Jump to content

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/HRS395/Archive

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


HRS395

HRS395 (talk  · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

15 November 2017

Suspected sockpuppets

The sockmaster account was originally named Gjboyle and if you look at the history of the talk page, received several warnings for self-promotional editing. They acknowledged being the RW person here and here and elsewhere].

They also got hounded in the summer of 2015 by an editor who was overzealous about COI - see the ANI thread here about that. In any case it appears that they started editing from other accounts that summer already, and accelerated that in the fall. They changed their account name in November 24 2015 after they created these socks, here.

All of these accounts are SPA/near-SPA for Australian psychologist Gregory John Boyle and related topics. What has called my attention to this set of socks is anti-circumcision advocacy; Boyle is an anti-circumcision advocate and very concerned with child abuse per Gregory_John_Boyle#Children.27s_rights. Also per this section of the Boyle article, an avid bag-piper, which explains some of the sock activity.

These accounts also have the odd habit of creating a blank userpage (MFC728 (diff); DanceFreeRun diff); Beatrix12 (diff); CorrectReferences (diff); WritingRescue diff)) or some variation of "just here to help" (Piobair123 (diff); PetaFixer (diff))

They tend to edit in long bursts of small edits and to directly follow each other. See this PTSD-related article, the Boyle article, and the [Zuckerman article.

The Boyle article self=congratulatory-ly notes Boyle's significant stature and international visibility is also reflected in his collaborations and publications with two of the most highly cited psychologists of the 20th century: Hans J. Eysenck (3rd most cited, after Freud and Piaget, respectively) and Raymond B. Cattell (7th most cited) and you will see that these socks have worked a lot on those two articles.

Creation dates
Account Create date
HRS395 04:59, 14 June 2015
Piobair123 04:48, 28 June 2015
PetaFixer 11:53, 12 August 2015
DanceFreeRun 01:39, 15 October 2015
Beatrix12 02:03, 17 October 2015
CorrectReferences 03:59, 22 October 2015
WritingRescue 13:33, 22 October 2015
MFC728 14:35, 2 November 2015



If you look at some of the socked articles, you can see that they have had a massive effect; this is true of most articles they have worked on (yikes).

total: 715 edits
MFC728 142
HRS395 118
PetaFixer 113
CorrectReferences 110
WritingRescue 76
Piobair123 38
DanceFreeRun 10
178.255.42.251 10
Sock total = 617
total 216 edits
Beatrix12 53
WritingRescue 42
sock total = 95
total 1256 dits
HRS395 731
(next biggest is 47 edits, skip 5 editors)
203.143.255.173 14
PetaFixer 14
Beatrix12 14
sock total = 773 edits

Am requesting CU to identify other accounts. Jytdog (talk) 22:26, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing the CU! The UnethicalSurgery one is a surprise because its behavior was so much more blatantly bad than the others, but makes sense in retrospect. I believe the behavioral patterns make it very, very clear that HRS395 is the sockmaster and that Piobair123 is another sock, and I look for review of that aspect. In my view these are all one person and should be treated as such. CU is but one tool in the toolbox for dealing with socks. Jytdog (talk) 15:13, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please pardon. Confirmed socks are not blocked. Jytdog (talk) 16:53, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
User:Smartse thanks for that. Piobair123 was also stale but behaviorally it is an obvious sock as well. Jytdog (talk) 21:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

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


Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/HRS395/Archive&oldid=814764987"