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.

Suspected sock puppeteer

Troy86 (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser)

Suspected sock puppets

• Cup22 (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser)
• Blackable2323 (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser)
• Unknown789 (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser)
• 70.156.138.197 (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser)
• 68.215.82.119 (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser) --- Account added by Lehoiberri
• JustBeingSkanter (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser) --- Account added by Lehoiberri
• Skanter (talk⁺ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser) --- Account added by Geniac

Report submission by

• cab (talk) 12:20, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence

General outline is that all of them create poorly-sourced articles about African diaspora groups in Latin America, add unsourced content to each others' articles, and show up to defend each other on talk pages/AfD. Despite the common interest of all these accounts, they never talk to each other --- normally, human migration is an unpopular enough subject area on Wikipedia that probably every editor working on it knows each other and has left a message on each other's talk pages asking for advice.

Some specific examples:

1. 2008 July 05: They all show up in four subsequent edits within 30 minutes of each other on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jamaican Brazilian to vote keep [1][2][3][4]
2. 2008 September 20: Troy86 creates African minority in New Zealand; Blackable2323 shows up to work on it within a few hours [5]
3. 2008 November: 70.156.138.197 edits Jamaicans of African descent [6]; within a few minutes, Cup22 [7] and Blackable2323 [8] both show up too.
4. 2008-12-25: They all show up on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Angolan Brazilian to vote keep, with similarly poor arguments; Troy86 and Blackable2323's edits are within 6 minutes of each other, while Cup22 and Unknown789's edits are within half an hour of each other [9][10][11][12]

I believe there were also some similar editing patterns in the histories of the deleted articles German Jamaican (Troy86 and 70.156.138.197 both adding copyvio to it, then later Cup22 goes to create it again as Germans in Jamaica) and Japanese Jamaican (Troy86 created it, and IIRC one of the others deprodded it, though none of them showed up to comment on the AfD)

Comments by User:EdJohnston

• I have left messages for User:Lehoiberri and User:CaliforniaAliBaba requesting more info, since I understand from their talk pages that more than one IP is suspected, the IPs are in different regions, and the role of User:Skanter is also in question. Agree with Bradv that a checkuser is needed. Sometimes the checkusers don't like it if the complaint is very scattered, so let's get it organized first. I also am not sure that everyone suspected of sockpuppetry has been notified. EdJohnston (talk) 19:50, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Lehoiberri added two additional names. The listed accounts have all been notified. EdJohnston (talk) 03:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Skanter is a possibility based on similar editing patterns; creating many poorly sourced "[nationality] Brazilian" articles. However, JustBeingSkanter sounds like somebody imitating Skanter's editing style. --Geniac (talk) 04:22, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions

 Possible. Recommend checkuser to confirm. BradV 20:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Very obvious per deleted contributions. Blocked all indef (excluding main account; 48 hours) bar the IPs that'll get taken out by autoblocks. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 05:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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