) Mz7 (talk) 17:53, 13 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Based on Mz7's findings, my money is on poorly-planned school/university project (mostly because I can't see any point in someone creating a couple dozen throwaway accounts like this for trivial editing, also there are differences in their edit summary styles). I think page protection is sufficient here. Closing without action. GeneralNotability (talk) 04:25, 14 November 2020 (UTC)