English Wikipedia @ Freddythechick:Suspected sock puppets/Adrianfeane

The following discussion is an archived debate of the case of suspected sockpuppetry. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page. All edits should go to the talk page of this case. If you are seeing this page as a result of an attempt to open a new case of sockpuppetry of the same user, read this for detailed instructions.

User:Adrianfeane

Suspected sockpuppeteer

Adrianfeane (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Suspected sockpuppets

Yvonnediggins (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Wendygower (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Lesliebaumann (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Patrickmaguire (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Peterjohnohara (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Jrbelkin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Fmaple (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Report submission by

9Nak (talk) 19:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Evidence

These accounts appear to be controlled by an individual or group at Digino Marketing, a search engine optimizer that lists Ailesbury Clinic as a client. The suspected socks have been exclusively active in creating and editing Patrick Treacy, the founder and main personality behind the clinic, and in commenting on the AFD of that entry.

None of the accounts have been active anywhere outside of this one entry, its talk page and the related AfD.
Six of the seven accounts use an identical naming convention: Firstnamesurname; no space, initial capital and all lowercase thereafter. The seventh is close, identical if assuming first name is "JR".
Five of the seven accounts have identical editing styles: multiple edits to the same page within minutes of one another with no edit summaries. The remaining two accounts have only one and two edits, respectively.
The five active accounts are remarkably keen on including inter-textual external links and continue doing so contrary to advice and warnings.
Accounts edit sequentially, with occasional overlaps.
Two of the accounts (Peterjohnohara and Jrbelkin) learned to sign talk page comments within hours of one another – after consistently failing to do so previously.
As noted at the AfD page by Brammarb: "Lesliebaumann and Jrbelkin both misuse the word "notary" in the same way and in the same context (a 'notary' is a lawyer of sorts and not a noteworthy person)..." (diff1, diff2, and add Peterjohnohara to that list: diff3)
Accounts that have commented on talk pages use the same writing style and similar arguments.
Accounts all show remarkable knowledge of the background of the article subject without being able to point to references for the same information.
Yvonnediggins' user page identifies the user as an employee of Digino. A company web page lists one "Adrian Feane" as sales director and the user by the same name says the page was created on behalf of the subject.
Six of the accounts managed to mistake a redirected article page for the AfD discussion page, and proceeded to hold their own AfD debate there. Needless to say consensus was easily reached. (page history)

Comments

I would be very surprised if checkuser doesn't find all seven accounts sharing just three IPs, the three that edit Patrick Treacy with the same pattern as the suspected socks:

83.71.213.165
86.42.173.221
89.100.158.252

9Nak (talk) 19:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything 9Nak says and I'm glad that the hunch of a newbie wasn't thought completely wide of the mark. I do have a slightly different sense of things, though. I think the puppetmaster is Lesliebaumann and that (s)he, Jrbelkin and Peterjohnohara are all the same person and probably, given the ardour with which they rally to the cause, the subject of the article. I think that Patrickmaguire is another sock. However, my guess is that Adrianfeane and Yvonnediggins are paid marketeers on behalf of the real puppetmaster - after all, they don't hide behind fake names and nor have they done any editing much outside of the regular working day. Although not really at all active, given the time at which Wendygower was up and about, I suspect that (s)he is also a sock of Lesliebaumann. However, wherever it all starts, it's clear that they're linked. Brammarb (talk) 20:59, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

My Account
I can't speak for the above users but I definitely only have one account and I'm genuinely interested in finding out more about good practices in writing articles for Wikipedia, so please don't delete my account.

Yvonnediggins (talk) 15:37, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Conclusions

Obvious socks. Master blocked 24 hours, socks blocked indefinitely. Enigma ^message 16:54, 31 July 2008 (UTC)