Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Thuringowacityrep

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.

[edit] User:Thuringowacityrep

Suspected sockpuppeteer

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

Suspected sockpuppets

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

Report submission by

Mattinbgn\^talk 10:44, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Evidence

Thuringowacityrep (talk · contribs) is an editor with a keen interest in the municipality, City of Thuringowa in north Queensland, Australia. His editing history could almost see this editor considered a single purpose account. Thuringowacityrep created an article, Les Tyrell about the mayor of the municipality, that was nominated for deletion by Twenty Years (talk · contribs) on 8 January 2008.

On 10 January 2008, the account "RockandRolldownunder" was created. Its first edit was to create a user page with the content "Hi all, just found this site and see that it is full of great music infomation so i thought i would join up and add my bit to this site. A little about me..I'm a Guitarist of a heavy metal band....like i said a little about me." This is very similar in writing style and content to Thuringowacityrep's user page. An example includes "I was a professional drag racer for about 14 years and played lead guitar in my own band until I had to give up the racing and music due to my health, I then built race motors for the next 4 years but again my health let me down and had to stop, so I moved into computer building and band promoting and that's where I am today."

Following this edit, Rockandrolldownunder then made an edit typical of Thuringowacityrep's style, changing a mention of Townsville to City of Thuringowa.[1] The next edit was in the AfD mentioned above where he supported keeping the article, using an WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument similar to Thuringowacityrep's earlier comment.[2]

Finally, the account makes an edit [3] to List of shopping centres in Australia, once again pushing the point of view strongly held by Thuringowacityrep that Thuringowa is separate from Townsville.

This sockpuppet case is not an attempt to argue one way in the ongoing Townsville/Thuringowa discussions. Other editors who attempted to mediate in those discussions know far more about this than I. However, the evidence above seems to me to point clearly at an improper use of a alternate account in an attempt to push a point of view and to influence the result of an AfD.

Comments

It's been confirmed - the user has the same writing style, same interests, and the edits for R are located in T edit periods. I have blocked the sock indefinitely, but have not blocked Thuringowacityrep as a one-off good faith measure. I sincerely hope this does not happen again. Orderinchaos 12:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

That sounds a fair resolution to me. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 12:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• This is getting low now, for a start the user that you say is a sockpuppet IS NOT, the User is a Good Friend of mine from Cairns and did infact play im my band with me untill i had to give up, we were talking the other day and i just said about how there are some cock heads on here that are very one sided (just saying what i told him) and he said that he would have a look at the site as he had never heard of it and i told him that it has a lot of info on bands, and yes he may have done a few edits that i had NO input in (i might add) and as some of them were in my watch list i did see what he had done and really all he did was correct a few pages that were wrong (and you all know that they were) i just hope that when he gets home from work and finds out what you have done he doesn't get pissed off becasue this is not the write way to treat a new editor...IS IT?. So much for your it's proven, now i am the one who is genuinely disappointed that you resorted to this. Thuringowacityrep (talk) 03:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Confirmed per checkuser. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Conclusions

Closing, already resolved. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)