Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Charlie.somerville

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.

User:Charlie.somerville

Suspected sockpuppeteer

Charlie.somerville (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Suspected sockpuppets

Bradlow idiot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
58.107.252.48 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Report submission by

AAA! (AAAA) 03:34, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Evidence

Bradlow Idiot's contribs on my user page (diff) practically match the vandalism Charlie.somerville made on my user page. 58.107.252.48 also vandalised my user page in the same pattern. If they are not sockpuppets, then I suspect them to be meatpuppets.

Comments

Looks like a match. Charlie last edited under his own name more than a week ago, and he left an apology note, so blocking his account would be pointless IMO. Bradlow idiot should be indef-blocked as a sock/vandal-only account. The IP has been firmly warned by Fram, and that should be sufficient. YechielMan 08:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

It isn't me. Must be one of my cronies who were around me while I was vandalising your page.
Go ahead and block Bradlow idiot but don't mark it against my account. Charlie.somerville 03:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Conclusions

I took a closer look, and I believe that Charlie is innocent. A friendly word of advice to Charlie: it's not a good idea to edit other people's userpages without their permission to write dirty jokes. Even though you reverted it without a fuss, you should not have done it in the first place.

I checked Charlie's editing pattern in the contribution log. He tends to make a few edits in a day, then disappear for two or three weeks, then return for a few more edits. His last edit had been on June 12. Then he returns on June 26, makes three ordinary edits as if nothing happened, and comes to defend himself in this case.

Bradlow idiot came along on June 22 and made a throwaway edit to revert to the last vandalism version by Charlie. In order to do that, he needed to be a sockpuppet of someone - newbies don't know how to navigate page history and revert on their first edit - but that doesn't establish whom he is impersonating. It could be someone else.

It just doesn't make sense to me that Charlie would vandalize as a joke, revert his own vandalism, apologize to User:AAA! on his talk page, and come back ten days later to revert to the vandalism version. It's totally irrational on many levels.

Charlie, I'm willing to give you a free pass on this as long as you behave yourself and avoid vandalizing pages, even if it's just a joke (unless you wish to fool around in the WP:SANDBOX. I suppose we could do a checkuser, but I don't think it's necessary.

{Disclosure: I am YechielMan above. I changed my usernaeme.) Shalom ^Hello 03:36, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

The friend explanation actually makes sense here, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt this time around, given that Charlie.somerville has been editing constructively. Charlie, if you just want a page to screw around with, you can create a subpage in your userspace (such as User:Charlie.somerville/sandbox) and do whatever test edits you like to it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

This can make sense actually. You might not know, but me and Charlie know each other in person, and we also go to the same school. I saw Charlie on Wikipedia, and he had the vandalised diff on a separate notepad document (this was before he apologized to me, by the way). It is possible that he may have given that to his friends, and they created accounts, edited the page, and replaced it with the vandalised edit that was on the doc. So it's possible that they could be meatpuppets or even just single-purpose accounts. Hope that shined some light on that.

And Charlie, I'd like to let you know that I'm not doing this for revenge; I'm doing it because you broke some of Wikipedia's rules, such as this, this, and possibly this; and it alerted my suspicions since those edits on my page were practically the same ones you made. Heck, if it was someone in Canada who did the exact same thing on my user page, I'd still have taken the same measures that I took against you. If I wanted revenge, I would've talked to you in person or something similar, and not get Wikipedia involved (because there's no point to do it on Wikipedia when we can simply do it in person). Hope there are no hard feelings between us. --AAA! (AAAA) 00:37, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

That's ok... I understand what you're doing AAA!
This whole sockpuppetry case has almost blown over anyway
BTW, After I reverted the changes originally, I did create a sub page of my userspace to screw around in... It got deleted.

Charlie.somerville 03:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

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