Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Vault-tec/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Summary version: The entirety of the contributions of these three editors have been to create and "maintain" articles on Denali Federal Credit Union and their subsidiaries, evidently from the perspective of the credit union's marketing strategy. This has been bubbling in slow motion for the past eight years, but has finally reached the point of being potentially malicious.

Long version: Vault-tec showed up in 2009 and created the credit union article, Denali Alaskan Mortgage and Denali Alaskan Insurance (article creations) and kept at it despite multiple speedy deletions ("Your article appeared to be written from a marketing point of view and made no assertion of notability" and likewise). In July 2011, in response to my suggestion that the three middling articles could instead make for one halfway decent article, Vault-Tec responded with a rationale which smacked of the notion that we're here to be a part of their social media strategy. Namely, if it's a current subsidiary, it's independently notable; if it's a former subsidiary or historical component credit union, it's not notable except as another incidental mention to puff up the credit union article, irregardless of the actual history of that particular entity. "...because of their different histories and business directions I thought it might be appropriate to write about them as separate entities". Really? I'd say that at least four of the predecessor credit unions are independently notable, yet they don't even merit redirects to the main article in Vault-Tec's eyes. Redirects would help avert inappropriate categorization and factual accuracy baggage/puffery, such as claiming in the infobox that the credit union was founded in 1948, while the article states that the earliest historical component was founded in 1948 and that this particular credit union was founded in 1997. At around this same time, Vault-Tec created Denali Alaskan Home Loans and redirected the mortgage company article to that article, creating a split history for what's essentially the same thing, apparently because the mortgage company is no longer notable if they ceased to exist as a separate company.

Vault-Tec last edited in February 2012. Fast forward four years and the appearance of Bhatdenali. No user page, just like Vault-Tec, and editing the same few topics. Bhat's duty here was to upload a logo but mainly to pursue an RM for the credit union article. Zero regard for the difference between WP:COMMONNAME and official names, zero regard for the possibility of independent notability for the defunct 1986–1997 credit union of the same name (there's also the matter of the two credit unions which merged to form the original Denali; The Alaska Railroad and the Teamsters Union Local 959 were both economic juggernauts in Alaska during the years that their respective credit unions existed).

Fast forward again. Bhdfcu was created today. Its only edit thus far was to delete the mention of the insurance company from the credit union article. This was followed by Bhatdenali attempting to PROD that article with a similar rationale as the backdoor deletion of the mortgage company article. These edits contain multiple references to Hub International but no attempts to link to that article or to simply redirect the insurance company article to Hub's article or any other appropriate article. The similarities of the last two usernames should be obvious ("BH at Denali" and "BH–D(enali)F(ederal)C(redit)U(nion)").

There appears to be a lot of this sort of activity occuring on these particular types of articles; if I remember, I tagged the talk pages of most every Alaskan credit union article with COI notices. Really, though, when so many on the encyclopedia push the POV that government agencies and non-profits are inherently notable while most every other type of organization is non-notable, push the POV that defunct equivalents of today's notable entities couldn't possibly be notable themselves, and push the POV that we're here to be a popularity contest which only concerns itself with "popular" topics, you invite folks to come along and game the system like this. That the pattern here shows some level of competency with Wikipedia, but not enough that they've left behind several messes which haven't been cleaned up in years, merely reinforces the popularity contest mentality. I may eventually reach the point of getting tired of coming across these things and doing something about it because others don't or won't. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  07:17, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

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

 * The listed two socks are ✅, the listed master is stale by five years. Courcelles (talk) 18:29, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I've blocked and tagged the two confirmed accounts. Closing. GABgab 22:38, 17 July 2017 (UTC)