Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Urabura/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets

 * ( original case name)

In Poland, an afterwards-sock-blocked user User:HetmanWL edit-warred to change the country infobox to include period "Duchy of Poland" c. 960 before Baptism of Poland in 966: [1]. User:FeldmarschallGneisenau restored this change in [2].

On Talk:Poland, FeldmarschallGneisenau proposed to change the lede to a "good proposition deleted without thorough discussion" [3], which is identical to the lede present at the last version authored by HetmanWL [4], which was undone afterwards by Merangs [5].

On plwiki, FeldmarschallGneisenau has only two non-userspace edits, one of which is a continuation of a short thread started by HetmanWL, arguing towards using a photo of Donald Tusk that was improved by HetmanWL [6].

Account was created around a month after HetmanWL was banned, which would make sense for a sockpuppet.

It should be noted that though User:HetmanWL was sock-blocked as linked to User:Urabura, he was probably also a sockpuppet of User:Malecide, as HetmanWL's user page was initially identical to Malecide's (not only on enwiki [7] [8], but on plwiki too [9] [10]). Malecide in turn was banned as a sockpuppet of User:Galehautt. There may be more sockpuppets. Might be helpful to join all this together. NicolausPrime (talk) 04:21, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Pinging User:E-960, User:Merangs, User:Piotrus to weigh in as y'all interacted with HetmanWL earlier on Poland and Talk:Poland. NicolausPrime (talk) 04:25, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Definitely a strong similarity between the actions and contributions of HetmanWL and FeldmarschallGneisenau when it comes to the lead section in Poland article. Also, a very peculiar but correlated choice of usernames; I would like to point out that all three names - HetmanWL, FeldmarschallGneisenau and Galehautt - reference some kind of military formation, rank or status. Merangs (talk) 01:25, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * My nickname doesn't refer to "military formation, rank or status." It refers to August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, a great man, but also to German battleship Gneisenau, a great battleship. Happy to help :) FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 03:50, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I simply checked the "last 50" on Poland and found that it was in a much better state before. Unlike the banned User, I wrote in Talk first, and only then... simply copied and pasted that edit. To get the disc. in Talk going. WP:BRR. EDIT: Now I checked and no one focused on the Talk, only on doing attacking..I don't even know why FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 04:04, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.

Hello. I can only say that I was born in Germany to a German Father and a Polish Mother. I don't live in Poland, I live in Germany and do consider Myself German only, thoug I'm visiting my Mother currently. So this does eliminate the Accusation completely because I can't be a Person of a different Nationality. I can post my Passport. I've been looking across several German/Polish Pages lately and made Corrections where I did see Content that was lacking. I'm eager to edit. I'm new to editing .For Donald Tusk, I did check his Page in German, in Polish in English and in French and the one in Polish does have the worst Image Resolution. Donald Tusk has been covered a lot of times in our German Media over the past few Months. As for the Lead Edit, I did start a Discussion on the Talk Page prior to making that Edit. Perhaps it would explain that I also have the Superpower that is being on the Spectrum. I do check thoroughly each Page I feel lacking that I want to edit (whenever I'm on Wikipedia, which isn't all the time). I do think you should ponder the Quality of the Changes instead of attacking for no Reason FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 03:45, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Addendum. Perhaps you could consider the likelihood of multiple people in the German-Polish space being interested in their shared History, Present, Military matters. It is over 80 million People on the German side and nearly 40 million People on the Polish side. 120 million in total. Consider the odds. FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 04:23, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - Please move to Urabura. Bbb23 (talk) 14:51, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Moved. 0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 10:36, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * On behavioral evidence, the two accounts look very different. Aside from having some similar opinions, I don't see anything that would indicate sockpuppetry. The Wordsmith Talk to me 00:01, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Evidence this user (FeldmarschallGneisenau) is HetmanWL

 * User was edit-warring in Czech Republic against and      (ANEW thread), reinserting previously reverted changes to the infobox made by.
 * User was edit-warring against to keep the phrase "prime minister" in the lede of Donald Tusk without capitalization    (ANI thread). This formatting appears to have been originally introduced by HetmanWL.
 * User edited Serbia to make it not be Central Europe, which is what HetmanWL attempted earlier but was reverted.
 * Evidence from the previous SPI:
 * User made a change to the country infobox to include period "Duchy of Poland" c. 960 before Baptism of Poland in 966, which is a change HetmanWL attempted earlier but was reverted.
 * In Talk:Poland, this user proposed to change the lede to "a good proposition deleted without thorough discussion", which is identical to the lede present at the last version authored by HetmanWL. (undone by  )
 * In the previous SPI noted the similarity: "Definitely a strong similarity between the actions and contributions of HetmanWL and FeldmarschallGneisenau when it comes to the lead section in Poland article. Also, a very peculiar but correlated choice of usernames; I would like to point out that all three names - HetmanWL, FeldmarschallGneisenau and Galehautt - reference some kind of military formation, rank or status.".
 * On plwiki, this user has only a handful of edits, yet one of them is a continuation of a short thread started by HetmanWL, arguing towards using a photo of Donald Tusk that was improved by HetmanWL.
 * Account was created around a month after HetmanWL was banned, which chronologically makes sense for a sockpuppet.

Evidence this user (FeldmarschallGneisenau) is Galehautt

 * Despite having never interacted before, this user taunted on the latter's talk page  over the article about Joseph Stalin, which is something  did earlier too.
 * seems to agree that this user is a sockpuppet: "Even more obvious is that they decided to return to my talk page to troll there.[4]. I never interacted with FeldmarschallGneisenau before but I have interacted with Galehautt who left personal attacks due to the same article that got them indeffed.[5]".
 * User created the article TVP World . It appears Galehautt also attempted to create that article earlier, but it was moved to draftspace (and deleted, it appears, as I can't find the original revision authored by Galehautt).

Other evidence

 * finds the overlap between the pages edited by, , , , and suspicious: "They were previously SPI'd was reported, but was early days so not blocked. The overlap in pages edited is suspicious now. Some of them are very niche.".

NicolausPrime (talk) 23:17, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.

I've notified them on their talk page about this investigation. (talk | contribs) 01:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello. I have already elaborated my arguments in the previous, rightfully closed investigation (w:en:Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Urabura/Archive), such as what is the likelihood of multiple people, out of the pool of 120 million Germans and Poles, being into country pages and being anti-Putin and anti-communist, at the same time. Well it is very high, just think. The points made above are the same points made in the closed investigation, such as the Poland infobox and lede edit that I openly admitted I took from an earlier revision I saw while perusing through the edit history of the Poland page out of curiosity, thinking it a really good change and additionally opening a discusion for it @ Talk, unlike the user responsible for the original edits. I'm sorry, but there seems to be some unhealthy obsession with my person since. I assure I am a good-faith editor who will not rest at Wikipedia being short of perfection. I am on the Spectrum and I am specifically autistic about country articles and articles related to country articles. Happens. Maybe because they attract the most attention (including mine) therefore I think they must be held up to the highest standard, because if these are not held up to the highest standard, then which should? I also like contentious topics, well, beat me. To quote a non-English idiom, do you expect me to prove that I'm not a horse? I already made this effort last time and don't really feel like repeating myself. However it is interesting to me how this heated ganging-up on me happened after I tried shedding light on the background of Lex Fridman--I'm not accusing anyone of anything but there is a time correlation. But I accepted my temporary block, I don't fight with admins, accept their conclusions and I think we resolved the issue in an OK and civil manner. Closing, I will repeat, that I hail from Germany and am of mixed German-Polish descent and currently reside in Poland. As for not paying as much attention to the Germany page as I did to the Poland page, it is because I consider the Germany page to already be perfect. Perhaps this information will turn useful. FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 02:41, 19 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Well, Serbia isn't Central Europe... Nothing nefarious about this fact that I had to fix while perusing through country pages SPECIFICALLY to see if they're incorrectly placed in Europe.FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 03:38, 19 April 2024 (UTC)


 * And I explained that my nickname doesn't refer to "some kind of military formation, rank or status" but August von Gneisenau who is my idol... FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 03:20, 19 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I was going through WW2 articles out of curiosity and was checking out the Joseph Stalin page along with its edit history out of curiosity and simply noticed that this user was active in preserving the earlier version of the lede which is now completely gone and decided to ask him how he feels about it. It wasn't taunting. I'm sorry if it came off like this, I'm on the Spectrum and don't read emotion. FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 03:09, 19 April 2024 (UTC)


 * PS: on a sidenote I'll use the occasion to add that I'm sad that the whole discussion @ Poland Talk which I opened for the lede change proposition which I took from that user (I don't remember his nickname now) didn't move forward at all... How is Wikipedia supposed to progress when the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle doesn't work at all? You open a discussion but people just don't care and inertia takes over. FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 03:32, 19 April 2024 (UTC)


 * , it looks like the accused has incorrectly placed multiple comments within your SPI report. Could probably remove that and put it down under comments., don’t reply to bullet points within the original report. The ‘comments by other users’ sections exists for a reason. Zenomonoz (talk) 04:29, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Added User:Encylo-P-D to the list of suspected socks. Similar pattern of edit-warring over the classification which European countries are "Central Europe". NicolausPrime (talk) 19:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You can add just about any user now. Excuse me for saying that this is complete hogwash. That guy was literally edit-warring with me, he tried to change Poland's place from Central Europe to "Central-Eastern Europe" or something. I and a couple other editors reverted his edits and kept the page proper and clean, upholding my editorial duty. It seems for you, no offense, that when you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. FeldmarschallGneisenau (talk) 10:07, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

The overlap in the articles they edit shows that this is plausible. Not to mention the comment they left on my talk page which was more or less trolling. Mellk (talk) 21:17, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
has blocked FG indefinitely after repeating edit-warring complaints. Daniel Case (talk) 19:11, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * All blocked, nothing further to do here. The SandDoctor  Talk 23:31, 15 June 2024 (UTC)