Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Epeefleche/Archive


Epeefleche

Report date September 20 2009, 10:23 (UTC)
Suspected sockpuppets



Evidence submitted by User:Black Kite

This stems from Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_Shells which I have relisted while this SPI is outstanding. This article was created by User:VMAsNYC. However, the notability of this band appears to rest on whether the award which they were nominated for (Best Breakout New York City Artist Award) is a notable award. This article was created on 30 August by User:Epeefleche.

The next day, User:VMAsNYC was created. Their first edit, two minutes after creation, was to pipelink a date. They then go on create the article The Shells complete with an {{otheruses}} template, and with a talkheader on the talkpage. This is clearly not a new user. However, the user would not have been able to create this page, had not the original The Shells article, about a 50s band, been moved to a different name ... by User:Epeefleche. The VMAsNYC user was of course too new to move a page. The user then goes on to take over editing of the Award page created by Epeefleche.

The two users continue to edit, Epeefleche in their own subject area, and VMAsNYC in theirs, including creating a number of articles being used to bluelink The Shells to make it appear more notable.

There are no overlaps in their contribs. Indeed, on many days, their edits are interlinked, as if one editor is logging out for the other to login, and vice versa. This is most noticeable on 2 September, 7 September, 9 September.

The cumulative evidence is almost enough for me to block per WP:DUCK, but I have brought it here because of the existence of User:Haltzman, which also !voted on the AfD. This user, created on 2 August 2007, had only made 2 edits ever, both to Scott Haltzman, until it pops up over two years later. A major contributor to Scott Haltzman, a quite obscure article, is ... User:Epeefleche, including the edits to the article either side of the ones made in 2007 by Haltzman (and including three made the same day).

Thus I believe all three accounts are linked, and am asking for CU evidence to see if this is the limit of the issue.

Black Kite 10:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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CheckUser requests
Checkuser request – code letter: F (Other reason )
Current status – Completed: Reviewed by a Checkuser, results and comments are below.    Requested by Black Kite 10:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC) [reply]



Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments
Conclusions
  •  Administrator note Some of the behavioral evidence is rather odd in this case, several of the accounts don't seem to intersect at all. On the other hand, the checkuser evidence is solid, from what Brandon could tell me, and several accounts do overlap quite frequently. I have blocked all the sockpuppets indefinitely, and Epeefleche for 1 month. NW (Talk) 15:21, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This case has been marked as closed. It has been archived automatically.
27 February 2013
Suspected sockpuppets


In the discussion concerning whether Theatre District, New York City or Theater District, New York City (i.e. "-re" vs. "-er") is the preferred spelling, User:Epeefleche has taken an extremely strong position in favor of the "-er" spelling, which has been backed up by the IP 65.92.180.137, who has not, to my knowledge, been involved in any previous discussions about NYC geographic questions before. Considering that Epeefleche has a history of using sockpuppets ([1]), it does not seems unlikely that he has resorted to sockpuppetry again, in order to "win" this debate, in which he wanted to move the article from the "-re" spelling it has been at for six years, to the "-er" spelling he prefers. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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