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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by عباد ديرانية (talk | contribs) at 19:24, 7 August 2012. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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An-Apple-A-NY-Day

An-Apple-A-NY-Day (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 Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/An-Apple-A-NY-Day/Archive.

A long-term abuse case exists at Misplaced Pages:Long-term abuse/An-Apple-A-NY-Day.

– This SPI case is open.

05 August 2012
Suspected sockpuppets

All of these editors are new entrants into the Stephanie Adams article, which has been attacked by the sockmaster for years. After the article and talk page got protected, socking by proxy server was attempted for a while. Once the sock lost access to the proxies, things settled down for a few days. Then all of a sudden of these editors appeared within a matter of days of each other, and all of them seem to support positions the sockmaster supoprts, such as adding the following information to the article: A reference to a lawsuit the subject was involved in, and a detailed bibliography of works by the author. Then some discoveries were made:

  • This screenshot of an ad on elance
  • And this project description on freelancer (saved via WebCite). Note the name of project poster "fbell74".

Also from that URL is a request from the "client" that reads The prior assistant was fired and we are now handling this project so we apologize for the delay. We would like to offer you more than the $20 you were due. We only ask that you make one or two comments, if needed, in the talkpage the next coming days. It might not be necessary, but if you can add in the talk page that you feel your edit and addition about the NJ guardianship should remain, that would suffice. Concensus thus far is that it be added, as long as you include that you agree. For the additonal $10, that is all we need. Thank you for your professionalism and we hope to keep you on board for future projects.

This editor is receiving instructions not only on what to edit, but to offer a specifc opnion on AfD. While Fbell74 is obviously caught in this web, any reasonable person would have to suspend disbelief and not conclude the other three editors have also been solicited in a similar manner. Fasttimes68 (talk) 07:07, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Also

for having remarkably similar patterns of editing:

  • Fbell74 (contributions) -- who appears to be editing for payment (see elsewhere on this page) and whose user page was created by Pkeets -- has made edits related to Stephanie Adams, minor edits to Besso Limited (now at AfD), and edits to Candis Magazine, among a wide variety (if smallish number) of articles.
  • Kathym89 (contributions) started editing with a series of six small edits to articles about schools, some (all?) in Liverpool. Her seventh edit was the addition of 3,836 bytes to the article on Michael John Wade. To quote the article on Wade, "Wade currently holds the title of Chairman of Besso Insurance Group Ltd". Kathym89's later (not so many) edits include more to Wade, and edits to Besso Limited.
  • Jason.grandiola2014 (contributions) started off with six edits (of middling size) to an article on a school in the Liverpool area, but soon created 6,446-byte‎ Newhall Publications and 4,955-byte Candis Magazine.
  • Michaelc14 (contributions) started with five small edits to articles on schools in the Liverpool area, and thereupon dedicated himself to Besso Limited.

Hoary (talk) 11:15, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Also:

Hoary (talk) 14:35, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Also:

Hoary (talk) 22:10, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Also:

Cavarrone (talk) 22:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

  • One addition, one correction. Fbell74's list of earlier contributions may be compared with this (WebCite). The specific request that appears above was made at Aug 3 2012 20:51:15 (according to freelancer.com), which I believe predates the start of this AfD. It's instead for the article's talk page, and it's uttered here. (Fbell74 is most polite, starting "In my humble opinion", and ending "Thank you for your consideration".) -- Hoary (talk) 09:44, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I've added two more. However, I don't think that Mazza1234 or ITpro27 are related to the others: one adds material compactly and modestly, the other actually removes fluff. -- Hoary (talk) 14:35, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Good find. I'm adding Lindad2011 now. (If you make further discoveries of which you are pretty certain -- and I've a hunch that further socks await discovery -- you may wish to add them yourself.) -- Hoary (talk) 22:10, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Looking at his edit history, عباد ديرانية appears to be a genuine editor. Cavarrone (talk) 09:54, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Yes, I agree. -- Hoary (talk) 10:44, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
    • No, I disagree. This user's recent edits include a request for page protection on a page already protected, presumably to protect the "right version" of the article from being edited by autoconfirmed users. This is that user's first and only edit made to to any notice/request board. The circumstantial evidence points to this user being canvassed as well. Fasttimes68 (talk) 19:40, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
      • While Fbell74 appears to be a paid editor and a sockpuppet/sockmaster (looking at his "portfolio" at Freelancer.com his articles include articles originally made by other SPA, such as Michaelc14 for the article Besso Limited) I still don't see any evidence about this user. In my view requesting a protection for a page already protected just denotes a lack of skills in that field, nothing more. He appears to be a two years old account that focuses his edits, with some regularity, on Arabic world, and made a lot of useful technical work on these pages (such addition of interwikis from Arab and Turkish Wikipedias). He has created an article that is doubtless encyclopedic and surely not result of paid editing (Astronomical_filter). He NEVER edited the Stephanie Adams article, just shared a couple of (non-partisan) opinions in the talk page, no different from what he has done in the same period in the talk page of Battle of Tremseh. Looking at his talk page he made an excellent work on organizing other Arabic Wikipedians to become Misplaced Pages Online Ambassadors. With respect, I really don't understand why he was posted here. Cavarrone (talk) 04:15, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
        • While it is my suspicion the first two editors in this SPI are hired guns, the last two appear to be canvassed via other means. This article gets relatively no newcomers, and in the span of a week we get four new editors parroting the socks positions? WP:DUCK. Even in disagreement, you have my regards. Fasttimes68 (talk) 04:40, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
          • Unfortunately, I can confirm that عباد ديرانية was paid through Freelancer to edit the article and post comments, and based on the timing of edits and payments, Editorkabaap was also paid through a Freelancer account. However, the evidence would out at least one of the two, so I would need to provide it via email to a checkuser or arbcom member, as required. Two other editors were also hired or canvassed, (along with Fbell74), but both have already been blocked. I don't know anything about Pkeets. - Bilby (talk) 06:46, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
            • If it is so, I'm very sad, I was sure he was "clean". About Pkeets, looking at this edit, it could be an alternative account of Fbell74: I have never seen an editor creating the user page for one another editor before (let's see what the CheckUser will say). Cavarrone (talk) 07:37, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
              • I was disappointed as well - there have been a couple of editors I've seen who do really good work, but have made bad judgement calls along these lines. I can only assume that عباد ديرانية doesn't really understand WP's policies, as he mostly edits on ar.wikipedia. - Bilby (talk) 08:07, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Looking at his edit history , Pkeets is a hugely energetic editor over a wide area (very commendable), and in large part (if not more) a genuine one. Yet there are distinct oddities. One of the last articles he edited before dedicating himself full time to Adams was Camerata Bariloche, which he had created. It doesn't seem ever to have had any independent sourcing. A more recent creation, also odd, was (later deleted) Masatoshi Fujitani, which at the time was titled Fujitani Masatoshi: though putting names of recent and living Japanese people in the Japanese order violates MOS-JA, I'm personally all for it and certainly it's understandable; yet the way the article is written suggests that the writer thinks that the second names (in the Japanese order) are the surnames (they're not). There's a basic misunderstanding of the subject here; and the whole affair has a single specified source: this page of a book, a page that actually just mentions the biographee's name but says next to nothing about him. I hope I'm wrong about this, but it looks as if the author was working from a source that he didn't really understand and felt unable to specify. -- Hoary (talk) 10:44, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
  • If one wanted to speculate about about who the client "archangelseven" might be, this google search provides some surprising (or maybe not) results; I wasn't expecting to discover the subject writes about such lofty topics as angels arch-angels. Now I'm a bit rusty on my bible, but I did remember that there were 7 archangels, of whom I could recall Gabriel, Michael and Raphael. I had to do a search to discover the names Uriel, Chamuel, Jophiel and Zadkiel. Less than 30 seconds later I found this interesting page from 2006 which to my amazement mentions an interesting email exchange between the author of the blog and the subject's PR department, as well as a few commenters (two of which are named Gabriel and Michael) who the blog author labeled as her "supporters". The author of the blog makes the astute observation that all of the commenters seem to be posting from the same ip address and might be (gasp) the same person. Don't we have a word to describe that sort of behavior? Fasttimes68 (talk) 22:23, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Mention of "archangels" in this context brings this to mind. But let's drop it. Somebody was paying for edits; who this was doesn't matter. Furthermore, anyone who was interested in determining the identity (not the job of Misplaced Pages, I think) should note that there's no obvious reason for the paymaster to reveal his or her name, and thus that the more clearly the paymaster's name hints at an identity, the more plausible a joe job becomes. -- Hoary (talk) 22:38, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
  • This hydra-headed writer really is a waste of time. Wondering how he or she had either (A) got so close to a pair of Anglo-Iranian plutocrats as to be able to take (aspect-ratio-distorted) headshots or (B) acquired rights to these photos, I decided to take a closer look. Seeing what was wrong with VincentTchenguiz.jpg wasn't rocket science, as the very metadata presented an image title that read in part: Supplied for single editorial UK print use only in the Sunday Telegraph. Copyright-Tom Stockill-All Rights Reserved.(01753 862508/07831 815511)This image must not be syndicated or transferred to other systems or third parties, and storage or archiving is not permitted.Any unauthorised use or reproduction of this image will constitute a violation of copyright. But some minutes of my finite lifespan went to show that the photo of his brother was ripped off from Rex Features via the Telegraph. I suggest that any and all images related to these usernames should be regarded with suspicion; however, I have to attend to other, WP-unrelated affairs for a few hours. -- Hoary (talk) 23:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
  • I'm trying to pick this apart now. However, while I can see why there are concerns that the accounts mentioned above are linked, I don't see any link to An-Apple-A-NY-Day here. If no link to the originating account is made, then this will need to be moved to a separate SPI. Risker (talk) 02:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Well, technically this is a meatpuppet report. So maybe I opened this up in the wrong place. I couldn't find a better venue and someone suggested I just file it here since the master listed here is giving the meats their marching orders. I could show you diffs and evidence that establish the link, but that would have to be done off-wiki. If you want them, please ping me. Fasttimes68 (talk) 03:21, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Results
  • All of the accounts added by Hoary are  Stale so no check will produce results. Only one of these accounts has edited in the last six months. It seems as if there are concerns about notability of the articles these accounts focused on; we have deletion processes to address this, please consider them. (I note that at least one of these articles is currently at AFD)
  • There is no technical relationship whatsoever between Fbell74 (talk · contribs), Pkeets (talk · contribs), Editorkabaap (talk · contribs), or عباد ديرانية (talk · contribs). These accounts do not edit from the same continent, let alone the same country. If there is a meatpuppetry case to be made, it should be made elsewhere.
  • On reviewing the archives, I believe we are dealing with at least two different users who are targeting either (a) articles related to Stephanie Adams and/or (b) User:Fasttimes68. There is no technical evidence that any of the accounts in this report are related to the accounts that are identified in the archive. I'm going to ask a checkuser clerk to consider where we can move or split up this report, because the accounts identified by Hoary are working in a completely different topic area (one overlapping edit between Fbell74 and the others is not diagnostic even for co-ordinated editing) and the accounts identified by Fasttimes68 are definitely not socks of An-Apple-A-NY-Day or of each other. Risker (talk) 03:52, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Non-CU comment I agree the accounts are not socks and I was mistaken for opening this case up at this venue. The matter is now being discussed here. Fasttimes68 (talk) 19:22, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

involved user comment

I have read the discussion above. I admit that I was mistaken; yes I was hired through Frelancer, and did some work for a particular employer. But, at least as far as I believe, my work didn't violate any Misplaced Pages policies or guidelines. All of what I did was posting comments in the talk page, and sometimes when the employer asked me to do tasks that I know it violates the policies (One of which was, btw, requesting a ban for fasttimes) I refused. Even the things I discussed was supposed to be did immediately, but I preferred not do it before getting consensus, and at last I didn't make any edits to the article. I don't mind getting banned from editing this particular article, and I don't intend anyway to do any further work for freelancer; it was the first time, and the last. I don't know if the COI issues involves a full ban (temporary or instant), but since it was the first time, and since all of my over 1,000 edits here in two years was pure Misplaced Pages-for-Misplaced Pages, I hope it doesn't happen. Again, I don't plan for any further work like this --aad_Dira (talk) 19:24, 7 August 2012 (UTC).

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