Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Nrswanson

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,

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User:Nrswanson

Suspected sockpuppeteer

Ringnpassagio (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Voicequeen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Report submission by

edg ☺ ☭ 04:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence

Both socks are new accounts who edit war in favor of fork articles (and a template) recently created by Nrswanson in voice/opera related topics, including Discussion page conversation and deletion discussions for these pages. Voicequeen in particular has very few edits, and no interest outside Nrswanson's disputes. Nrswanson's method appears to be creating parallel versions of existing articles, then attempting to delete the existing versions. Why this is done is unclear, but it evades

Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Nrswanson considers this Possible sockpuppetry, but cannot rule out multiple users of the same public wireless node, and propose "It's most likely that they are known to each other, rather than being the same person".

1) Voice type hijack attempt

Nrswanson establishes a consensus with the two new accounts to delete

Voicequeen twice reverts information merged to Voice type from Nrswanson's fork article, with edit summaries accusing bad faith [3] [4], helping Nrswanson evade

Day-old account Ringnpassagio also creates a template on 2007-12-30T19:15:18, 2 hours after claiming to have never used Wikipedia before 2007-12-30T17:09:12.

3) Talk:Falsetto edit warring

Ringnpassagio and Voicequeen help Nrswanson edit war in

Upon being rebuked in this AFD (Speedy keep)[8], Nrswanson begins Talk page campaign to instead redirect Falsetto to his article. New accounts Ringnpassagio and Voicequeen agree most enthusiasticly. [9] [10] All three casually ignore the decision made in the Afd.

Nrswanson begins edit-warring on the

The Potemkin village on-wiki consensus-building demonstrated on Talk:Falsetto register [17] seems especially improbable considering Nrswanson's later claim that these people are friends of his who correspond via email [18].

4) Sock similarities

• Similar biographies. [19] [20] Biographies identify geographically distant residences, despite Checkuser finding use of same
  Nrswanson: Oklahoma; Ringnpassagio: NYC; Voicequeen
  : unspecified, but implies elsewhere).
• Both contribute to
  WP:OWNed) by Nrswanson^{diff history}. (Note edit by Ringnpassagio deleting almost all article content.[22]
  )

5) Votestacking in {{Vocal classification}} Tfd

All three accounts vote Keep in a Tfd for Nrswanson's 2 day old[23] fork of {{

6) Style similarities (added by Ddxc (talk) at 00:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC))[reply]

On Talk:Falsetto#18.1 and User talk:Ddxc#8 - 10 you can see that all three users use similar (slightly cumbersome) sentence structures. Also, they have a similar density of punctuation and spelling mistakes, and they sign the same way. (Nrswanson wrote that the two other users are meat-puppets, but because of the aforementioned stylistic evidence I don't believe him, and I'd consider them sock-puppets for all practical purposes.)

Comments

• Comment from
  frowned on by Wikipedia and was ill-advised. Their expertise is welcome, but at the very least, they should have made the circumstances of their participation clear on the talk pages of the relevant articles. Had they done so much of this unpleasantness could have been avoided. I also have views on what should be done about the conflict between the two articles, but I shall put that on Talk:Falsetto. Voceditenore (talk) 06:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • One of Ringnpassagio's edits was to create a Template. I don't think using Wikitext is routinely covered in voice and vocal performance education. / edg ☺ ☭ 07:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • No it's not routinely covered ;-) But he could be technically savvy anyway and it's quite possible to create a template by modifying an existing one on a related article e.g.
      this before they embarked. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 08:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply
      ]
      • For the record, Nrswanson created the {{Vocal classification}} template. / edg ☺ ☭ 20:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• As the checkuser who ran this case, can I just state that I strongly suspect collusion here due to the addresses used and the timings involved. I am 100% certain that these people know each other - Alison ^❤ 20:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• I really doubt much harm is done here. Nrswanson writes very nicely and his friends sound like equally knowledgeable people. Welcome one and welcome all, says I. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 23:40, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nrswanson is being disruptive and ignoring
    WP:OWN these articles are not justifiable, and would not be needed if Nrswanson would contribute to the existing articles (presuming there is non-puppet consensus for his edits). / edg ☺ ☭ 23:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• (I've added another point 6 above.) -- Ddxc (talk) 00:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions

If these users aren't socks, they're meatpuppets. I also find the fact that Nrswanson and Voceditenore (who appeared defending them here) both have large gaps in their edit histories that are very close in time very interesting; along with the fact that Ringnpassagio and Voicequeen. The only reason I'm issuing warnings vice blocks is that they all seem to have gone quiet again. Strong warnings issued on all talk pages. If such activity reappears, this case should be referred to. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting followup, see [28]. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:55, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]