Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sheldonium/Archive

Sheldonium

Sheldonium (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

02 June 2020

Suspected sockpuppets

Vineword (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
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Vineword is a new account that appeared on 26 May 2020, two months after Sheldonium was blocked for personal attacks and harassment. Vineword appears to be remarkably familiar with wiki jargon, as seen here . This account also takes up some of Sheldonium's old grievances, blanking vast swathes of List of Dutch inventions and innovations, which is something that Sheldonium also did before being blocked. Also, much like Sheldonium, Vineword is involved in the dispute surrounding the Ivan Gundulić article, assuming the same POV. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 15:58, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

Confirmed. Blocked and tagged, closing. Mz7 (talk) 19:50, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

02 January 2021

Suspected sockpuppets

Thebeon (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
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Both Thebeon and Vineword have made edits to Franciscus Patricius. Exact same POV and similar line of reasoning. [1] [2] When the subject of an article happens to be a Serb, Sheldonium, Vineword and Thebeon (mis)cite WP:ETHNICITY to have any mention of their being Serbs removed. [3] [4] [5] Both Sheldonium and Thebeon have made edits to Nikola Tesla, with the goal of removing the word "Serbian" from the lead. [6] [7]

Vineword and Thebeon have an identical referencing style -- last name, first name, url, title, date, publisher, isbn, language (in that order). Both use Croatian Google (as evidenced by the domain names in their citations). [8] [9] And finally, both Sheldonium and Thebeon have cited Leonard da Vinci in their argument that Nikola Tesla is Croatian. [10] [11] Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 00:07, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims. I'm not the same user, only reviewed past edits on Croatia-related articles. Everything I've done with this account is according to Wikipedia rules, reliable sources, no harrasing, nor POV-pushing.--Thebeon (talk) 14:14, 2 January 2021 (UTC) These [12] [13] arguments are not valid, as I added that tesla is croatian word also, and provided a source for that, and added that he was born in modern-day Croatia which he was. And also provided sources for that which is ridiculous: [14]--Thebeon (talk) 14:21, 2 January 2021 (UTC) These [15] [16]edits were ridiculous, how can anyone write "His family, de Petris was of Italian descent was Italian. He’s only shown as Croatian because the area is Croatian now." which is self-evident POV, and has no sources. I worked on al these articles because I noticed that are constantly vandalized, and being disruptively edited, so I used valid arguments from prevoiusly blocked User:Sheldonium and User:Vineword. These articles are Croatia-related, of course I will undo uncourced POV. This was investigation was clearly done to cleanse every "threat" of Serbian POV pushing.--Thebeon (talk) 14:29, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I guess that explains why both the Sheldonium and Thebeon accounts use odd words such as "sneakingly". [17] [18] You're not fooling anyone. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 15:39, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to eagerly try to block user fighting for NPOV and sourced content, while defending unsourced pro-Serbian propaganda. Sneakingly is a nice word, and that is exactly what user Sadko, and you do, delete every mention of Croatian and Croats without WP:VERIFY. The point is to maintain Wikipedia to be neutral as per WP:NPOV and you and your friend Sadko consistently work against those rules. You should be blocked for that. --Thebeon (talk) 18:05, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Please also see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Thebeon. Jack Frost (talk) 11:51, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Amanuensis Balkanicus: to pick up the thread from 19 January 2021, there's no doubt that Sheldonium and Thebeon have significant overlap in interests. The problem is, I can't tell for sure if they're really the same person, or just two people with a similar interest in Serbo-Croatian topics. This is an area where nationalistic pride runs strong and opinions such as which nationality you call somebody can be shared by many individual editors. While it's certainly possible, perhaps even likely, they're the same person, I haven't yet seen anything which makes me sufficiently sure of that to justify blocking. -- RoySmith (talk) 04:02, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Amanuensis Balkanicus, I'll reply under 02 January 2021. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:54, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith: Thanks for the response. I understand your reluctance to proceed without checkuser, so I guess I'll just present further evidence for other admins. The behavioral similarities go far beyond simply editing Croatian-related articles. It's the narrower topical interests shared by Sheldonium, Vineword and Thebeon, in addition to syntactic quirks such as "sneakingly", that are quite idiosyncratic and have convinced me this is the same person. These narrower topical interests boil down to Croatian inventions/discoveries, the Croatia article itself, and the ethnicity of notable people from Dubrovnik.

Both Sheldonium and Thebeon have also made numerous exonymous redirects to Croatia. Sheldonium: Kroasië, Kroacia, Kroasia and Horvaatia. Thebeon: Hrvatistan, Khorvatia, Hrvacka, Croatia, HR, and many, many others. In Sheldonium's last edit, Sheldonium wrote: "Will we finally reach consensus then, and start to delete every mentioning of ethnicity in every biography per WP:ETHNICITY?" [19] Thebeon goes on to make the exact same kinds of edits, misconstruing WP:ETHNICITY to make a WP:POINT over the same grievances Sheldonium had. [20] [21] [22] Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 15:51, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Amanuensis Balkanicus I have now reviewed your editing do you edit wikipedia or sue other editors who write what and follow them? Take a look at your editing, every week you constantly report an editor from Croatia, never another country. What is your job on wikipedia, because all the time when someone creates a new account from Croatia you report it to be banned account. Then he asked to ban all editing from the Croatian state that's the best. Here I will not edit here anymore. I thought I'd open an account but I won't that the user Amanuensis Balkanicus does not report me as another user, if I edit some pages that were previously that were previously edited by that user , bye — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.136.205.83 (talk) 20:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

All accounts that I can compare to are Stale. This will need a behavioral investigation... ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:26, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On hold - I've gone deep down a rabbit hole on this one, and still digging. Feel free to comment on the case, but please don't close it until I come up for air. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:34, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Clerk note: After slicing and dicing the data for a while, I'm just not sure. The arguments made above certainly look reasonable, but I've also found a few other users who fit the patterns described who I'm sure are NOT socks. I don't know where that leaves us, but I'll move this back to open, to let somebody else take a whack at it. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:21, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RoySmith would you be comfortable with me making the decision on behavioral grounds that this is a violation of either sockpuppetry or the meatpuppetry policy? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:32, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Joy, As I noted above, I'm hoping somebody else will take this up and do their own investigation. As an admin, you're certainly within your rights to do so, but you might want to consider whether you're WP:INVOLVED. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:43, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RoySmith err, are you saying I could be inappropriately involved simply by virtue of reporting this for checkuser? I otherwise never heard of this user before... --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:11, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Joy, I'll leave that to you to decide. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:12, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RoySmith Yeah, I don't see what you mean, as it is literally the task of admins to assist with enforcing policies such as the sockpuppetry policy. Maybe if I had interacted if this editor before yet don't remember it now, but other than that I don't see your point at all. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:51, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrator note Account blocked and tagged. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:57, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

19 January 2021

Suspected sockpuppets

Thebeon (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) ( Clerk note: original case name)
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I'm a long-time administrator, and have been editing and paying attention to abuse in the WP:ARBMAC topic area for well over a decade now. This editor only started editing recently, and their contributions are already a bunch of flawed edits across a weird smattering of Serbian- and Croatian-related pages, referencing intricate policies apparently wrongly to make edits that can reasonably be understood to be nationalist Croatian. All of this has already been reverted and they were already warned on the user talk page. Today I noticed that the editor pinged me and a bunch of other people at WT:HRV with a curious canvass-style message. While it's technically possible that an actual newbie did all this, that they read all these various policy pages in the last month or so, and that they somehow have a genuine interest in biographies of Serbian people and the country of Croatia but can't express themselves correctly, and that they just so happened to have investigated hundreds of page histories to be able to compose a list of Croatian editors like that, it's also rather unlikely. Experience teaches me that we should verify the good faith status of this account before anything escalates. I recently interacted with a sockpuppet of User:Crovata without knowing, and several other accounts have been blocked or banned in this topic area in the last year or so (global ban of User:Kubura for example), so I think this weird pattern of behavior merits a quick checkuser to see if we're dealing with repeat business. TIA. Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:17, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Oshwah:, sadly, I don't know *shrug* it makes sense to try that one first, yes. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 23:08, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith: but have you checked against User:Crovata? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:50, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Joy, You need to give me something to go on. Why do you think it's Crovata? There's some non-stale accounts in that case which CU could compare against, but I can't endorse it for CU without something to go on. Diffs would be really helpful here. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:48, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RoySmith I believe I provided behavioral evidence that shows legitimate concerns about bad-faith editing (per WP:CHK) in my explanation above. If you open their contributions, and just skip over some of the mundane stuff, there's everything that I described (various edit summaries mentioning MOS:ETHNICITY tagged reverted, etc) and other assorted gems like casting aspersions at a WP:ANI thread that they did not initiate, removing 8 KB of text with 20+ references from an article, an edit that drops referenced text about ethnicities but also changes random formatting (this indicates to me that they are going back in article history to look for a version they like better, which is the practical hallmark of an edit warrior), etc. I do not think this pattern of behavior is normal for an editor who's been here since December. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:09, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Joy, I agree that they're not behaving like a new user. But, I'm not seeing any reason to suspect that they're Crovata specifically. WP:NOTFISHING says, it is not fishing to check an account where the alleged sockmaster is unknown, but there is reasonable suspicion of sockpuppetry, but most CUs seem to be more conservative than that, so I'm still hesitant to endorse based on what we've got here. It sounds like you're much more familiar with this topic area than I am, so you may well be seeing nuances that I'm not. This case is still open (i.e. the 02 January 2021 section above), so somebody else may be more willing to endorse or run a check. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:05, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith:, @Oshwah: I'm really not sure why this SPI has dragged on for as long as it has. Thebeon is clearly a sock of Sheldonium, as seen by the evidence I've presented above, and has little in common with Crovata, who operated a completely separate sock account (Miki Filigranski). Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 16:55, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith: Thanks for taking a look. Today Thebeon started revisiting some of Sheldonium's old stomping grounds, creating redirects to List of Croatian inventions and discoveries (Croatian inventors and Croatian inventions and discoveries). A quick search of Sheldonium's editing history shows that Sheldonium was particularly fixated on List of Croatian inventions and discoveries, making dozens and dozens of edits. Thebeon has also made Ivan Vukić redirect to Giovanni Luppis. Vineword was intent on defending Luppis' Croatianness and added a source to back up the Vukić rendition of Luppis' surname. [23] These are further indicators that we're dealing with the same person. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 01:54, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Amanuensis Balkanicus you forbid editing and this is not in line with wikipedia . According to you, no one can edit those pages anymore.93.136.205.83 (talk) 18:41, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

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

Note: Please also see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sheldonium. Jack Frost (talk) 11:49, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

Joy - Can you list a sock puppet user that I'll be comparing this account to? Is it User:Crovata or someone else? ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:05, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk note: This section was originally opened as Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Thebeon, but listed no suspected socks, so wasn't going anywhere. Since Thebeon is already listed here under 02 January 2021, I've merged it here mostly to preserve the history. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:50, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]