Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Zefr/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



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Sockpuppet account has been mostly dormant until last few days, now has heavy editing on pages along with suspected sockpeppeteer - see Monotrophic diet, and Carnivore diet. I suspect this may be partially to get around edit warring restrictions. Mr. Vernon (talk) 07:06, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Comments by other users
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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
Both accounts seem highly active going back at least a month. That several highly active editors would be working to combat edits by tons of anons and non-autoconfirmed on several med-fringe-like articles is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that a set of related articles would be patrolled by the same set of editors. I note that these targets have had protection repeatedly ramped up in response to those anon/etc editors (some of whom have been blocked, and with protection up to EC500 as evidence that they themselves are trying to game the system). That suggests the accounts mentioned here, who are working against those increasingly inhibited editors, are on the right side of things, so I do not see what they are doing as forbidden even if they were the same person (which again I do not see strong evidence to support). DMacks (talk) 07:23, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Per WP:ER, "Reverting vandalism is not edit warring. However, edits from a slanted point of view, general insertion or removal of material, or other good-faith changes are not considered vandalism." I don't see claims that the edits being reverted are vandalism, and looking at the contributions - they do not rise to a definition of vandalism that gets anyone a pass from edit warring policies on Wikipedia. I'll grant you that they could also be meatpuppets attempting to bypass 3RR. In addition, unregistered editing is welcome on Wikipedia, and I don't think the use of anonymous accounts means anything; I've seen more than enough worthwhile and well-sourced IP edits while doing vandalism patrol, and poor sources and editing using accounts. --Mr. Vernon (talk) 08:06, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a typical problem that an article attracts attention from GF or BF anons. The named accounts' edit-summaries indicate that they are combatting bias, which is an expected problem in this article field, and they repeatedly cite policy/guideline in their ES. That the article got semi/EC/EC500-ish protected but not fullprotected indicates to me that the long-term editors are on the right side combatting the comparatively problematic edits that the protection prohibits. There are (per multiple admins) many socks abusing these articles and keep getting blocked. That these named editors are making edits against those socks indicates that that these editors are on the "right" side. I don't see a strong behavioral case that they are socks. DMacks (talk) 08:31, 6 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Insufficient eviddence. Closing. Bbb23 (talk) 13:10, 6 February 2020 (UTC)