Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Johnwest1999
Johnwest1999
- Johnwest1999 (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
22 October 2016
– This SPI case is open.
Suspected sockpuppets
- Tacoloco1 (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
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This first came to my attention when the IP began editwarring over whether Global Television Network, in its paragraph about the impact of the Anik satellite decision on the original "NTV" network proposal of 1968, required an extended digression into the entire subsequent ownership history of Canada's entire broadcast satellite infrastructure all the way up to the present day [1] — following which they made a vaguely threatening post to my talk page arbitrarily dictating that the information was "here to stay" whether I liked it or not. In reviewing the IP's prior edit history, I noted the following evidence to suggest a link:
- 174 has directly acknowledged in one edit summary that they are a former logged-in user evading a past block: [2]
- 174 is a frequent editor of Tacoloco's sandbox page, but has never touched anybody else's. [3] [Update: the current content of that page, added by IP number 65.182.125.23, includes "Johnny West" among the names of the creators of that topic. So for the sake of completionism, I'm adding 65 to the request although I can't otherwise connect their edit history to this situation.]
- Tacoloco and 174 have both since gotten directly involved in ongoing editwarring at H-I, N-I and N-II over unsourced claims that McDonnell Douglas was their designer; 76.188.18.166, the IP number previously blocked as a sock of JohnWest in the first go-around, was the editor who originally inserted that claim into the articles, 174 reverted it back into the articles two or three times in May, and Tacoloco was the most recent restorer. The link to 76 through this content is where I was able to finally establish the link to Johnwest.
- 174 has previously attempted to blank large portions of Super RTL [4] and to editwar over it when that was reverted; Tacoloco's first-ever edit was a malformed and bad faith attempt to have Super RTL's article deleted outright by listing it at AFD but not actually creating the nomination page for it to be discussed. [5] (Which weirdly resembles one of the last things JohnWest did before the block: listing himself for an RFA nomination but not actually creating a discussion page or nomination statement.) 76 was previously involved in editing some of the same content that Tacoloco and 174 were trying to blank — JohnWest has also edited that page in the past, albeit at a time when none of the disputed content was there yet to be editwarred over.
- From what I can tell by comparing JohnWest's logged-in edit history to 76's, he seemed to follow a pattern of keeping his powder dry when logged in by using minimal edit summaries and not getting too aggressive on talk pages, but then logging out and using IPs like 76 to editwar and lash out with attacks and idle ban threats at anybody who disagreed with his content — and that's the very same pattern seen here between Tacoloco and 174.
- Although I'm not finding too many other specific pages where they all crossed paths directly besides the ones I've already noted, there are broad themes of interest discernible across all of the users' edit histories: animated television series and the channels that air them, broadcast satellites and the rockets that launched them into orbit.
- The editing issue that got me on this trail in the first place, regarding whether the extended ownership history of Anik/Telesat was necessary added context in an article on the Global Television Network, closely resembles an edit JohnWest made in April 2015 to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, delving into the contextually irrelevant extended ownership history of two of the channels that merely happen to air that show. [6]
I did run a reverse IP lookup on both 174 and 76, and they do both resolve to the same ISP. I ran one on 65 as well, but it just came up blank on several different lookup sites. Bearcat (talk) 21:30, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
Comments by other users
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