Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Yalens/Archive

17 February 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 " ~ "''

All active only at the Talk:Deportation of Circassians page and related renaming discussion pages. and similarly active since October 2010. --DonaldDuck (talk) 04:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC) DonaldDuck (talk) 04:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

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


 * I suppose I have to respond to it. My initial response was "Are you kidding me?" I have never edited under any other user name but my own. Occasionally I have edited as an IP,when I forgot to sign in, but I have never voted doubly or anything like that... I have used a number of public computers if that means anything (school computers, etc... but isn't that pretty common, to work on public computers once in awhile?), however, I have never used any other username but my own, and I have never voted twice or violated any of the rules or anything like that... --Yalens (talk) 16:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I may also note that if you use geolocate on all the IPs, they all are in different cities (although they are all in New Jersey- though I am not in New Jersey!).--Yalens (talk) 16:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, I suppose I should mention this: I-as a real life person- have never used two accounts, but the reverse has happened once: my brother used the account I edit on. He liked to edit stuff about video games, had different interests from me, etc. When I started editing using it, he more or less had stopped (he hasn't edited for a large number of years anyhow). But there is nothing illegal about this as far as I know anyway. --Yalens (talk) 16:40, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I am also not in New Jersey. If I wanted to be bold, I might say that this is a last ditch effort to protest the Circassian article name change. I hope that when it is proved that these allegations are baseless, there is some sort of investigation into the motives of the accuser(s)Nettieoneg (talk) 06:33, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Evidence posted by Nanobear:

I agree the IPs are highly suspicious (obvious SPAs commenting on a POV topic), but I don't see direct evidence that they are Yalens.

However, I think there is a good reason to believe the Yalens account itself is a sockpuppet of - a serial sockpuppeteer and banned POV warrior who was active on very similar Caucasian topics. The evidence:
 * There is a very substantial amount of overlap in the articles they edit. Notice especially, how both are interested in little-known Caucasian articles edited by a small amount of editors AND in Japanese Manga like Temari (Naruto) and Shikamaru Nara. I think it's highly unlikely this overlap of interests would be found in two completely unrelated persons.
 * Yalens often edits little known articles created or substantially authored by HanzoHattori. Examples:
 * Compare the edits of Yalens and HanzoHattori's latest sock . I think this sequence of edits makes the connection pretty clear:
 * Insertion of POV material by Asperchu:
 * POV removed by a third editor:.
 * Asperchu is blocked as a sockpuppet of HanzoHattori and can no longer edit:
 * Yalens arrives to revert and restore the POV:
 * Another example (this time Yalens goes first):
 * Yalens edits:
 * Asperchu expands on the same material (search for "Magomed Yevloyev"):
 * HanzoHattori creates an article with category "War crimes of the Second Chechen War": . Note that this article is little known (gets few views), and only HanzoHattori socks have made substantial edits in this article:.
 * Another editor removes the category:
 * Yalens reverts and restores the category:
 * This suspicious message on Yalen's userpage.
 * More comparisons. Compare with HanzoHattori's latest sock: . Comparison with another HanzoHattori sock: And with yet another sock: (see Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of HanzoHattori for more socks)

In my view, the evidence that Yalens is HanzoHattori seems pretty clear - at least enough to warrant a CU check. Since HanzoHattori's account is probably stale, I recommend checking Yalens against HanzoHattori's latest sock, Asperchu. Nanobear (talk) 06:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the 3 IPs listed at Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of HanzoHattori will be helpful to the CU. It seems that HanzoHattori has edited from two different locations. Nanobear (talk) 13:42, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * As someone familiar with HanzoHattori (and Asperchu is evidently his sockpuppet), I must tell that Yalens has a very different editing style,  different level of English, and different quality of edits. I would be very surprised if they were the same user.Biophys (talk) 19:03, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Yalens' reply to Nanobear and other comments.
Okay, I honestly didn't even know of the existence an editor named HanzoHattori. I did have one exchange with Asperchu on a wiki page (see link). []. He asked us (those editors working on the 2010 Chechen parliament attack article, i.e. myself, Lihaas and Nanobear/Offliner) to help him with a new article that he made- Hussein Gakayev. That is the only reason I ever even learned of the Gakayev’s articles existence at all.

As for Japanese manga, that for the most part wasn't me editing, but my younger brother, as I explained above. I had an interest in anime/manga, but I really didn't think it was worth spending time editing. And looking at some of those edits that were made about anime, they're actually rather embarassing :(. That also explains the "suspicious message". I already said this before. And there are plenty of editors who edit manga once in a while, it is quite popular.

Much of the overlap is explained because of similar interests, although, looking at HanzoHattori's edits, I would say he is more interested in modern events and I am more interested in history, and much of my edits to those pages have to do with that.

That the pages are little-known is true, I only stumbled upon them before editing them. The reason for that is because not many people have an interest in the obscure region of Caucasus. But if you are going to say that any users with similar interests and points of view are the same person, there are no doubt many editors- probably an overwhelming majority- for whom this is not the case. Not many people are interested in the Bombing of Katyr-Yurt or the various other similar events, because the media nowadays simply portrays the Chechens as a whole as being born terrorist, and doesn't examine at all the events that led up to the modern day, nor is there much interest at the present moment of examining them.... That HanzoHattori and Asperchu (or HanzoHattori-Asperchu) had a similar interest in such topics and a similar view.

In bombing of Katyr-Yurt, Russavia removed the category, because he did not think it was a war crime. Not only did I oppose this, but so did User:Biophys... and he is definitely not a sock. []

Furthermore, if you want to see where I get my information on these "obscure pages" from, there are plenty of works on these "obscure" topics. My citations for Chechnya-related matters frequently include published, publically available material, such as: Jaimoukha’s “Chechens: A Handbook”; Dunlop’s “Russia confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict”, Gammer’s “Lone Wolf and Bear” (as well as others), Wood’s “Chechnya: The Case for Independence”, Sakwa’s “Chechnya: From Past to Future” (for the Russian view), and so on. Primarily Jaimoukha’s “Chechens”. I don’t know what sources Asperchu tends to use, but looking briefly through his edits, we tend to use very different sources.

I’d like to say that I am telling the truth, and more importantly that I am proud of my edits to Wikipedia. I have worked alone or doing must of the work on a number of projects, and I hope to be able to continue to do so. One day I found that one of the pages I had made, for the most part without much help, had been translated, and others had been quoted because they were good… I was proud, and I want to continue editing. This is sappy, yes. But I honestly am not connected in any way with this person except that we share interests in the Caucasus and in Wikipedia. You will find this when you do the IP check (do you do that?). But I regret having to go through this case… --Yalens (talk) 16:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

One more thing- I checked the User Compare report, and I only shared 71 edits with Asperchu (only 2.3% of my edits at all, at the time of posting). --Yalens (talk) 21:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Both of these accounts are fairly old. Honestly I'm not seeing it; aside from the Circassian articles, they don't have any others in common. This could be meatpuppetry or just a false positive; do you have any evidence (diffs, e.g.) to back this up? —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 14:03, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * - I think based on the evidence, I'm going to endorse for a check for these two accounts against . —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 13:26, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

There appear to be different sets of editor groups here. One set belongs to an educational institution, so it is very likely that the various editors in that set are unrelated. The only editor listed above from that institution is Yalens, and so he must be given the benefit of the doubt at this point. -- Avi (talk) 01:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I've blocked and tagged the Hanzo socks. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 02:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)