Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Yanickproulx06/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
Two separate attempts, ten months apart, to create articles about Natalie Labbée, a municipal councillor in a midsized Canadian city whose municipal councillors do not get an automatic free pass over WP:NPOL #2. I wouldn't have thought much of that by itself, but there are also recurring patterns: across both of their edit histories there's a focus principally on topics related to the Ontario Liberal Party, such as the party itself, its current leader, the 2023 leadership race and a 2024 provincial legislative by-election; both editors have committed at least one act of editing non-Liberal politicians from the Sudbury area (MPP France Gélinas in Yanick's case, mayor Brian Bigger in Theeditor's) to remove content and referencing from the articles and insert unsourced POV commentary, and Theeditor has also attempted to go the other way on Liberal-identified mayor Marianne Matichuk (Bigger's immediate predecessor) to hagiographize her and bury any content that painted her mayoralty in a less than glowing light. So when all of those things are taken together, there's fairly substantial evidence that it's worth at least a sockcheck. Bearcat (talk) 17:34, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * For examples I'll note this edit to Gélinas by Yanickproulx, which note includes removing references from the text, de-surnaming Andrea Horwath and wiping out any acknowledgement whatsoever of the fact that Gélinas won re-election to her seat in 2022; this edit to Bigger which removed references from the text and inserted an unsourced statement that he was one of the least popular mayors in the city's history (which I don't know that anybody's ever actually tried to poll on at all, but it would be damn hard for him to be more unpopular than John Rodriguez). In the case of Matichuk, the crossover is between TheEditor and LiberalEditor (whom I hadn't noticed until they were found below), and doesn't seem to involve Yanick, so there are no diffs that would be useful there. But I will also call attention to TheEditor's handiwork at Rick Bartolucci, which similarly involved blowing every single reference right out of the article and leaving it completely unsourced when they were done advertoralizing it. Bearcat (talk) 18:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * ! The bad news is, I checked because maybe the older account had signed in recently; they had not. The good news (well, no news about socking is ever "good"), your Theeditor is confirmed with User:Liberal editor, who was doing similar things. How these should be tagged, I don't know; I marked this SPI in the block log. Identification with the older account will have to be done on the basis of behavior, which would require a bit more detailed (diffs) evidence--if that's worth it. Drmies (talk) 17:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's worth it to chase. Closing. Izno (talk) 23:10, 1 June 2024 (UTC)