Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dodo19

Dodo19

Dodo19 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

Populated account categories: confirmed · suspected

For archived investigations, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dodo19/Archive.

– A user has requested CheckUser. An SPI clerk will shortly look at the case and endorse or decline the request.

22 March 2012

Suspected sockpuppets

• Dog Whipper (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

• User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

User:Dog Whipper showed up here at the end of February. His first edit displayed a knowledge of wikipedia policy shorthand: not incriminating in and of itself, but an indicator that the user already knows how things work around here from prior experience. Also of note in that edit is what he removed: a source by German mineralogist and right-extremist —Dodo19 displayed some strongly anti-right-wing tendencies while he edited. He then dove into editing Viktor Suvorov (a controversial revisionist Russian military historian), one of Dodo19's old favourites to edit. Another interesting early edited page is Majakowskiring, a street in Berlin. Dodo19 is himself German and lives or lived in the capital, further evidenced by his socks User:Friedrich S. Hain (Friedrichshain) and User:Charlotte N. Burg (Charlottenburg). None of this is particularly incriminating, but keep reading....

Recently and more tellingly, Dog Whipper has been creating articles relating to obscure Estonian and Estonian-related crime of spurious notability (Le gang des Estoniens, Budget airline bandits, Baltic Organized Crime Hub) and editing more well-known articles of the same topic (Crime in Estonia, EstDomains). Dodo19's personal feud with Estonian editor User:Estlandia (formerly known as Miacek) should be well-known to anyone familiar with his editing here.

On a hunch, I worked through Dodo19 and his various socks and ran a Stalker test comparing them to Dog Whipper. Here are the results. Because DW has very few edits here (and, I believe, because the sockmaster has gotten wiser over time), only 7 pages were found in common between DW and the others, but they only add more substance to this case:

• User talk:Estlandia: Admittedly, Estlandia edited DW's user talk first. However, Estlandia has been responsible for rooting out the majority of Dodo19's socks. The fact that he suspected something "off" about this account says something, I feel.
• Viktor Suvorov has been discussed already.
• German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union was edited by both Dodo19 and the User:RobinHood005 sock. Perhaps not an obscure article to edit, but indicative of Dodo19's keen interest in German military history: an area in which DW is also very active.
• Joachim Gauck and Wolfgang Schäuble are articles on German politicians: an area in which Dodo19 was and DW is very active.
• Category:Estonian War of Independence is even more interesting: a recently-registered editor already going into category-editing? An in an area in which Dodo19 was involved in editing (see e.g., Dodo19-Miacek/Estlandia feud)? Something ain't right here....
• 1st Foot Guards (German Empire) is by far the most incriminating page of commonality found. With a size of 1,161 bytes and a grand total of 9 edits to it, it is about as obscure as you can get. But even more telling is the fact that it was created by—wait for it—User:Pankrator, one of Dodo19's more prolific socks.

So, we have this: early editing patterns loosely connectable to the sockmaster, contentious activity (possible baiting?) in a topic area of past conflict, editing in near-identical political/historical topic areas, and a number of pages in common that do not seem coincidental. Something is not kosher about this account. Do I hear waterfowl in the distance, or am I hallucinating? Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

DW has also created Category:Organized crime groups in Estonia and has made the following category or categorisation edits: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 (over 20% of his edits). Dodo 19 was highly active in category and categorisation editing (see also his HotCat-filled user contributions).

Another small but interesting scrap of evidence is the similarity of user talk habits between DW and Dodo19. Both use "--" to begin their signatures Dodo19 Pankrator (sock) Dog Whipper. Both sometimes use closing lines of addressment (e.g., "thanks", "regards) Dodo19 Dog Whipper. Both will use "Hi" to begin a new post on another user's talk page Dodo19 Dog Whipper. Now, will admit that since DW has not been around for long, he has a minuscule and "statistically insignificant" number of such edits. I also fully acknowledge that none of the described habits are extraordinarily unique. This evidence should not be considered authoritative, definitive, or anywhere near critical to my report. Just more things to consider.... ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 00:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

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