Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/CutePeach

CutePeach

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

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

20 March 2022

– A checkuser has completed a check on relevant users in this case, and it is now awaiting administration and close.

Suspected sockpuppets

• ScrumptiousFood (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Tools: Editor interaction utility · Interaction Timeline · SPI Tools

Evidence

1. On 2 August 2022, CP was TBAN'd from COVID origins (an area they had invested considerable time in, occupying #2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 10 of their top 10 Mainspace edited pages, and 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of their top Talkspace edited pages [1]). Their account went silent soon after and dropped in daily edits to nearly zero until 18 October 2021 [2], when they resumed editing and creating WHO-related and "pandemic preparedness"-related pages. On 31 October 2021, the SF account was created and made their first edit to create Lancet letter (COVID-19). [3]. Within the next 4-5 days, this article became a fully formed mainspace stub, complete with sections, structure, citations, etc. all beyond what we would typically expect from a brand new editor. This period of time is also absent for CP, who made no edits between 28 October and 7 November [4].
2. The time cards of SF and CP are very similar, indicating they probably edit from the same time zone (SF | CP). This corresponds most with 10p-1a in the Phillipines (UTC+8). SF is also a very briefly used account, compatible with WP:BRIEFLY and WP:OCUSE.
3. They are never editing at the same time, and appear to alternate between each with 3-21 hours in between [5] (Do you ever see Bruce Wayne and Batman in the same room? Why does nobody ever notice this?)
4. The SF account, for the first 3 months of its existence, was solely used to create articles about various scientists/personalities associated with COVID origins/biodefense/gain-of-function research, a hot button topic for CP which was very much related to the TBAN. I'm not kidding, for the first 2 months, SF only created these articles and did nothing else: [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] They then did some other limited editing, but continued making these articles mainly until month 3 [18] [19] [20] At ~edit 300 and 3 months, they started getting involved in many of the same dispute areas that CP was active in (COVID origins, China cover-up, etc).
5. Both CP [21] and SF [22] seldom (if ever) use citation templates, despite multiple attempts to remind them of the importance of avoiding linkrot.
6. Neither CP, nor SF use edit summaries.
7. CP edits almost exclusively as a mobile user, whereas SF edits almost exclusively as a desktop user. This may either A) indicate this is one human using a computer and phone for two different accounts, in which case CU may be negative if they are not on the same wifi, B) indicate this is a possible meat puppet situation, or C) indicate there may be some user agent spoofing going on.
8. Both usernames are two words, without a space, and first letter of each word capitalized. Both are food-related.
9. Both users have extremely sparse user pages. Neither uses any archiving on their talk page.

I think overall, this is a pretty compelling case for WP:SOCK, if not WP:MEAT.— Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:03, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

added 19:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC):

10. The SF is used for 2 purposes: to create new COVID origins articles, and to provide !votes/brief input in disputes with the same position that CP would typically take [23] [24] [25] . It rarely edits outside of these purposes.

11. The SF account often references comments made by the CP account in those same disputes: [26] [27]

12. The SF account makes arguments and uses templates that are relatively advanced wiki-lawyering for someone with ~300 edits. (e.g. citing WP:RFCBEFORE [28], WP:BALANCE [29], Wikipedia:Attribution [30], Templates [31], knows about WP:AE despite never being a party there [32]. It took me years to realize AE exists.)

13. The SF account has a knowledge of the lab leak theory debates that is surprising for someone who was not on the wiki for most of when such disputes were occurring [33] [34]

@CutePeach I am not interested in litigating any disputes here, as this is not the proper venue.— Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} (01:14, 22 March 2022 (UTC))

added 19:06, 21 March 2022 (UTC):

14. Both CP and SF , when they create a new article, very often use British news sources, including The Independent, The Guardian, The BBC, The Times, and then also the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, indicating they may both read these sources on a regular basis: SF ([35] [36] [37] [38] [39]) | CP ([40] [41] [42] [43] [44])

added 01:14, 22 March 2022 (UTC):

15. Both SF ([45]) and CP ([46] [47] [48]) use "RS" in the plural instead of "RSes" or "reliable sources" or "RSs".

16. Both SF ([49]) and CP ([50]) seldom use dashes for multi-word adjectives (e.g. well written instead of well-written)

17. Both SF ([51] [52] [53]) and CP ([54] [55] [56]) use "counter" as a verb and adjective outside of multi-word adjectives (e.g. "counter those sources" or "runs counter to")

— Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:06, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Tangent not directly related to this case. WP:BOLD collapsing, rv at will. - Shibb@19:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

As an aside, I've been trying to find a way to do NLP analysis of these two user's edits. I looked at Masz, but it appears to be restricted to CUs for comparison of two users. @@RoySmith would you be able to perform this on CP/SF? I would be curious to see the result. Thank you for honestly any help in this avenue, but I understand if you don't think this would be useful or if it has a low specificity/sensitivity. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:06, 21 March 2022 (UTC) @Shibbolethink the Masz tool is restricted for a reason. I run it sometimes but I don't put a lot of faith in it, and I'm afraid I'm not willing to run it on request. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:15, 21 March 2022 (UTC) Understood, thank you for the prompt response. @RoySmith do you know of any other way to make comparison of editor linguistics easier? Aside from going by hand through each contribution and comparing word choice? I used to have a good tool to search through a user's contributions for a certain word or phrase, but now I can't find it. I think it was through something similar to WikiBlame? I understand if you A) have no idea what i'm talking about or B) are pretty sure it's not your job to help me make my case, because you'd be right, it isn't! — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:15, 21 March 2022 (UTC) Masz is the best tool I'm aware of in the context of wikipedia. Taking two corpi and determining if they were written by the same person is an open research problem. See for example, Shakespeare authorship question. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:26, 21 March 2022 (UTC) Yes, I know it's considered a "hard" problem in linguistics. A friend of mine has a lab at NYU that's working on it! Okay okay, I will await any other input on the evidence here. Thanks. Gonna collapse this as a distraction that isn't related to this particular case, but rv at will.— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

My speciality is public health policy and I will continue to write on the WHO and public health related subjects in my precious little free time. My TBAN was imposed due to a list of twisted diffs from Shibbolethink at a WP:AE [57] - which was objected to by many editors - and which I plan on appealing when I get the time. Shibbolethink tried the same trick to get Adoring nanny banned over a dispute on the same topic, earning him a warning from an administrator El C for filing false evidence [58] [59], which is exactly what he is doing here again - flinging spaghetti and hoping something sticks. Shibbolethink has also been gloating over the TBAN [60] [61] and WP:HOUNDING me [62] [63], earning him rebuke from administrator DGG.

We are currently in dispute about attributed allegations of China deliberately undercounting cases and deaths in the early outbreak [64] [65] [66] which he [67] [68] [69] [70] and several new accounts [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] and questionable IPs are trying to remove [76] [77] [78] [79], even though they have been on Wikipedia for nearly two years.

I have never interacted with SF on or off wiki and and I have been quoted by many editors on sources I have cited. CutePeach (talk) 15:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello, it seems my edits undoing your edit warring have been labeled as "by a new account" however my account is years old, what? This is not the place to discuss your edit warring, but as you have brought it up, there is an ongoing discussion and you are trying to reinsert non status quo content, regardless, whether you are edit warring or not has nothing to do with whether this other account is your sockpuppet or not, the evidence provided by Shibbolethink is quite convincing, and given that checkuser shows it is a possibility, you should defend yourself against the actual allegations provided, rather than moving off-topic as your message here does (quite suspicious in my view). Xoltered (talk) 00:51, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Just to chime in briefly about point 13: knowledge of behind-the-scenes drama is surprising for an editor who wasn't there. I was there for a lot of it, and I'd have to work to dredge up links. XOR'easter (talk) 06:04, 22 March 2022 (UTC) On 31 October 2021, the SF account was created and made their first edit to create Lancet letter (COVID-19). Within the next 4-5 days, this article became a fully formed mainspace stub... ← false. I created this article as a draft and waited three months for it to be approved [80]. Most of my edits are related to the COVID origins subject, but Mark R. Denison, Ron Fouchier, Barry Schoub and Yanzhong Huang are not related to that, so Shibbolethink's claim I do nothing else is false. I created my account after reading the CNET article about the COVID origins debates on Wikipedia, so I have read most of the discussions here, including the policy debates. I am Aussie Filipino and Alina Chan has many followers here. I am not a meat or sock puppet of CP or any other editor. I believe Shibbolethink has an undisclosed COI with the Lancet letter and possibly also the Draft:Proximal Origins letter. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 16:15, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

• These two accounts are technically  Possible. They geolocate to the same country, and the occasionally show up on the same /17 range as each other; however, there's no overlap in the UAs they use, and they are mostly operating out of different ranges. Behavioural analysis needed. Girth Summit _(blether) 09:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
• @JJMC89: I see you created the CutePeach account. Is there anything that you can add/divulge here which might be useful? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:34, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

---