Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Eyrian, Gazpacho, JB196, Molag Bal, and Mrs random

User:Eyrian, User:Gazpacho, User:JB196, User:Molag Bal, and User:Mrs random

 * Suspected sockpuppeteers


 * Confirmed sockpuppets


 * Suspected sockpuppets


 * Report submission by

-- Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles  Tally-ho! 17:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

After posting evidence here, Thatcher suggested I instead post my report at Suspected sock puppets. To summarize, checkusers and arbcom cases have determined that Eyrian, Gazpacho, JB196, Molag Bal, and Mrs random all engaged in sockpuppetry in "in popular culture" related AfDs. So far at least all of the following have either admitted to or been confirmed by checkusers as being socks or puppeteers: AndalusianNaugahyde, AshbyJnr, Blueanode, Brandon97, Burntsauce, Casperonline, Dannycali, Davenbelle, Diyarbakir, D73733C8-CC80-11D0-B225-00C04FB6C2F5, Eyrian, Gazpacho, Golfcam, IPSOS, Jack Merridew, JohnEMcClure, LAZY 1L, Moby Dick, Mrs random, Note to Cool Cat, 75.5.225.151, SolidPlaid, Varlak, and Yeshivish. Some of these accounts were blocked as socks of JB196 and Molag Bal, i.e. too of the project's most prolific sockpuppeeters who have combined hundreds of socks. If THAT is what we faced in fiction related AfDs and policy discussions, who knows how many edits these and those accounts I have not listed that are associated with these banned users made to policy and guideline pages or influenced other good faith editors. Collectively, they made THOUSANDS of edits many of which were overwhelming AfDs with delete votes and harassing their critics (notice some of these accounts for blocked for stalking and incivility even prior to the checkusers confirmed sockpuppetry). I also suspect that the following currently unblocked accounts may be related due to strikingly similar editing patterns (rapid delete "votes" in AfDs in many of the same AfDs or kinds of AfDs as the blocked accounts): Blahblahme, Bulldog123, Crazysuit, Hornet35, Keb25, MarkBul, 138.88.170.131, Saikokira, 76.80.112.235, 68.163.65.119, StaticElectric, and Tregoweth. While these accounts have seemingly stopped editing, it is nevertheless important to determine if they are indeed socks to 1) determine the actual extent of the damage done by Eyrian, Gazpacho, JB196, Molag Bal, and Mrs random and 2) to block those determined to be socks so that they do not make a "come back" and cause further disruption. For additional evidence, please see here. Sincerely, -- Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles  Tally-ho! 17:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Evidence

There's relevance to this request: the validity of quite a few AFDs may be at stake. Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles turned out to be right on target about some concerns last year that got validated in the Requests for arbitration/Alkivar and Requests for arbitration/Eyrian cases. Some people were doing an end run around site policies to advance a deletionist agenda. If the older accounts turn out to be socks then Roi would have a solid reason to open some DRVs. Durova Charge! 18:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Comments


 * Conclusions
 * 1) This needs to be split up into multiple cases - you can't just lump a whole lot of serial sockpuppeteers together and say "well, it's probably one of these". Users like JB196 and Molag Bal have absolutely nothing in common with each other other than being known to use socks.
 * 2) It'd be tough to work out which are socks and which aren't now; probably most if not all are, but most of those haven't edited since 2007 and their contribs would be too stale to checkuser.
 * 3) In theory, votestacking at AfD isn't generally a problem (RfA is a different issue), because the !vote is either valid or it isn't - a pile of WP:ILIKEIT Keep votes or WP:JUSTNOTNOTABLE Delete !votes can and should be disregarded by the closing admin. Can you provide some examples of AfDs where these socks have led to an AfD reaching a different concolusion to that it "should have"? Black Kite 11:53, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Consider Articles for deletion/List of Konami code references in popular culture. Seven accounts voted to delete versus three arguing to keep and three arguing to merge.  Of those voting to delete, two were determined by checkusers to be sock accounts (Eyrian and Dannycali) and another is a suspected sock who has some similar editing patterns with Dannycali and with Eyrian, as well as many similar edits to Burntsauce.  In Articles for deletion/The Garden of Earthly Delights in popular culture, sock accounts Eyrian and Dannycali voted deleted, as did suspected sock Bulldog123.  In Articles for deletion/Amateur radio in popular culture, if you remove the delete votes of banned editors (Eyrian, Golfcam, and Burntsauce), then you're left with something more like a no consensus.  Similarly in Articles for deletion/List of Minotaur references in popular culture, maybe half (Eyrian, Golfcam, Burntsauce, and IPSOS) of those voting delete were engaged in sockpuppetry in these types of AfDs, as well as one suspected sock (Mleivo).  In fact if you go through the page User:Dannycali/In Popular Culture deletions that one banned sock created to coordinate the offensive against "in popular culture" articles, you'll find that most of those deleted consisted of some combination of the above confirmed and suspected sock accounts participating and accounting for half or more of the "delete" side of the discussion.  What you also don't see in those AfDs is the talk page and email harassment those who disagreed with Eyrian and Dannycali experienced as addressed in the Alkivar and Eyrian arbitration cases.  Who can say what the conclusion of the AfDs "should" have been, because you and I probably disagree about many of these articles' value, but what is certain is that in many of them multiple accounts voting to delete were engaged in widespread sockpuppetry at the time that included vote stacking in AfDs as well as talk page and other harassment of those arguing to keep elsewhere on the project, which was only determined after the AfDs closed.  Because the above suspected socks share many similarities with those banned accounts (rapid delete votes in fiction and list related AfDs, halting editing around the same time), it is important for the sake of other discussions that we determine the actual scale of the problem.  And there is some agreement (see, , and --I thought it best to get some community input before opening this case) that we cannot just allow their "succeses" to stand.  Best, --  Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles  Tally-ho! 17:17, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Err, each individual vote/comment or whatever you want to call it as such assumes a greater importance in AfD as there are generally fewer than RfA. And self-righteous bluster can be quite effective in convincing a non-involved closing admin as well as newer passers-by, especially if enough people repeat it.


 * Problem is Black Kite, you as deletion-minded and me and LGRDC as inclusionists, neither of us are going to be objective about it, in a similar way to deletionists all disregarding evidence of Jack Merridew being a sock.Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't get me wrong, I may lean towards the deletionist side where fancruft and trivia is concerned, but I'm equally dedicated to saving worthwhile articles. None of the AfDs mentioned above, when I look at the deleted content, give me any pause to worry about the Delete decisions, even with the admitted sockpuppets.  More to the point, I don't see any that would have been closed differently by an admin applying correct policy, even if the socks had been discarded. I wish LGRdC had found some different AfDs than those for "...in popular culture" articles. Black Kite 23:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As there is a lack of consensus in the interpretation of policy in regards to these kinds of articles, they more likely than not would have been closed as no consensus. Moreover, in most "in popular culture" AfDs after the confirmed sock accounts were blocked, the closures have usually been keep or no consensus.  If nothing else, over two hundred AfDs started by puppeteers, socks, and their proxies as part of a coordinated effort and in which myself and others who protested the AfDs wound up being non-stop "attacked" by the now banned accounts did play a role in the discussions, as many editors became discouraged and chased away (such as MisterManticore) from those kinds of AfDs.  An admin employing correct policy if the socks were discounted would have perhaps not closed as keep, but certainly as no consensus or redirect (as in every instance the articles could have been redirected somewhere and so the editors' contributions could have remained public).  There were no copy vios, libel, or hoax elements to the articles that necessitated deletion and there were valid redirect points that further made outright deletion unnecessary.  Plus, it doesn't help that some of these banned accounts were actually involved in some policy discussions.  Best, --  Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles  Tally-ho! 23:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As the closing admin on the first AfD said, the main problem for a lot of these articles s lack of reliable sources. I wouldn't argue that a number of them are good candidates for a merge with the parent article, but they do struggle to maintain a claim for independent existence. And let's face it, if we're talking about the "fixing" of AfDs through socking, hundreds of articles have been kept through this method, whereas I suspect that the number that have been deleted is much smaller. Incidentally, Mister Manticore is still editing under a different name, and I have had more than one extended AfD "battle" with him where he was on the delete side and I was on the Keep side, so that's probably not a good example. Black Kite 23:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * For the purposes of this case, whether we like or dislike the articles under question is not really relevant, but whether or not greater sockpuppetry was involved than we initially suspected last year, which is important should any not yet blocked accounts be sleeper socks. Anyway, though take Articles for deletion/Examples of meta-references in fiction a no consensus with at least one delete from banned account Dannycali. Or Articles for deletion/List of fictional restaurants, again largely no consensus, but closed as delete and yet we now know that SEVERAL of those voting to delete were socks or sockmasters: Yeshivish, Dannycali, and Burntsauce. And some are suspected socks: Crazysuit, 68.163.65.119, and MarkBul. With maybe six sock accounts making up a huge chunk of the deletion side of the debate, how can we allow such a closure to stand? Especially when the deletes in the discussion are largely "I don't like it" anyway. Or how about Articles for deletion/Charon in popular culture in which two confirmed socks (Dannycali and Burntsauce) and two suspected {again MarkBul and 68.163.65.119) voted delete and of the non-blocked deletes, we have such objective gems as "if it uses the words "in popular culture" its going to get a delete vote from me... period". Or Articles for deletion/Allentown, PA in popular culture in which confirmed sock Dannycali nominated, confirmed socks SolidPlaid and Gazpacho voted deleted, and suspected socks Blahblahme and Crazysuit made up most of the rest of the deletes. Again, even if you personally are happy that the article was deleted, why should we allow an account that is known to have used socks in "in popular culture" AfDs along with others blocked for sockpuppetry in these and other AfDs to have accomplished its objective through illegitimate means? Or Articles for deletion/List of media using the Wilhelm scream, which had as many or more good faith editors actually arguing to keep than delete (I don't count "votes" with "crap" as serious). Anyway, you have suspected sock Crazysuit, suspected sock Keb25, confirmed sock Dannycali, and suspect sock 81.153.158.137 all on the deletion side. Sincerely, -- Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles  Tally-ho! 00:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) OK, let's have a look;
 * Articles for deletion/Examples of meta-references in fiction - 6 Keeps, all of which were "It's notable", "it's useful" or "we shouldn't be deleting stuff like this". Nothing policy related.  The Delete !votes weren't a lot better, but I think the nominator nailed it to begin with anyway.
 * Oh I dunno, easy with blinkers on to assess anything as indiscriminate - this is the issue as many criteria can be applied with some fluidity.Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:10, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Not in this case - an unsourced list spunoff from the main article when the information was nicely presented in that article - delete every time.
 * Articles for deletion/List of fictional restaurants - a mess. Probably fails various parts of WP:NOT, probably a correct close, but frankly difficult to say it'd have gone any different without the socks. Not sure on this one.
 * AfDs are not based on article quality.
 * I didn't say they were (otherwise we'd lose a lot of popular culture articles).
 * Articles for deletion/Charon in popular culture - was never going to be a Keep, or even a N/Con, even without the socks. Possibly a merge and redirect, but....
 * The ferryman is pretty notable, dont you think? Some fairly aggressive comments from the usual suspects here. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:12, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The ferryman is notable, but does it need a separate list of IPC appearances?
 * Well, I would have had it on the Charon page myself as it isn't very big, but would have closed as a merge. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

(outdent/edit conflict) Then we have a new user user:Lord Uniscorn, who began editing on Jan 19 whose first edit is using a templated tag. And soon after merrily joins in the deletion debate. . Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC) I am closing this report because it is hard to use. Please break it down into manageable cases, preferably by puppeteer. Attach socks to puppeteers based on behavioral evidence in the form of diffs. If the socking is stale, or if the accounts are already blocked, we are not going to take action here. In those cases, I see no reason why you cannot go to deletion review if a specific AfD discussion was corrupted. For any current disruptive socking or block evasion, please do file reports here at WP:SSP. This report is closed, but you can still reference it as evidence whenever necessary. It is not going to disappear. Regards, Jehochman Talk 02:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/Allentown, PA in popular culture - never notable in a million years. Socks don't make a difference to this one.
 * Articles for deletion/List of media using the Wilhelm scream. Hmm, all over the place this one.  Some possibility of socking in the other direction as well.  I would've merged this one, but on the other hand, if an inclusionist like User:Erik is saying delete... tricky. Black Kite 00:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Even in the worst case scenario all of those could have been redirected to the main articles thereby leaving editors' public contributions (something that is incredibly relevant in RfAs for non-admin participants like my self) with little to no controversy. The delete votes for metafiction were essentially just votes, which means it would be a no consensus if neither side was really persuasive.  For Charon, if it was a merge and redirect, then it wouldn't be a delete as per the GFDL, we cannot delete contribution histories on merges.  As for Allentown, I would not say "never", because 1) Wikipedia is not a crystal ball and 2) the significance of any given thing changes over time and often unexpectedly (who would have thought Byzantium would have many years after its founding become the capital of the Roman Empire as Constantinople?).  In all of these cases, I whole-heartedly agree that better referencing would have helped, but all that time and energy that went into deleting these articles very well could have turned up sources.  I have participated in enough AfDs now where its nominated and then there's maybe several pile on delete "votes" in rapid succession only to have myself or others find all sorts of sources with relative ease that results in the article's improvement.  Consider Cultural impact of Star Wars, which still exists following a no consensus afd (Articles for deletion/Cultural impact of Star Wars) in which you had the usual successive deletes until I found sources to improve the article.  Now in that discussion, after I improved the article, most seemed to recognize that fact (at least two acknowledge my efforts in their keep arguments), but not banned accounts Dannycali and Burntsauce with the most vociferous proponent of deletion being this account.  Here was the article as nominated versus at the close of the AfD.  All the alleged problems with the article were fixed due to my and others' work, i.e. rather than us just piling on the easy "delete" votes.  Another case in point is Articles for deletion/Godzilla in popular culture, starts off with a deletion nom followed by two delete votes only to again have myself and others find many sources to drastically improve the article that persuaded at least one delete to change his stance and as for the subsequent accounts who still voted for delete after the improvements, well, you again have banned account Dannycali (who directly references his big list that he kept to use as precedent in getting as many of these kinds of articles deleted as possible) or such "helpful" comments as "kill all pop culture articles in the face".  In this AfD's case, he was the staunchest proponent of deletion.  Here was the version nominated versus the version at close.  In all of these instances, if as has been shown these kinds of articles can indeed be referenced and improved, how nice it would be if editors helped those of us who do in fact take the time to do so.  What you notice as well in these two examples is that once the above confirmed and suspected sock accounts started to be blocked, the outcomes of the AfDs started to change as well.  Fortunately, some of these cases did indeed end up as keep or no consensus.  Consider Articles for deletion/Robin Hood in popular culture, which closed as no consensus despite participation by this account (not sure whose sock he was and why it wasn't an indefinite block and what happened to its contribution history) and banned accounts Eyrian and Dannycali.  Articles for deletion/Seppuku in popular culture was not as lucky; nominated by banned account Eyrian, the first delete (Harlowrahman) also blocked for sockpuppetry and more, suspected socks Keb25 and Crazysuit voting delete, as well as banned Burntsauce as a deletor.  Articles for deletion/Space stations in popular culture did survive even though it was nominated by banned Eyrian and included deletes from suspected sock Crazysuit and confirmed sock Harlowrahman.  Best, --  Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles  Tally-ho! 02:34, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think a lot of this depends on the closing admin. Many admins are wary of redirecting IPC articles to the main ones, because they know it'll result in often very serious subjects being submerged under a wave of "OMG they referenced this in Star Trek!!11" which causes dropoff in the original article quality. So the closes go different ways.  FWIW, I think most of those closes above were correct (I would've Kept the Robin Hood one, actually).  It should be fairly obvious that an article like Godzilla IPC is completely sourceable and an obviously viable article, whereas the Seppuku one, as well as being unsourced, is just an random list of mentions of Seppuku, and thus fails WP:NOT regardless of how many socks !vote Delete. Black Kite 10:02, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * But if it's really the concern of anyone that its a discrminate list of mentions, then SOFIXIT. Myself and others have done so to make these articles better referenced and less of just lists.  I don't see why others can't/won't help in the effort to do that.  My whole feeling about the deletionist-incusionist issue large stems from not getting why anyone would rather than worry about improving articles they do care about and attempting to make these good or featured articles would instead devote time and effort to tearing down articles that others in our diverse community see value in.  I recall seeing one or two posts in the episode and characters arbcom where someone outright said he doesn't really watch much TV and so on, where how can I not think, then why would you even worry about articles pertaining to topics you admittedly know little about?  Say the article on Seppuku failed NOT in one of its drafts, but let's say secondary sources exist that can be used to revise the article (see for example Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army by Sabine Fruhstuck or Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: Towards a Political Reading of the Tragic Hero' by Isolde Standish, both of which addresses seppuku).  There's really few topics that haven't been covered in some secondary sources, whether it be books, magazines, or journals and for which a good tertiary article can be written.  A comparable amount of time and energy spent nomination these articles for deletion and challenging anyone who dares to want to keep them could be spent finding these secondary sources and revising the articles as myself and others have done.  And if those nominating really don't care for these articles, well why not try to bring the articles they do care about up to good or featured status?  Hoaxes, libel, and copy vios should be deleted without any question (although I have seen times where articles are alleged to be hoaxes and lo and behold sources actually do exist), but way too many articles are dismissed as having no potential or no sources only to have myself or others find sources and with relative ease.  Moreover, all the time I have to spend defending articles in AfDs is also time lost, i.e. time not spent improving articles.  As you can see on my user page, I have successfully rescued many articles and I'd wager I could better many more articles did I not feel compelled to discuss (not vote) in AfDs.  The fact that a large number of AfDs I argued to keep in were nominated by and flooded with "votes" by the above confirmed and suspected socks has made the experience all the more frustrating.  Best, --  Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles  Tally-ho! 00:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Conclusive conclusion