Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/keywordrenewals/Archive

31 August 2012

 * Suspected sockpuppets




 * User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

Article history of The Kluger Agency, Kluger Agency (now history-merged), T.K.A (moved), Adam Kluger (now speedied twice as self-promotional bio), Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Adam Kluger (speedied as recreation of promotional bio at Adam Kluger) and their associated talk pages show a consistent pattern of edits removing sourced criticism of Kluger Agency or individual music videos which contain Kluger-supplied advertising. All show the same patterns, WP:SPA hitting just these articles, or this and closely-related pages for individual Kluger client musicians and advertised brands, the Musicians Institute, branded entertainment and a pair of high schools Kluger once attended to insert links to the self-promotional Adam Kluger autobiography.

An attempt by commons:user:shahs227 to upload a proprietary Kluger logo to commons: with the claim that its creator Adam Kluger releases this to the public domain was deleted due to a missing OTRS ticket. user:shahs227 is likely the only valid checkuser target in this list (user:keywordrenewals is the original account used to create The Kluger Agency, Kluger Agency and Adam Kluger as promotional advertisements in fall 2008, so likely too stale for WP:CU).

User:Shahs227 was created on en: on 20 August 2012 at 17:11, one minute after a pair of IP edits at 17:08 and 17:10, 20 August 2012‎ where user:67.88.44.147 (Tag: section blanking) blanked The Kluger Agency here and blanked the same section of the same article here after a few days of WP:SPA edits which included a recreation attempt on twice speedily-deleted Adam Kluger through WP:AFC. User:Shahs227 and user:184.32.125.150 are currently temporarily blocked for 48 hours for section-blanking The Kluger Agency to remove information critical of the agency, a common pattern with these IP socks.

user talk:184.32.125.150 contains a failed unblock claiming "Two emails have been sent to info-en-q @ wikipedia.org as a major contributor to this article is clearly writing defamitory information..." where that IP had already blanked the entire page; info-en-q is one of the addresses listed for Contact OTRS as "handles issues regarding an article that is written about you or a group you are affiliated with". It would only make sense for the IP to use this specfic e-mail address for OTRS (separate from their main address, and intended for use specifically by the subject of an article) if he is Adam Kluger or affiliated with Kluger. It would only make sense for Shahs227 to use the "author releases this to the public domain" tag when uploading Kluger's logo to commons: if he is the author of that image, Adam Kluger. User:keywordrenewals has also implicitly claimed to be Adam Kluger based on his list of uploaded files (all long deleted) where (like user:shahs227) he uploads Kluger's logo with 23:21, 23 June 2009 Keywordrenewals (talk | contribs) uploaded "File:Kluger 4.jpg". If user:keywordrenewals is the sole author of this logo, and user:shahs227 is the sole author of this logo, and the logo is the creation of Adam Kluger, then all of these are one and the same implicitly. The pattern of WP:COI edits removing anything Kluger doesn't want in The Kluger Agency article (not just sourced criticisms but sourced info on which brands paid what to advertise in which songs) is also consistent.

The use of Contact OTRS to request creation of Articles for deletion/The Kluger Agency is an abuse of OTRS, which is intended to be a help desk and not a means to post WP:AFD requests while blocked. A WP:COI case is already open at Conflict of interest/Noticeboard as the problems have been ongoing since Kluger's 2008 inception and steadily getting worse. The Kluger Agency is currently semi-protected, providing a few days' short-lived respite, after a recent page-blanking incident.

Of the IP's, 72.254.146.87 belongs to iBAHN.com, a provider of Internet connections for transient guests in hotel rooms, and 184.32.125.150 is a regular BellSouth ISP user in Florida (The Kluger Agency is in Miami, Florida). I haven't tried whois on the rest of this, but would expect a user posting from hotel/motel rooms makes a fine moving IPv4 target. 66.102.83.61 (talk) 14:53, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

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


 * Comment "Keyword Renewal" hasn't edited from that account for over a year, and has never been blocked. Many of those ip edits were years ago, and there is no rule against editing while not logged in, unless trying to edit while blocked, which isn't the case here. I recommend that the case be closed as "no offense" and move on. Sock puppetry is only disruptive when done to avoid a block or to stack a "vote". Neither of which happened here.-- JOJ Hutton  16:12, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I would concur - I've been looking at the article from the COIN note that the same user opened - I don't find anything socky - at most some dynamically assigned IPs and new users.Fayedizard (talk) 16:22, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment While this is not a new user (this has been ongoing since October 2008), he was recently (August 2012) section-blanking The Kluger Agency as an IP to remove content as part of a conflict of interest incident. The user then registered as user:shahs227, re-created a twice-deleted self-promotional bio of Adam Kluger as Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Adam Kluger and continued the same section blanking of The Kluger Agency, then went to a Florida ISP IP address to continue section-blanking The Kluger Agency anonymously. He was only blocked (and then just for 48 hours as shahs227 and the last IP used) after blanking the entire page. This user, when confronted on user talk pages, is prone to claim to be someone else - anything from an Associated Press employee to a marketing professor in a Florida university - which looks fishy. Section-blanking is disruptive even without editing while blocked (does using OTRS to nominate a page for deletion while blocked qualify?) or voting. Contributing to the same page or discussion with multiple accounts, avoiding scrutiny or misusing a clean start are all listed as inappropriate uses of alternative accounts. The exceptions (where one person with multiple identities is legit) only cover cases where the accounts are openly linked (such as user:XYZ and an approved user:XYZbot) or cases where the multiple identities are not editing the same pages - neither of which apply to this incident. That user:shahs227 is user:keywordrenewals does matter if one account is merely re-creating deleted pages the other originally posted, or is reverting WP:COI advertisement pages the other created to remove embarassing facts added by subsequent editors. 66.102.83.61 (talk) 14:21, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * Stale and non-overlapping edits. IPs expire, etc.  Taking no action except to close as this isn't a live abuse issue. Dennis Brown -  2&cent;    &copy;   Join WER 16:49, 5 September 2012 (UTC)