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Collect

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

For archived investigations, see Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Collect/Archive.

04 March 2015

– This SPI case is open.

Suspected sockpuppets

• Dear ODear ODear (talk · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Vertrag (talk · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

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• Editor interaction utility

Collect is an experienced editor and I am not posting here lightly, but I've noticed a suspicious pattern of behavior involving these three accounts which I think bears checking out.

Some important context first: Collect has recently been involved in a huge dispute over the article Project for the New American Century (PNAC), in which he has exhibited a rather combative editing pattern, and been particularly concerned with adding/removing specific stuff from the article. Some diffs for example:

• Diff1 - removing a wikilink to Reagan's page from the lede on the word "Reaganite."
• Diff2 - removing a table from the article which he charges is SYNTH.
• Diff3 - same concern again
• Diff4 - removing this passage/source about the connections people have drawn between the Bush administration and PNAC from the lede.

An additional piece of context here - Collect is currently blocked for edit warring on this article, and has been involved in a lengthy dispute with the user Ubikwit over it. He was himself blocked for edit warring after reporting Ubikwit for same. On his talk page, he recently outlined the dispute between himself and Ubikwit as part of his unblock request. Note in particular that he claims Ubikwit has been drawing undue attention to or falsely labeling conservative political figures as Jewish.

I had just finished reading that when I noticed that User:Dear ODear ODear had started editing the article on PNAC. Note that the account has been a sleeper since 2012, but suddenly sprang into action on the article that Collect was recently blocked for edit warring on. I think the diffs speak for themselves here:

• Diff1 - removing the wikilink on Reagan, same as Diff 1 for Collect.
• Diff2 - removing the same passage/source from the lede as Diff 4 for Collect. Also note, here, the edit summary, alleging that the source is somehow anti-semitic. This is consistent with Collect's rationale for his editing the article and his interactions with Ubikwit.

Dear ODear has only made 10-12 edits to the article so far, but they are displaying the same kind of combative edit pattern and edit summaries that Collect often does (see the admin's comments on the edit warring noticeboard, linked above for examples of that), and like Collect, they are particularly concerned with ensuring that certain information is labelled as opinion. Examples:

• Diff1(Dear ODear ODear) - insisting that since there's only 1 RS, it should be phrased as opinion
• Diff2(Collect) - this is a post he made on my talk page, but it shows his insistence that "opinions must be cited as opinions." For context, that was a response to my post on the PNAC talk page. That conversation was (again) centered on the statements in the lede of the article about the connections that critics have drawn between PNAC and the Bush Administration. This diff shows both that Dear ODear and Collect are both very determined to excise that sentence, and (as I explained in the talk post Collect was replying to) that no one else seems to have had a problem with it and it had been in the lede for many years.

Odear ODear and Collect have also been active at the same time. Today, for example, ODear made these three edits: one, two, three between 19:03 and 19:12. Then Collect made this edit at 19:26, and then ODear made this edit at 19:56.

As for Vertrag: He also is/was a sleeper account, created in 2006 but with a huge gap in edits from 2007-2015. When he returned to wikipedia, made a number of edits on the BLP/N noticeboard (which a glance at Collect's user page and editing history will show is his main haunt). He jumped into editing the PNAC article at a critical point in the debate between Ubikwit and Collect, with this being his very first edit. Note the removal of the Reagan wikilink, the bush admin-PNAC connections, and the table that Collect had sought to remove as SYNTH. That revert was also what prompted Ubikwit to make the final revert in the edit war between him and Collect, and which allowed Collect to report Ubikwit for edit warring. Collect linked it as Link 22 there, dated 16:28 2 March.

Finally, here is a Diff of Vertag arguing on the talk page of the PNAC article for removal of the table Collect had wanted removed as SYNTH. It's important to note here that no one else has been able to make much sense of Collect's argument that the table is SYNTH and should be removed. I'm not the only editor who thinks that - see JBH's reply to Collect here as evidence that his concerns haven't made much sense to others as well. He posted about it at BLP/N, for example, but no one was able to figure out his argument that it was SYNTH and should be removed. So it's odd that another user (who seems to be a sleeper account, and intervened at a critical moment in the edit war between Collect and Ubikwit) is now also insisting that it is.

As the editor interaction utility shows, these three accounts have made edits to the PNAC talk page within 5 minutes of each other, and to the article within 3 hours of each other. Vertrag and Collect also made edits to The Cowsills, making back to back edits within an hour of each other, and BLP/N, where both have multiple posts also within an hour of each other.

If you made it through all that, thanks for reading! Sorry for the wall-of-text but since Collect is such an experienced and active user and will almost certainly accuse me of being biased here, I wanted to make my case as clearly as I could. Fyddlestix (talk) 21:39, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

Collect's response, copied from his talk page Guettarda (talk) 23:03, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

My actual name and address are known to Jimbo, and about a dozen or more admins. I have used this handle now for over thirty years, and have never "socked" at all -- this accusation is apparently about as ill-faith as I can conceive of, and timed so that I cannot respond. I would have no rational reason to sock, but accusations of this type are so routinely made now sans any actual evidence that I suggest SPI enforce the rule requiring some actual evidence of some sort, beyond "someone came into the article, and even though their edits are, in fact, contrary to the edits of the editor I wish to accuse, this is a good way to annoy the hell out of them." Collect (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Re: Cowsills "evidence" - the edits were absolutely and totally unrelated to each other -- anyone saying I would use a sock for such edits is NCM.

Re: An accusation that I used a sock in order to force Ubikwit to edit war - that is a remarkably obtuse and ill-founded charge - noting that I suggested that Ubikwit self-revert.

Re: We both used BLP/N -- I have about four hundred edits on that noticeboard. Odds are pretty high that anyone posting there will show some sort of overlap. And the overlap? I saw Vertrag's post about a Cowsill! That is the one and only BLP/N thread we have an overlap on at all. Period.

Please someone - put the horrid SPI complaint out of its misery? Collect (talk) 23:08, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Clerk, please strike through your "certain evidence" that I and the Vertrag are the same person. Perhaps you meant that something struck you as similar? Dear ODear ODear (talk) 00:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The prosecution of non-liberal editors on Misplaced Pages continues. -sigh- --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:45, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

•  Clerk note: @Fyddlestix: I need some clarification here. You cited this diff and claimed that is shows "removing the wikilink on Reagan", while in fact it does not. You also cited this and claimed that it represents "removing the same passage/source from the lede as Diff 4 for Collect", while in fact it does not. I don't see any strong evidence to connect Dear ODear ODear to Collect. After reading your post, I came to believe that there is certain evidence to accuse Dear ODear ODear and Vertrag of being the same person, but I can't see their connection to Collect. Please, cite more evidence. Vanjagenije (talk) 23:49, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

@Vanjagenije:Sorry about that, it's possible I made a mistake with the diffs - putting my kid to bed then I will look them over and re-state my case more clearly for you.Fyddlestix (talk) 00:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

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