Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Carfiend

User:Carfiend

Suspected sockpuppeteer

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

Suspected sockpuppets

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

Report submission by ScienceApologist 01: 25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Evidence

These two users act in tandem to avoid 3RR and have single purpose accounts for articles related to Apollo Moon landing hoax accusations.

I do not make this accusation lightly. I am often involved in contentious articles and see many people with similar ideas promote similar causes. Take for example the disputes at Electronic voice phenomenon. There are a number of editors there who support each other but are very different in style, tactic, and range of contributions. I would never accuse any of them of puppetry. This particular case is striking because of how similar the commentary coming from the two users is. They often parrot exactly what the other says and seem to show up at exactly the point where the other one has been losing ground. For example, I haven't worked on moon hoax articles for some time, but the first few interactions I had with User:Gravitor (ostensibly a user I've never interacted with before yesterday) were uncannily similar to those with I've had with User:Carfiend. The similarities are too much to be left up to coincidence, I've been at Wikipedia for years and I have never seen something as striking as this except in the case of Christopher Michael Langan and his wife and Jonathan Sarfati and his wife. That is why we need an administrator to go through and carefully check the histories of these two users, perhaps side-by-side. When you have two users with such single-purpose accounts who essentially parrot their ways past editorial defenses of Wikipedia, action needs to be taken.

--ScienceApologist 11:44, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence of tag teaming to keep User:Carfiend under 3RR on Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations

Associated editting pattern on Independent evidence for Apollo Moon landings

Note that the timing of both these editorial maneuvers is completely coincident. Carfiend stops editting at exactly the point where he would be violating 3RR and Gravitor comes in and starts making edits that follow Carfiend's patterns in an uncanny way.

On Talk:Apollo missions tracked by independent parties#Merge with evidence article Note that Carfiend and Gravitor use almost identical arguments in the discussion and then criticize User:Branson03's statement where he measures the consensus against merging to another article -- as if to claim that because they are in agreement with each other they somehow affect consensus. As editors are beginning to treat them de facto as meatpuppets, it may be time for the community to act de jure.

--ScienceApologist 11:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the problem is that this is a common tactic used by others on the page:

Evidence of tag teaming to keep User:Numskll under 3RR.

Note that the timing of both these editorial maneuvers is completely coincident. Numskll stops editing at exactly the point where he would be violating 3RR and Wahkeenah comes in and starts making edits that follow Numskll's patterns in an uncanny way.

Note that Numskll and Wahkeenah use almost identical arguments in the discussion. Since they agree with each other, and make 'supporting edits', I am inclined to treat them de facto as meatpuppets, it may be time for the community to act de jure. To be serious, what you've picked out here is a distressing feature of edit wars. You have shown examples of one side of a n edit war, when a user stops editing because of the 3RR war, other users sometimes jump in. This has happened on both sides, as I have shown. It's unfortunate, but it is not evidence that they are the same user. Gravitor 14:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

They often act together (and remain silent during the same time periods), their attitude and writing styles are identical, they are both contrary and disruptive, they both accuse everyone else of what they do (i.e. making significant changes without consensus and ignoring requests for useful discussion), and they both write on only one subject, namely the alleged Apollo "hoax". Wahkeenah 01:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This tired accusation has been made before. A checkuser was performed, and the admin confirmed what I originally knew, which is that I am not the same user as Carfiend. It is true that we seem to share an interest in the Moon landing hoax, and that I often find myself agreeing with Carfiend, and reverting attempts by a bunch of users who act in tamdem to insert their POV into that series of articles. This is the latest of a series of administrative harassment activities that have not been upheld by admins. Gravitor 01:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Consider the edit history of the two: Carfiend Gravitor. Carfiend made 25 edits in 6/06 and then hundreds of edits 7/06 through 9/06. Gravitor also made edits 7/06 through 9/06. Then both stopped editing (after the RfC for one of them, I think) until 2/07, when both of them started editing again. Their POV seems to be the same. Bubba73 (talk), 01:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The editing periods you refer to, iirc, correspond to particularly egregious attacks on the neutrality of the articles in question by one or more of the SA/Wahkeenah/Branson/Lunahkod/Numbskull sock/meatpuppets that act in concert and have very similar editing styles. The fact is, that when two or more users are interested in a topic, and share an agenda to make the article neutral, their edits are going to resemble each other somewhat. Take the edits of Wahkeenah and Bubba, for example, and you will find very many identical edits. Gravitor 01:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The editing periods you refer to, iirc, correspond to particularly egregious attacks on the neutrality of the articles in question by one or more of the SA/Wahkeenah/Branson/Lunahkod/Numbskull sock/meatpuppets that act in concert and have very similar editing styles. --> This is a very problematic statement as I can plainly attest that I was not editting the article at this time (except perhaps on a very limited basis). I happened to come back to the article only recently and found this troubling behavior. I think that Gravitor makes a good point here, ironically. Compare the edit histories of the users cited and compare that to the edit histories of Gravitor and Carfiend. The similarities between Gravitor and Carfiend are striking. The differences between the users Gravitor cites are equally as striking in context. --ScienceApologist 12:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you consider (these are slow) Wahkeenah and me, you will see that he has 20,000 edits on 4,000 pages and I have 10,000 edits on 2,000 pages, and the only ones that overlap are a few dealing with the landing hoax accusation articles. Both of us are far from "one topic" editors, Also, there is no correspondence between periods of activity and inactivity the way there is between Gravitor and Carfiend. Bubba73 (talk), 01:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But that does not prove you are different users, does it? All that seems to be needed here is a grudge, and an angry mob! No evidence needed. Gravitor 02:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It makes it highly unlikely. Do a checkuser on us. Bubba73 (talk), 02:03, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I try to set a higher standard, just because someone disagrees with me, I don't start a vendetta against them and try to drag them through witch hunt after witch hunt. A checkuser has already been done on me, and shown me to be innocent. Gravitor 02:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone reading the histories in depth would learn that Gravitor and/or Carfiend do not adhere to any kind of standard other than disruption. Wahkeenah 03:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A checkuser is irrelevant when the editting style is so similar and the ability to get two different IPs on two different computers is so easy. I encourage everyone to look into the editting history of these two users. They are nearly identical and they share striking commonalities in tone. Meatpuppetry is worse than sockpuppetry often. --ScienceApologist 01:44, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As appealing as it would be to be able to block users simply for disagreeing with you, that's not how Wikipedia works. Gravitor 01:49, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For your convenience, here are the results of the previous "If you disagree with me, you must be committing a crime" accusations. [1], [2]. Both, of course, were thrown out, because they are false. People who disagree with you, will often agree with each other. That does not mean they are the same person. Gravitor 01:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that they are sockpuppets, but I think they might communicate outside of Wikipedia (email, im, etc.). Branson03 03:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ScienceApologist, it would be helpful if the you could provide diffs of the 3RR violation. Gravitor, please don't mischaracterize the Checkuser requests; ~~no judgement was made whether they were true or false, they simply weren't run because the requests didn't have a code letter. The checkuser could now be refiled under code "E".~~ --Akhilleus (talk) 02:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I need to read more carefully. One checkuser was declined because no code letter was given, but the second request showed no evident IP or geographic relationship. That creates a strong presumption that there's no sockpuppetry. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What about meatpuppets? Bubba73 (talk), 03:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't looked through the users' contributions yet, so I can't say for sure. In general, though, meatpuppets are people who are closely connected and use the same computer or the same network--so checkuser finds them also. You would need very strong evidence to show that these users are connected. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can still communicate with the other if you don't live in the same country, all you need is their phone number or email. A checkuser would not find that. Branson03 12:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's why conduct is more important than checkuserdom. The two arbitration cases I cite above deal with the actions of users as they pertain to editting articles (single-purpose accounts and the like). The issue is that when you have two users who act the same without breadth of contributions and show evidence of railroading article edits, this is the definition of meatpuppetry. Precedent is to apply sanctions to users equally who are meatpuppets. We need to take action in order to ensure that this kind of behavior is discouraged at Wikipedia lest other users take it upon themselves to behave in such a manner. --ScienceApologist 12:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For refernece, here is the old checkuser: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Gravitor. Bubba73 (talk), 03:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And here is the old RfC for Gravitor Bubba73 (talk), 03:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And here is the old RfC for Carfiend. Bubba73 (talk), 03:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notably, not one of these witch-hunts resulted in any findings against myself or Carfiend. And yet these vexatious and capricious accusations and abuses of process continue. Rather than use the talk pages to try to establish consensus, these users continue to hope that if they bring enough frivolous accusations, sooner or later one of them might result in people who disagree with them either quitting in disgust, or being wrongly blocked. Gravitor 05:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will note that this kind of statement is extremely similar to those made by User:Carfiend who is very fond of telling people that they haven't used the talk pages to try to establish consensus. For example [3]. The evidence keeps piling up. --ScienceApologist 12:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In the real world, when a lot of different people keep telling you to use the talk page, it's because you don't use the talk page. If a user keeps reverting without comment, it's odd to accuse the users who tell him to comment, and not revert of being the same person. The thing in common here is a habit among a small group of users of beginning edit wars, then blaming anyone who objects of being sock-puppets. The evidence of this being a futile witch-hunt has already piled up. What you are doing is slinging mud. That's not the same as evidence. Gravitor 14:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's evident from anyone reading the history are two things: (1) on the Apollo subject, Gravitor and Carfiend are the most flagrant abusers of doing what they themselves gripe about, namely reverting without consensus; and (2) wikipedia admins are often unwilling to do their jobs, i.e. they are unwilling to do anything about disruptive users, which is one of the primary criticisms of the wikipedia website in general. Wahkeenah 14:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's evident is that you have a content dispute with a group of users, and rather than dealing with that, you would rather pursue administrative harassment and unjustified accusations in the hope that they will be driven off in disgust or wrongly blocked. Gravitor 14:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions