Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Wild Wolf/Archive

15 April 2014

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IP 64 appears to be used by Wild Wolf to avoid scrutiny of his assessments of articles and support for Wild Wolf's edits. IP 64 nominated Wild Wolf for Military Historian of the year here and appeared to be trying to pose as a neutral editor. If you look at the contribution history of Wild Wolf and IP64 []  they never edit Wikipedia at the same time and Wild Wolf has only started to reply now that IP64 is under a block warning. The large gap of IP 64's edits betwene March 18th and January 24th coincide with a backlog drive which awarded Wild Wolf a barn star. They use the same syntax commands when assessing articles Example: Wild Wolf's Editing Style and IP 64's Editing Style (UTC)Wild Wolf is currently involved in  a discussion here trying to defend IP 64's edits Here, trying to appear as a neutral editor. Molestash (talk) 17:46, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

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Per our discussion at Military History Project, I took a look at your talk page archive, Molestash, and saw that Wild Wolf admits there that they have, at best, a history of permitting alleged-unauthorized use of their account by unknown third-parties who leave snarky comments that they must then disavow, like: "If I really thought I could assess these articles myself, would you really think that I would be putting these articles up on this page? Rather than continually removing the articles, why not actually assess them? (Think there might be a reason why the page is called Requests for Assessment if the articles can't be assessed?)" and then their admission of permitting the alleged-unauthorized use: "''Sorry about the previous edit. I had stepped away from my computer for a few minutes and someone must have used my account." ... Err, ok...this seems to suggest something could be amiss, never mind the similarities and other circumstances you identified...sockpuppetry certainly seems plausible. JDanek007Talk'' 20:08, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
To begin with, I geolocated the IPs. All geolocate to Kansas, so they are connected to each other in that sense. Behaviorally, these IPs and Wild Wolf are very similar (the unusual way that Wild Wolf evaluates articles is distinctive). I'm going to block all IPs for a month, and Wild Wolf as well. I'll admonish Wild Wolf to no longer edit under IPs in an attempt to avoid scrutiny and pretend to be multiple people, and any block evasion for the next month or any attempt to use IPs or multiple accounts in the future will lead to an indefinite block. --  At am a  頭 19:48, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

28 April 2014

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Wild Wolf (WW) is already blocked for a month because of the use of IPs to give the illusion of multiple editors supporting their arguments, and even had IPs give the WW account awards. That was pretty obvious per WP:DUCK since this editor has a very narrow editing style and uses their own syntax when reviewing military articles. That same behavior is being done with Mad Man American (MMA). In addition to all of that, there are a few other pieces of evidence that helps tie the accounts together.

First of all, the initial activity from MMA began on November 5, 2010, at about the same time that WW had stopped editing. They edited until 17:16, November 9, 2010. WW was dormant during that period, and didn't resume editing until 6 minutes after MMA stopped. WW then continued editing until 18:11 on November 15, then stopped. At that point, MMA started editing again 12 minutes later, and made two edits, then went dormant for more than a year. This pattern of using one account, then switching to the other, and back and forth is evident throughout the edit histories of the two accounts.

Secondly the very first edit from MMA was to ask why they can't move pages (since they've been able to do so as WW for years). Obviously the problem was that MMA hadn't been autoconfirmed yet (since they hadn't made any edits yet, you need at least 10 edits).

Finally, the fact that MMA came out of a months-long dormancy to edit after WW was blocked suggests that it is being used for block evasion. This all makes a WP:DUCK determination that much easier. --  At am a  頭 16:15, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

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

This is somewhat after-the-fact, but there are several cases of this sock supporting Wild Wolf in discussions, see for instance this AfD and these CfDs from a couple of years ago. Also note that a couple of IPs show up in both cases, usually within the hour of MMA voting to support WW. Parsecboy (talk) 20:28, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
I'm just putting this in so that it's on the record in SPI archives. I've already blocked the sockpuppet, and extended the block of the sockmaster to indefinite due to this block evasion. --  At am a  頭 16:15, 28 April 2014 (UTC)