Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/TheLawGiverOfDFT/Archive

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TheLawGiverOfDFT

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

25 May 2021

Suspected sockpuppets

  • Dft4wiki was magically created with the goal of making one edit on the article for Nike Dattani. If you review the edit summaries by both accounts, they are very similar in style. Also continual claims of COI and what appears to be a personal agenda against the article subject. Missvain (talk) 01:25, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The IP kindly gave a response to a question on the AfD for the Nike Dattani article - which was created by TheLawGiverOfDFT.[1] It almost seemed to good to be true - this random IP shows up and supports the nominators AfD efforts be explaining their concerns? As if they could read TheLawGiverofDFT's mind. Missvain (talk) 01:25, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Added User:BountyTJ - they also write and edit the same content and have the same concerns as the possible socks. Missvain (talk) 19:49, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I suspect BountyTJ is a different sockpuppet master. I'll write more about it when I get time. I suspect TheLawGiverOfDFT recruited Dft4wiki and 147.226.103.110 to support the deletion proposal, and Dft4wiki = 147.226.103.110 (or at least the latter two may have IPs from a similar location, which is not the same as TheLawGiverOfDFT's location because TheLawGiverOfDFT said something to that effect on their talk page). Since "WHO IS" tells us that 147.226.103.110 is from Ball State University (BSU), I'll try to see if there's a connection between anyone at BSU and the article's subject, as well as to email abuse@bsu.edu which is listed in the IP's WHO IS. Dr. Universe (talk) 04:31, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

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

  • Need some time: That comment of mine mentioned 22 different accounts/IPs which seemed to be doing the same things at very similar times. I'll need some time to put all the information together, but am busy with some other things right now. Hopefully we can be a bit patient and let me give the details as soon as I can do it! Dr. Universe (talk) 21:18, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment As a participant at the AfD, I took the IP comment as a forgot-to-log-in situation, rather than as an attempt to mislead; but it is possible that I am assuming excessive good faith here. The single-edit account certainly appears to be problematic, and the combination is not a good look. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 19:48, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply So you think that the IP comment was from a user that was browsing through the AfDs and just happened to comment only on this one, making it (still) the only edit ever made from that IP without signing in; then you think the IP never came back, despite seeming to have a strong opinion on the issue, tracking down the previously deleted article (which even I didn't know how to find), and TheLawGiverOfDFT pinging the IP only 13 minutes later? TheLawGiverOfDFT also removed the article about the undergraduate experiment from the Wiki page and left an edit summary almost exactly the same as what the IP says about "mostly irrelevant undergraduate work". Can you show one example where an IP has contributed to an AfD discussion as their only ever edit? I've been looking at two weeks worth of AfDs all day and don't think I've seen one IP address at all, let alone one with a single edit that seemed so correlated with the edits of the deletion nominator. [Didn't ping you since you didn't reply to my questions on your Talk Page and I don't want to be seen as "hounding", and seeing the comments you've made about me and my edits on the AfD, on another user's talk page, and your deleting of large chunks of my work recently, I fear retaliation — but if someone else thinks it's a good idea to ping Russ then feel free to do it]. Dr. Universe (talk) 04:19, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, as I said in my comment, I thought that it was obvious that the IP was likely TheLawGiverOfDFT, but that it looked like they just forgot to log in, and that I didn't find it to be misleading. (But also that the combination with the other account looked somewhat concerning.) IPs are permitted to contribute at AfDs (and I have surely seen it in my participation at Academics AfD over the past year or two), although it is true that the quality of the contribution is rarely high. I have not yet responded to the wall of text that you left on my talk page, but I will endeavor to do so; I'm watching this page and a ping is unnecessary. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 09:08, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, you did not "say in your comment" "that the IP was likely TheLawGiverOfDFT" and if you did, it would be even more strange since TheLawGiverOfDFT replied to the IP and actually @pinged the IP 13 minutes later, so if TheLawGiverOfDFT and the IP were the same person, then replying to each other with an @ping would in fact be misleading despite you saying that you "didn't find it to be misleading". I never said that IPs are not permitted to contribute. I was pointing out that, as Missvain said in the initial opening of this investigation, that the IP's behavior "seemed too good to be true", and I completely agree. Also, I think you know that "wall of text" is not a very positive term, and by hyperlinking to your talk page (where we were at the time talking about MLR, not this sockpuppet investigation) if you are trying to do WP:CANVASSING to make me look bad, I think that's inappropriate. You can say that it was me who first mentioned the talk page, but I didn't link to it nor did I call it a "wall of text", I was simply worried that you might get angry for me responding to you without pinging, so I explained the reason why I didn't ping. I would just in general appreciate more neutral behavior from you towards me and the articles I've contributed to. Dr. Universe (talk) 18:42, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • ST47 TheLawGiverOfDFT already said on their talk page that there would be no connection between the IP addresses of TheLawGiverOfDFT and Dft4Wiki, but the fact that they did exactly the same edits within hours of each other, and both have "DFT" in their usernames, makes me think one of them is a meatpuppet (a friend who was called in to make an account and support the other). I'm curious whether or not the IP address 147.226.103.110 is geolocated close to Dft4Wiki or TheLawGiverOfDFT. If not perhaps there was a proxy or inaccurate WHOIS or clever circumventing (using various computers) by these users, but I think it would be worth it to check. Dr. Universe (talk) 18:56, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Dr. Universe I'm going to take a look at this now, but just wanted to mention that no CU is going to divulge anything about an IP relative to a named account, even something vague like you're requesting. It's just not something they can do. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for looking into this @RoySmith:! I didn't know about WP:PRECOCIOUS, but I completely agree with you. I was amazed at how TheLawGiverOfDFT was nominating an article at AfD as one of their first ever edits (AfD was something I didn't even know how to use despite so many years of being here). I was even more amazed that 147.226.103.110 was able to find the deleted article Nikesh S. Dattani, because I didn't even know how to find that deleted article and I was the one who originally wrote it back in about 2014! The only way I could figure out how to find the AfD for that article, is search for an article with precisely the same characters (for example the "S." ) and then to click on the link that allows you to create an article with exactly that name, which will then say at the top that the article was deleted previously. I tried finding the deleted article several times but failed because I had searched for "Nike Dattani" or "Nikesh Dattani" or got lazy and typed something like "Nikesh s dattani" hoping that Wikipedia's search engine will match it with Nikesh S. Dattani, not remembering that there was a "." after the "S" when I created the article about 7 years ago. For the completely new person to figure all this out including case-sensitivity in their first edit, was amazing to me. So thank you for teaching me about WP:PRECOCIOUS, which I do agree seems to apply to TheLawGiverOfDFT and 147.226.103.110. Dr. Universe (talk) 06:01, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that BountyTJ should be a separate case. The administrator Missvain added that user here, not me. BountyTJ entered into similar edit wars, trying to remove cited references about Dattani: The user has edited articles about research institutes in the Netherlands, and similar edits or edit wars happened from this Netherland's IP address: 217.101.236.202, this Dutch name User:Agdijkstra, and reverts that were similar to BountyTJ and at similar times were from: User:FidelCastrum, User:Mrs. Norma Smith, User:NikeDattani, User:Friendly Colleague, User:Lellowiki, 24.134.125.217, 192.225.188.2, 213.205.194.52. Older versions of the talk page for: talk:Hierarchical_equations_of_motion show some of those accounts teaming up with BountyTJ and they look very much like "single-purpose accounts". I blanked that talk page after exchanging some emails with the oversight team. I realized I'd broken some Wikipedia guidelines in 2019 on that talk page, so I emailed the oversight team and they told me I wouldn't get banned or in trouble for those guideline violations because it was 2 years ago and I didn't know those rules at the time. I think Missvain added BountyTJ because of the above description of sockpuppet-like behavior. BountyTJ wrote in a talk page or edit summary (Redacted), and then soon the users User:Mrs. Norma Smith and User:NikeDattani were created just to edit or revert the same things BountyTJ, FidelCastrum, FriendlyColleague, 24.134.125.217, Agdijkstra, 217.101.236.202, and Lellowiki (all seem very much "single-purpose" except for BountyTJ) were doing. If (Redacted), the account User:Mrs. Norma Smith is surely a sockpuppet because all that user did was remove 6 references to Nike Dattani's work, from a page, which is the same thing the fake account (now banned) User:NikeDattani did, and the same thing BountyTJ was doing. I wrote this paragraph because you said about BountyTJ that there's "nothing that convinces me they're socking" Dr. Universe (talk) 06:01, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

  • The two named accounts are  Unlikely. Both have inconsistent geolocation, so proxy use / inaccurate WHOIS is possible, but there's no technical evidence connecting them and I don't think they're the same person. No comment on IP addresses, of course. ST47 (talk) 06:09, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's no doubt in my mind that TheLawGiverOfDFT and Dft4wiki are either same person (despite the "unlikely" CU finding) or if not, then certainly the latter is working closely with the former. For sure, the WP:PRECOCIOUS nature of TLGofDFT's edits makes it clear they are not the new user they claim to be As for the common "DFT" in the usernames, that's almost certainly a reference to Discrete Fourier transform, a mathematical technique used in spectroscopy, which is what these accounts are interested in. I honestly don't know how BountyTJ ties into this. I think it's clear there's some relationship, but nothing that convinces me they're socking.
I do note in the discussion here, various comments about contacting people at a university. I must warn everybody, in the strongest possible way, to take heed of WP:OUTING. Socking can get you blocked. Outing somebody's personal information is a far more serious offense. Don't go there. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:58, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  •  On hold - I'm chasing down some additional items. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:43, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've chased down a few other loose ends and didn't find anything, so I'm reclosing this. Please don't edit this closed case if you're not a SPI clerk or CU; if there's additional users that you suspect of being socks, open a new report. As a general rule, however, there's no point in investigating accounts which haven't edited in a year or more. The goal of SPI is to prevent ongoing disruption; if an account is no longer in use, then regardless of what it might have done in the past, it's not causing disruption now, so there's no reason to dig into the history.
I do need to emphasize two points. One, wikipedia is not a battleground. If there's professional rivalries at work here (as there appear to be), this is to wrong place to be pursuing that. Two, as mentioned before, WP:OUTING is very serious. Please do not make any attempts to connect wikipedia accounts (other than your own) to the real-life identities of people. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:09, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RoySmith, did you want tags on those? GeneralNotability (talk) 01:22, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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