Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Jeff Defender

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:Jeff Defender

Suspected sockpuppeteer

Uninsured Driver (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), formerly Uninsureddriver (talk · contribs), goes by NoInsurance (talk · contribs) in sig

Possibly also a.k.a. King of Anonymity (talk · contribs) and No Longer Wikipedian (talk · contribs) here's why, but could have been a joke edit

Initial suspect was Jeff Defender, but evidence has shifted the suspicion toward Uninsured Driver, which may itself be a sockpuppet; the puppeteer may well be as-yet unidentified; checkuser might be needed to resolve the matter.

Suspected sockpuppets

Jeff Defender (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) (possible puppeteer)
Honda Pilot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) (goes by HP in link-free sig intended to prevent talk page feedback) — confirmed as a Jeff Defender sockpuppet via checkuser
Jbl1975 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) (possible puppeteer)
68.237.229.68 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Karim Prince (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) a.k.a. Karim Prince1 (talk · contribs)

Report submission by

Wooyi^{Talk, Editor review} 00:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence

This is a procedural report, due to concerns raised in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Dgies by User:SMcCandlish. --Wooyi

I've made it quite a bit more than procedural. :-) --SMcCandlish

Evidence from SMcCandlish:

I first encountered this clade of socks when Jeff Defender (talk · contribs) filed this bad-faith, WP:POINT-violating AfD (compare Honda Pilot's similar b.s. today here, which notably had to do with "Vandalism", a topic in the WP context that Jeff Defender and Honda Pilot know far too much about, such as block times and indefblocking, to be newbies). Jeff Defender is supposed to be a brand new user, but already knows how to (ab)use AfD? Ri-i-ght... This is likely a puppet of 68.237.229.68 (talk · contribs), and of Karim Prince1 (talk · contribs), and Jbl1975 (talk · contribs), among others that an admin could dig out of a deleted talk page. See User talk:Jeff Defender and edit history (not to mention the username...) Jeff got his pet non-notable WP:WEBsite speedied, and rather than try to understand why has lashed out by filing frivolous "oh yeah, well, then delete this too!" nonsense AfDs. The user's history consists of nothing but the following actions, as of that date (and precious little since, other than some fake apologetics, and now adding more suckpuppet !votes in an RfA): getting his vanity article speedied (was defending it in talk under another username, by his own admission of sockpupettry, and clearly is not a newbie and likes to cite obscure WP essays at people in defending his WP:COI article), adding blatant WP:SPAM here, trying to delete the speedy tag under one username or another but got caught by someone who evidently had already identified this person as a sockpuppet (since Jeff Defender's edit history doesn't itself show the speedy tag deletion), and meanwhile attacked a random stub, using the same "vanity" label he lost his wikispam to. Please note that User:Hatch68 had already figured out Jeff Defender was a sock puppet before I even started looking.[1]

Next, the Uninsured Driver puppet attacked my RfA (successfully sabotaging it in fact) with an alarmist report that I was savaging some poor newbie, and then went and gloated about how my outing of the Jeff Defender puppet would harm my RfA, here (as shown below, this is the 2nd not 1st time that U.D. has popped up out of Neverland to defend J.D. from sockpuppet allegations). The Uninsured Driver puppet has done virtually nothing at all on WP other than try to defend Golden-Road.net, oppose username-related policy tightening at RFC, and upset the RfA of the "outer" of the Jeff Defender puppet, and create a NoInsurance (talk · contribs) doppelganger. Turned into a sleeper on Feb. 20. Contribs, for examination.

Didn't see much going on with these "users" until today, when Jeff Defender reactivated and opposed someone's RfA on grounds that can only be described as retaliatory for promising to firmly deal with vandals and spammers. This actually followed similar far-too-WP-wise commentary by "new" user Honda Pilot, and looks (until one digs deeper) like spontaneous support for a concern being raised about a potential admin.

Honda Pilot, an account which as existed for less than one day, and who like the rest of them, knows way too much about WP policy and procedures to possibly be an actual new user, is blatantly obviously the same person as Uninsured Driver. I can demonstrate this pretty easily, but do not wish to do so here without further consideration, as simply stating how I know this will reveal the puppeteer's "tell", whereas having him uncertain how he is giving himself away may be valuable in detecting more of his puppets. If I must give that evidence here, I will, but would rather be contacted in e-mail about it, by actual admins active in WP:SSP (i.e., I won't respond to random users' queries about it, since I can't be sure they aren't the puppemaster himself). Actually, anyone paying really close attention to the evidence posted above and below will probably notice the highly unusual quirk/pattern.

The other users mentioned will have to be investigated further by an admin, as this will require examination of talk and history pages which have been deleted. There are probably many others; these are just the ones I've personally enountered.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC) Updated: 06:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New evidence:

From Dgies RFA: "He's willing to have a zero-tolerance attitude. Is he here to block wayward newbies or will he AGF and indefblock only as a last resort? Jeff Defender 21:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)" diff

From Dgies RFA: "...Checking AIV, it's where you report bad users. do you make sure its the final warning and if it is do you indefblock or give a 24 hour block. I am judging based on his tolerance. HP 16:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)" diff

From AN/I: "don't condone initial indefblocks" (edit summary), "This is why I [2] Dgies (talk · contribs) RFA. The blocks shouldve been for just 1 day. You couldve avoinded these arguements. HP 19:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)" diff; and "...one last chance in leau of indefblock. Honda Pilot 18:56, 4 April 2007 (UTC)" diff

Please note that Jeff Defender wasn't (as such!) part of the AN/I debate, and Honda Pilot never mentioned AN/I diff1 diff2 diff3 and the issue did not arise at AIV, which Honda Pilot did mention. Ergo, Jeff Defender has no basis on which to even know what Honda Pilot is talking about with regard to Dgies, yet seems to know all about it and have a strong opinion. This is the puppetmaster forgetting which puppet is which and said what to whom, where!
Note that Jeff Defender appears out of nowhere after a long period of WP inactivity to support brand-new, preternaturally WP-knowlegeable Honda Pilot on this indefblock issue only minutes after Honda Pilot rants about it; then only minutes after Jeff Defender does so, Honda Pilot is back adding more diff that echoes the "trust" issue expressed by Jeff Defender diff, which in turn basically reiterated Honda Pilot's own "trigger-happy" trust issue diff. It's a sockpuppet circle jerk.
Compare:

"I am judging based on his tolerance" --Honda Pilot
"a zero-tolerance attitude" --Jeff Defender.

Note also the rather arch rhetorical question format that "both" users seem to habitually employ; for example Uninsured Driver does it again here and a trawl through the edit histories of these so-called users reveals plenty more instances.

From AN/I: "This is why I [3] Dgies (talk · contribs) RFA. The blocks shouldve been for just 1 day. You couldve avoinded these arguements. HP 19:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC) diff (Note: the passage is intended to read "This is why I opposed Dgies RFA", but the link code is wrong.)

From AFD: "Still, it may cost you support in your RFA. You accused him of disruptive editing, but... NoInsurance (chat?) 23:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)" diff

Clear pattern of voting against an RfA as vengeance for the candidate's anti-spam/anti-vandal/anti-puppetry policy position, followed by gloating about the Oppose vote in the public forum in which the dispute arose. This childish antic is too "signature" to be a coincidence.
As mentioned before I can identify another, far more "signature" action by two of these puppets, but I'm not sure I want to spill that here, as the pupetteer might stop doing it and make it harder to track his puppetry.

Please note also that this is not the first time that Uninsured Driver has inexplicably sought out and found places to defend Jeff Defender from accusations of sockpuppetry, for example here. Notice also at that link how much Uninsured Driver knows about the purpose and even web traffic at the http://www.golden-road.net website (an admin can confirm by looking at the deleted talk page of Golden-Road.net that similar observations were made about the site by Jbl1975, the original or principal author of the article. He/they are "both" obviously connected to that site in some way, as is 148.4.32.14. Note also that after Jeff Defender appeared out of nowhere to contest the deletion of this article, he engaged in more spamming for game-show related websites, as already documented above. Note also at same DRV link that Uninsured Driver sure knows his wikiwonking: "The first one was not edited, so full protecting isn't nessecary. I'd semiprotect, though since all recreations were done by new users" (and note that this was an attempt to get the page unWP:SALTed.)

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC) Updated: 06:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More evidence:

Compare the well-hidden User talk:Uninsured Driver/Archive1 (which was at User:Uninsured Driver/Archive1, but I saw it in the user's contribs, and moved it to the proper ___location; it is still not linked from the active user talk page), with the user talk pages of Jeff Defender and some of the other "users". A remarkably similar pattern of disruptive editing. NB: It is no suprise that the puppetmaster is attempting to change indefblock procedure - it would make disruptive behavior like this by all of this person's puppets easier to get away with, at the cost of only temporary blocks. It takes time to build up a sockpuppet and make it look like a real user, so indefblocks (the chief concern of both Honda Pilot and Jeff Defender, remember) are very painful for sockpuppeteers.

Note also that User talk:Jeff Defender has never once been responded to by Jeff Defender. The account is clearly on auto-pilot with no regard for resolving issues raised, but simply activated by the puppetmaster to go add a !vote here and there when he wants to stack a vote.

Further note that Honda Pilot very unconvincingly fakes innocence and ignorance diff, but note that is is H.P.'s comments inside a refactoring note by an admin, e.g. of WP:ATT/WP:V requirements that sources be cited, or of what might constitute blocking offenses, but meanwhile is a strong arguer with regard to blocking policy at AN/I and RFA, and even recommends specific block times for offenses! diff1 diff2. Compare this ridiculous "huh? But I'm new here!" act with the comments Jeff Defender has left on people's talk pages, and smiliar implausible noob-acting by more of these "users".

Similarly, Uninsured Driver went immediately to RFA upon being created. Then went dormant for over 8 months, only to reactivate and go straight to RFA again. Regardless who it is a puppet of, it is a blatant puppet. As noted elsewhere, these socks have an obsession with indefinite block policy. Uninsured Driver created the page User talk:Uninsured Driver/humor diff in case this is a redlink now. It is a short (and improperly wikilinked - he forgot "User:" in several cases) list of indefblocked users. Please note that one of them is User:Willy on Wheels (two l's in Willy), a misspelling of a nickname for Wily Mo Peña (one l), and U.D. monkeyed with that article a lot, and moved it improperly to Willy Mo Peña. This strikes me as very strong evidence that this is a list for U.D.'s own amusement of some of his socks that have been blocked (note that they all include contrib links, so he can review the disruption they caused). This in turn suggests that the banned User:Bobabobabo/User:Willy on Wheels is behind all of this.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC) Updated: 06:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence with regard to the other usernames:

Special:Contributions/68.237.229.68 Note the overlap with Jeff Defender and Karim Prince on game show articles and the Golden-Road.net AFD/DRV; admittedly, it could be a meatpuppet. Note however the similarity of the article-space editing pattern: Pushing of unsourced and/or POV nonsense edits, and mysterious, unexplained minor deletions seemingly intended to annoy or confound, interspersed with a few effortless little legit edits, so as to give an "I'm acting in good faith, I'm just goofy" air to the overall pattern.
Special:Contributions/Jbl1975 Note the non-standard No Delete !votes of both 68.237.229.68 and Jbl1975 at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Golden-Road.net; admittedly, it could be a meatpuppet. But I believe this user was the author of or otherwise heavily involved in Golden-Road.net; as this has been deleted, an admin will be required for further investigation.
Special:Contributions/Karim Prince More gameshow article tagteaming. Possible meat- but probable sockpuppet participated out of nowhere in joining Jeff Defender in seeking Golden-Road.net's reinstatement at DRV [4]. This user was the recreator of the Golden-Road.net article, and/or involved in that recreation diff discussion why he did it. Like so many of these "users", this one went dormant immediately after the failure of the DRV on that article, only to reactivate at the beginning of this month and head directly for RFA diff. And note the similar username juggling that is going on with this user and with Uninsured Driver (and U.D. seems inordinately concerned even for a non-newbie about tightening of username change policy.[5]) As with Honda Pilot, went straight into RFA and other deeply wikigeeky process the day the account was created.

Non-socks: The very last post at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 February 14 explains the sudden appearance of new users like Special:Contributions/148.4.32.14, who showd up to urge reinstatement of Golden-Road.net, then never edited again. It does not explain the other users here, since the offsite cavassing post was posted on February 14 itself (the timeline could explain Jeff Defender, actually, all other things being equal, but they are certainly not. J.D. immediately demonstrated deep knowledge of WP, and attacked a random article under the exact same terms, just incorrectly in his case, that Golden-Road.net was AFDd under as a WP:POINT, demonstrating prior knowledge of the AFD and WP in general, not just the DRV that was canvassed).

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes from the RFA (the suspicions that led to Wooyi's filing; evidentiary quotes and diffs are above): Honda Pilot (talk · contribs) ("HP" above) is almost certainly a sockpuppet. The account has existed for less than one day, yet headed straight for: a) RfA, b) AN/I (with edit summaries like 'don't condone initial indefblocks' - this is no newbie!), and c) various articles in which he/she has caused trouble (see the blowback on his talk page, cited just above). I believe this user to be a sockpuppet of Uninsured Driver (talk · contribs) (or rather, that both are socks controlled by the same party; see more information below about Jeff Defender being another related puppet)... — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is strong evidence that Jeff Defender (talk · contribs) (along with at least one other, Uninsured Driver (talk · contribs) a.k.a. Uninsureddriver a.k.a. NoInsurance) is a sockpuppet of a wikispammer (Golden-Road.net sound familiar to anyone?); files WP:POINT bad-faith AfDs (e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alfredo DeOro), attacks RfAs of editors who have thwarted or are likely to thwart his disruptive activities (such as identifying one of his sockpuppets or opposing one of his spamvertising "articles"). Masquerades as a newbie, but knows all about various WP policies, guidelines, the RfA process, how to file AfDs, and even really obscure WP essays, which he cites in WP:LAWYER fashion to try to game the system. There are probably various others, as both of these accounts are rarely used to do anything but !vote in RfA or AfD; other likely ones include 68.237.229.68 (talk · contribs), Karim Prince1 (talk · contribs), Honda Pilot (talk · contribs) and Jbl1975 (talk · contribs), which may be the puppetmaster. See paragraph of well-linked documentation at the Alfredo de Oro AfD. This set of users have not been run through WP:SSP yet, but will be soon. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:27, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

..."harassment" doesn't apply to sockpuppets anyway. If anything it is Dgies who is being harassed. (Cf. my own RfA for User:Uninsured Driver - same person as User:Honda Pilot - actually successfully sabotaging my RfA because I outed his other User:Jeff Defender sockpuppet. Don't let that happen to Dgies.) If someone adds another ranty oppose vote here (or in any RfA for that matter) actually investigate to see if the allegations are valid and the user (like Xiner) is a real one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also myself (Wooyi) find this that indicates the Uninsured Driver started editing RFA shortly after the account creation, which indicates he might be a sockpuppet.

Comments

Procedural report, I am neutral but leans to believe they are sockpuppets. Wooyi^{Talk, Editor review} 00:34, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have a strong opinion that these are all socks, and of the same person, or vaguely possibly one or another may be a meatpuppet called up to defend the GoldenRoad.net spam article. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We'll see how the cards fall. Less active guys can be "socked" Jeff Defender 03:54, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I urge you to mount more of a defense than that. If you're not a sockpuppet or an intermediary account that the ultimate puppeteer uses for sockpuppetry (i.e., a "metapuppet"), then I genuinely look forward to apologizing to you. I think there's a lot of ground to cover before we get to that point. Judging from your sparse activities to date, you are utterly clearly not a newbie but masquerading as one, and are a prime candidate for a {{uw-longterm}} tag. Lying dormant for a while doesn't make month-old but systematically problematic behavior vanish from anyone's notice. If you mean to imply by "less active guys can be 'socked'" that anything I've said or relied upon in any way indicates that your account has been usurped by a hacker, or that "bad stuff" has gone on in your absence, that is emphatically not the case. It is because your account became active again, out of the blue, and zoomed straight for RfA to support the starkly blatant sockpuppetry of Honda Pilot, in freakily specific terms ("tolerance attitude", "indefblock", etc.); meanwhile Uninsured Driver (who is certainly the same personage as Honda Pilot, without any doubt whatsoever), leapt to User:Jeff Defender's defense (no pun intended), in very Wikieducated terms, in widely disparate parts of WP, all while pretending to be a newbie, back when you were first accused of being a sockpuppet. Care to comment? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comment

User:HondaPilot !voted "oppose" on my RfA ([6]) so I shouldn't take any admin actions on this case. There's definitely some sockpuppetry going on here, but you might want to send this to Checkuser to sort this out. If any of these accounts have affected an AfD or RfA that's code "D". --Akhilleus (talk) 03:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've filed a checkuser on Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Jeff Defender. Wooyi^{Talk, Editor review} 04:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It may ultimately be more effective to do this with User:Uninsured Driver (and aliases) and User:Honda Pilot which are coming out as the more problematic pseudousers. I added U.D. to the checkuser mentioned above. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 08:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions

Honda Pilot was confirmed as a sock by Checkuser and has accordingly been blocked indefinitely. Other suspected puppets to be investigated normally. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Note): NoInsurance is a legitimately-marked doppelganger and has never edited. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right; it's just the nym that User:Uninsured Driver uses when posting. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The rest may be meat or sockpuppets, but I just can't find any type of smoking gun to indicate that they are for sure, and Checkuser turned up nothing on any but JD/Honda Pilot, so closing on up. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:00, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]