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Kabir Vaghela

Kabir Vaghela ( talk + · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser( log) · investigate · cuwiki)
18 February 2015
Suspected sockpuppets


On August 1, Richa101091 created a draft article Draft:Prime Focus Technologies. On August 11, it was moved into mainspace by Kdzrules [1]. It was moved to the odd title, " Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), a title Richa101091 has previously created it at and had it speedy deleted at. This was doen to avoid page protection at Prime Focus Technologies, but I find it unlikely two independent users would pick such a title on their own - they are either socks or meatpuppets. Note, that the Prime Focus Technologies was locked down to do recreation by socks of Eli786 (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Eli786/Archive) - I don't see any actual evidence these two are socks of Eli, although it is not impossible.

In addition to PFT, Richa101091 and Kdzrules have overlapped editing on Prime Focus Limited - parent company of PFT; Namit Malhotra - an important PF person; Merzin Tavaria - another PF person; and Daler Mehndi‎ - an unrelated singer. No way that is coincidence with so few edits by each. Either they are the same person, or are working for the same PR firm.

Request CU to confirm if these two are actual socks, or just meatpuppets, & possibly also to determine if they are related to Eli786. ThaddeusB ( talk) 17:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC) reply

Also, they both uploaded the same picture to File:Namit Malhotra.jpg (kdz's upload was deleted on licensing concerns). Neither uses edit summaries (previous Eli786 socks generally did.) -- ThaddeusB ( talk) 17:43, 18 February 2015 (UTC) reply
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  • Hi, me and Kevin are friends. We are learning on ways to use and improve Wikipedia. There may be edits on similar articles as we try and improve the pages that either of us have created or edited. This is a learning process for us. We never realized there can be an issue due to this. Richa101091 ( talk) 13:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC) reply
Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
27 February 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

User:Rupali Lohiya created page Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP yesterday, it was deleted under CSD A7. Next day User:VidhiJ recreated the same page. After I tagged it for CSD again, the user repeatedly removed the speedy tag until receiving final warning. As soon as final warning was received sockpuppeteer User:Richa101091 suddenly started editing the article. This caused me to check the talk page and contribs of Richa101091, talk page was full of CSD notices for film companies, and contribs were only to film company articles. Requesting check user to find any sleeper accounts and confirm accounts are related. - War wizard90 ( talk) 07:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC) reply

And now I just found this as well: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kdzrules/Archive where Richa101091 was previously suspected/warned for being a sock. - War wizard90 ( talk) 07:19, 27 February 2015 (UTC) reply
Added User:TirthaV for similar behavior, SPA editing on Emmay Entertainment and dispute the AfD for that article. - War wizard90 ( talk) 00:17, 28 February 2015 (UTC) reply
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  • Group 1 -  Confirmed - Emmay entertainment articles primarily:
  • Group 2 -  Possible To each other:
  • Group 3 - Main Aur Mr. Riight -  Confirmed:
  • Every group/account listed is  Possible to each other unless otherwise noted.
  • SilviaFern ( talk · contribs)  Possilikely (a mix between possible and likely) Group 1
  • AayushyaB ( talk · contribs) & CatchUpSunil ( talk · contribs)  Confirmed
  • PoojaPathare in group 1 appears to have a behavioral connection to Deepii1234 in Group 2
  • ThisIsFinal ( talk · contribs) appears to have a behavioral connection to Richa101091 of group 1 & EMWikiEdits who I mention below
  • While Groups 1 & 3 have technical differences, I wouldn't be surprised if it were close collaborative meatpuppetry*
  • EMWikiEdits ( talk · contribs) is indicates close collaborative meatpuppetry* with group 2, rather than sockpuppetry.
*(as in in the same room)
@ Callanecc: so your aware of the mess made here. Also i'm dropping some stuff on CU wiki in case this comes up again. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 05:01, 7 March 2015 (UTC) reply
Thanks, glad you ended up with this one. :P Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) 01:13, 9 March 2015 (UTC) reply
  • I've blocked and tagged all of group 1. I didn't find much behavioral evidence to link the two accounts together in group 2. Behaviorally, I think Deepii1234 is related to group 1, as the account has the same style of focusing his/her edits on one article and a similar, clunky writing style: Rupali Lohiya, Deepii1234 I've blocked Praseetha.w as a sock of Cinemawaali and issued a warning to Cinemawaali. Behaviorally, I don't think they're related to the main group. I've blocked SilviaFern as a sock of the main group, as it showed a similar interest in promoting Prime Focus Technologies: Kdzrules, SilviaFern I've blocked AayushyaB as a sock of CatchUpSunil and issued a warning to the master. There isn't much behavioral evidence to tie them to group 1. I've tagged EMWikiEdits as a behavioral sock of the main group. The account contested the deletion of other articles, like this sock and it tried to clean up the article, just like the master account. I've blocked ThisIsFinal as a sock of the main group for posting the same edit summary (Sectioning added) as EMWikiEdits Alright, I think that wraps up this mess. Mike V • Talk 02:41, 14 March 2015 (UTC) reply
20 March 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

Recreated Emmay entertainment article. @ DeltaQuad:Since this one account is a WP:DUCK of the other's I didn't request CheckUser, but since you were heavily involved in the last case, I wanted to notify you in case you wanted to do anything on the CU side. - War wizard90 ( talk) 06:18, 20 March 2015 (UTC) reply

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 Clerk note: All his edits are deleted, so I can't see them, but if he really recreated Emmay entertainment article, than   Looks like a duck to me. Vanjagenije (talk) 19:03, 23 March 2015 (UTC) reply

31 March 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

Reposted the Emmay Entertainment article at Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP - See Special:Diff/653897814 - War wizard90 ( talk) 01:32, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply

After reviewing other contribs of SocialSunil, I believe these other SPA (Indian film companies, fimls, and related actors, which is always the target of these socks) accounts are also related, going to request CU to confirm.

All of these accounts edited the same article Emraan Hashmi:

More notes: ZmeuraCapsuni also edited on Mr. X (film) on March 28th, and that same day Shahzebali798 added Mr. X to the filmography section of the Emraan Hashmi articles as seen here: Special:Diff/653994914. More possible linked socks that have edited Mr. X (film):

Users DB135 and Golden5220 have both edited Mr. X (film), Roy (film), Dolly Ki Doli, and Badlapur (film), more socks editing on Badlapur (film):

I randomly picked 1 name from each group and put it into the Editor Interaction Analyzer for these results: [1] to further link all these accounts. This led me to check the page history of Bang Bang! which Prithviraj2002, Shwayze, and Samyamoy (note username similar to above "Jay Samyamoy") have all edited, and brings into question the following accounts:

Here is another Editor Interaction analysis to link the Sockmaster (Richa101091) which shows Samyamoy and Richa101091 have 10 similar pages edited, Samyamoy and Golden5220 have edited 3 pages in common, and all 3 of those accounts have edited on Kick (2014 film): [2] Suspicious accounts editing on Kick (2014 film) include:

A 3rd Editor Interaction analysis to further link these accounts: [3]
Here we go again, I am adding the following user to the investigation:

Unfortunately, if I keep going through more contributions, I undoubtedly could find many more. Hopefully CU can dredge up some more sleepers from this, also check out the User Compare report, which is very telling and shows just how far-reaching this sock farm may be, 142 distinct pages have been edited by at least two of the above accounts. - War wizard90 ( talk) 02:54, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply

@ Vanjagenije: I respectfully have to disagree that the behavioral link between these accounts is enough for check user. I was not looking at similarity in actual edits, because the nature of the meat farm. You have to look at the behavior of their contributions. Am I the only one who finds it suspicious that there are so many editors with redlinks who come in and do 5-10 edits a month on nothing but Indian-film related articles? Such an extremely specific field. To me it seems highly likely that hundrends of accounts are being created, logged into, used for several edits, and then logged out and onto another sock to avoid detection (another behavior confirmed by the user contributions). Not to mention that we have already seen several confirmed socks in the past. There are also several similarities in many of the usernames, the use of "sunil or suneel" (i.e. CathUpSunil - confirmed, SocialSunil, Suneel gujrati), and the use of "J, Jai, or Jay" (i.e. VidhiJ - confirmed, JaiHoHeisenberg, Jay Hiwase). Also, the fact that some of the users I listed as socks were either already accused of socks of other in the past, accused of being a sock based on behavior, or listed as a sock on another SPI concurrent to this one, has to be more than a coincidence. I think we are just picking off a few socks at a time, rather than getting to the real root of the problem. I will continue to look for behavioral connections in order to get more support for checkuser in the future, but I think it would be a shame not to look into this and let them pass by because it appears to be a big problem. I know the decision is ultimately up to the clerks and CU's, so I won't push any further on this SPI, but if we don't I think we are letting one slip by, just my humble opinion. - War wizard90 ( talk) 05:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC) reply


Comments by other users

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  • I remember the accounts ScrewHue and Prackashrawat being tied into the case for the account TheDevNegi, and I similarly recall that the only way we got the &^%! sock to stop recreating the article was to protect it form recreation - I'm not proud of this per se, but I put a 24 month protection on it since the in between message from the previous protections seemed to be lost on the account holder(s). If these are in fact all tied to each other in gigantic sock/meat farm then I would strongly advise putting permanent pending changes protection on the articles they edit to ensure that both fronts on the war against the socks are sealed. TomStar81 ( Talk) 07:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply
  • I don’t know why I should be a sockpuppet just because I do edits on the same topic like the others. I mainly work on the German Wikipedia and I do edits here when I see that something is wrong. Do my edits hurt anyone? It's not fun anymore. And I'm definitely not a sockpuppet. And no one can proof that I am one of them. -- Shwayze  sing♪ 09:23, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply
  • For what it's worth, Shwayze does have quite a few edits on the German Wikipedia, which isn't true of any of the other accounts, but has also edited on 50 of the 149 articles listed in the User Compare report, which could be a big coincidence. Also all of their edits on the German Wikipedia (and a few other languages) have all been the same SPA editing for these same types of articles, and the fact that another user is convinced that they are a sock of User:Shez 15, makes me think this one is still worth looking into. - War wizard90 ( talk) 03:20, 3 April 2015 (UTC) reply
  • I was notified of this sock farm by the opener of this SPI. This seems like an infestation and paid editing for promoting Roshan's appearance. The editing pattern of Richa101091 shockingly similar to 1Majid and the others. Definitely a farm that needs to be burnt down. — Indian:BIO [ ChitChat ] 06:44, 2 April 2015 (UTC) reply
Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
​— DoRD ( talk)​ 16:03, 15 April 2015 (UTC) reply
24 June 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

Recreated Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP Special:Diff/668462037 - War wizard90 ( talk) 22:22, 24 June 2015 (UTC) reply

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29 June 2015
Suspected sockpuppets


obvious sock of Richa101091 the Prime Focus fan, started editing Prime Focus Limited a few days after master was notified SPI was underway [3] Brianhe ( talk) 23:15, 29 June 2015 (UTC) reply

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Comment: It would be great if we could get a sleeper check against this account as well. - War wizard90 ( talk) 01:10, 30 June 2015 (UTC) reply

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
29 June 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

WP:DUCK attempting to get Prime Focus Technologies article reintroduced.

Two users edited now-deleted Prime Focus drafts with evasive caps and punct variations. User:Shrutikedia is obvious sock of blocked sock User:Pratkipedia.

Discussed at WP:COIN, opened SPI at request of FreeRangeFrog Brianhe ( talk) 23:04, 29 June 2015 (UTC) Brianhe ( talk) 23:04, 29 June 2015 (UTC) reply

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@ Bbb23: I must have missed your question when I returned from a short wikibreak. At this point I don't remember what led me to this investigation instead of the other, sorry. — Brianhe ( talk) 14:42, 21 July 2015 (UTC) reply

Group 4 – The following are  Confirmed to each other, and although technically confirmed to one or more puppets,  Behavioural evidence needs evaluation to determine if they’re related to Groups 1, 2 or 3:

information Administrator note This is a horrendously complex case, with numerous accounts listed at several SPI pages, and CheckUser connecting together several groups of accounts, but leaving open the question of whether the groups are connected to one another. The filer says "User:Shrutikedia is obvious sock of blocked sock User:Pratkipedia." Those two accounts were clearly either the same person or else two people working for the same company, but Shrutikedia had not edited for almost five years when Pratkipedia first edited, so it is scarcely sockpuppetry, and in any case Shrutikedia has not edited for over six years now, so there's no point pursuing that one. All the other accounts listed here have clearly been used by editors who have been abusing multiple accounts, so I have blocked those that were not already blocked. At present, I don't have time to put in the work needed to decide whether all the groups are one sockpuppeteer or several, so I am leaving the case open. I may come back to it when I have more time, or someone else may be kind enough to do the job. The editor who uses the pseudonym " JamesBWatson" ( talk) 10:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC) reply

  •  Clerk note: They are all technically and behaviorally connected. It is very hard to say whether it is one person or several of them working together. I propose to merge the Richa101091 case into this case and to rename it to Kabir Vaghela (the oldest account), i.e. to join them all together. Even if they are not the same person, I think it is better to have all of them at one place. Vanjagenije (talk) 11:28, 25 July 2015 (UTC) reply
  • Yes, that seems to me the best thing to do. The editor who uses the pseudonym " JamesBWatson" ( talk) 19:19, 25 July 2015 (UTC) reply
Could somebody clue me in, is this user banned or just blocked? I found a page marked as the former [8] but no evidence that it is so. — Brianhe ( talk) 23:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC) reply
Oh darn, my mistake -- I was looking at the source code, it was in an if block. Never mind. Feel free to strike today's comments. Brianhe ( talk) 23:24, 26 July 2015 (UTC) reply

25 August 2015

Suspected sockpuppets

My involvement started when I removed an obvious copyrighted image from Shraddha Kapoor page[ [9]], User:SpacemanSpiff filled me in that the originator is a known sock. On the now deleted commons it was claimed it was the persons own work on this (File:Shraddha Kapoor for Noblesse.jpg)[ [10]] it was given to us by the owner which would be suggestive that they are connected. The sceond photo is more telling about their good faith or lack there of "Because it is been given to us by Shraddha Kapoor her-self" Hell in a Bucket ( talk) 12:36, 25 August 2015 (UTC) reply

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  • What a mess.  Confirmed the following:

14 October 2015

Suspected sockpuppets


These accounts exist for no other purpose than recreating the salted Prime Focus Technologies as Prime focus technologies and associated Patrick Macdonald-King.

Additional behavioral evidence at WP:COIN#Patrick Macdonald-King ( permlink). Brianhe ( talk) 13:15, 14 October 2015 (UTC) reply

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All listed accounts are  Confirmed matches to each other. At best, speaking in technical terms, this batch appears to be  Possible. I'd probably just go with behavioral evidence to link the accounts with the accounts in the archive. No sleepers/other accounts found this time. Elockid( Boo!) 15:37, 14 October 2015 (UTC) reply

  • I've blocked the accounts referencing the SPI and have tagged them as confirmed to the main master. Behaviorally there's no difference as they are writing client articles in similar format, but there's the strong possibility that there are multiple editors involved (reason for the possible on the technical side) from the same PR company, so we should perhaps rename the SPI from Kabir Vaghela to Everymedia as that is what the accounts are all about. — Spaceman Spiff 16:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC) reply

05 July 2019

Suspected sockpuppets

WP:DUCK per editing history. All SPAs for an Indian film company and/or executive. One of them "disclosed" paid editing in a hard-to-find location [11]. Note habitual reference to subject by first name alone in edit summary [12] and in edits like [13]. ☆ Bri ( talk) 20:13, 5 July 2019 (UTC) reply

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Filmfanatic500 is  Stale. HenryWilkinson94 and VeryRealEditor are  Likely to each other and Red X Unrelated to Kabir Vaghela. Blocked the two non-stale puppets without tags. Closing.-- Bbb23 ( talk) 15:33, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Kabir_Vaghela/Archive&oldid=1142567100"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Kabir Vaghela

Kabir Vaghela ( talk + · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser( log) · investigate · cuwiki)
18 February 2015
Suspected sockpuppets


On August 1, Richa101091 created a draft article Draft:Prime Focus Technologies. On August 11, it was moved into mainspace by Kdzrules [1]. It was moved to the odd title, " Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), a title Richa101091 has previously created it at and had it speedy deleted at. This was doen to avoid page protection at Prime Focus Technologies, but I find it unlikely two independent users would pick such a title on their own - they are either socks or meatpuppets. Note, that the Prime Focus Technologies was locked down to do recreation by socks of Eli786 (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Eli786/Archive) - I don't see any actual evidence these two are socks of Eli, although it is not impossible.

In addition to PFT, Richa101091 and Kdzrules have overlapped editing on Prime Focus Limited - parent company of PFT; Namit Malhotra - an important PF person; Merzin Tavaria - another PF person; and Daler Mehndi‎ - an unrelated singer. No way that is coincidence with so few edits by each. Either they are the same person, or are working for the same PR firm.

Request CU to confirm if these two are actual socks, or just meatpuppets, & possibly also to determine if they are related to Eli786. ThaddeusB ( talk) 17:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC) reply

Also, they both uploaded the same picture to File:Namit Malhotra.jpg (kdz's upload was deleted on licensing concerns). Neither uses edit summaries (previous Eli786 socks generally did.) -- ThaddeusB ( talk) 17:43, 18 February 2015 (UTC) reply
Comments by other users

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  • Hi, me and Kevin are friends. We are learning on ways to use and improve Wikipedia. There may be edits on similar articles as we try and improve the pages that either of us have created or edited. This is a learning process for us. We never realized there can be an issue due to this. Richa101091 ( talk) 13:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC) reply
Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
27 February 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

User:Rupali Lohiya created page Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP yesterday, it was deleted under CSD A7. Next day User:VidhiJ recreated the same page. After I tagged it for CSD again, the user repeatedly removed the speedy tag until receiving final warning. As soon as final warning was received sockpuppeteer User:Richa101091 suddenly started editing the article. This caused me to check the talk page and contribs of Richa101091, talk page was full of CSD notices for film companies, and contribs were only to film company articles. Requesting check user to find any sleeper accounts and confirm accounts are related. - War wizard90 ( talk) 07:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC) reply

And now I just found this as well: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kdzrules/Archive where Richa101091 was previously suspected/warned for being a sock. - War wizard90 ( talk) 07:19, 27 February 2015 (UTC) reply
Added User:TirthaV for similar behavior, SPA editing on Emmay Entertainment and dispute the AfD for that article. - War wizard90 ( talk) 00:17, 28 February 2015 (UTC) reply
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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
  • Group 1 -  Confirmed - Emmay entertainment articles primarily:
  • Group 2 -  Possible To each other:
  • Group 3 - Main Aur Mr. Riight -  Confirmed:
  • Every group/account listed is  Possible to each other unless otherwise noted.
  • SilviaFern ( talk · contribs)  Possilikely (a mix between possible and likely) Group 1
  • AayushyaB ( talk · contribs) & CatchUpSunil ( talk · contribs)  Confirmed
  • PoojaPathare in group 1 appears to have a behavioral connection to Deepii1234 in Group 2
  • ThisIsFinal ( talk · contribs) appears to have a behavioral connection to Richa101091 of group 1 & EMWikiEdits who I mention below
  • While Groups 1 & 3 have technical differences, I wouldn't be surprised if it were close collaborative meatpuppetry*
  • EMWikiEdits ( talk · contribs) is indicates close collaborative meatpuppetry* with group 2, rather than sockpuppetry.
*(as in in the same room)
@ Callanecc: so your aware of the mess made here. Also i'm dropping some stuff on CU wiki in case this comes up again. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 05:01, 7 March 2015 (UTC) reply
Thanks, glad you ended up with this one. :P Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) 01:13, 9 March 2015 (UTC) reply
  • I've blocked and tagged all of group 1. I didn't find much behavioral evidence to link the two accounts together in group 2. Behaviorally, I think Deepii1234 is related to group 1, as the account has the same style of focusing his/her edits on one article and a similar, clunky writing style: Rupali Lohiya, Deepii1234 I've blocked Praseetha.w as a sock of Cinemawaali and issued a warning to Cinemawaali. Behaviorally, I don't think they're related to the main group. I've blocked SilviaFern as a sock of the main group, as it showed a similar interest in promoting Prime Focus Technologies: Kdzrules, SilviaFern I've blocked AayushyaB as a sock of CatchUpSunil and issued a warning to the master. There isn't much behavioral evidence to tie them to group 1. I've tagged EMWikiEdits as a behavioral sock of the main group. The account contested the deletion of other articles, like this sock and it tried to clean up the article, just like the master account. I've blocked ThisIsFinal as a sock of the main group for posting the same edit summary (Sectioning added) as EMWikiEdits Alright, I think that wraps up this mess. Mike V • Talk 02:41, 14 March 2015 (UTC) reply
20 March 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

Recreated Emmay entertainment article. @ DeltaQuad:Since this one account is a WP:DUCK of the other's I didn't request CheckUser, but since you were heavily involved in the last case, I wanted to notify you in case you wanted to do anything on the CU side. - War wizard90 ( talk) 06:18, 20 March 2015 (UTC) reply

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 Clerk note: All his edits are deleted, so I can't see them, but if he really recreated Emmay entertainment article, than   Looks like a duck to me. Vanjagenije (talk) 19:03, 23 March 2015 (UTC) reply

31 March 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

Reposted the Emmay Entertainment article at Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP - See Special:Diff/653897814 - War wizard90 ( talk) 01:32, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply

After reviewing other contribs of SocialSunil, I believe these other SPA (Indian film companies, fimls, and related actors, which is always the target of these socks) accounts are also related, going to request CU to confirm.

All of these accounts edited the same article Emraan Hashmi:

More notes: ZmeuraCapsuni also edited on Mr. X (film) on March 28th, and that same day Shahzebali798 added Mr. X to the filmography section of the Emraan Hashmi articles as seen here: Special:Diff/653994914. More possible linked socks that have edited Mr. X (film):

Users DB135 and Golden5220 have both edited Mr. X (film), Roy (film), Dolly Ki Doli, and Badlapur (film), more socks editing on Badlapur (film):

I randomly picked 1 name from each group and put it into the Editor Interaction Analyzer for these results: [1] to further link all these accounts. This led me to check the page history of Bang Bang! which Prithviraj2002, Shwayze, and Samyamoy (note username similar to above "Jay Samyamoy") have all edited, and brings into question the following accounts:

Here is another Editor Interaction analysis to link the Sockmaster (Richa101091) which shows Samyamoy and Richa101091 have 10 similar pages edited, Samyamoy and Golden5220 have edited 3 pages in common, and all 3 of those accounts have edited on Kick (2014 film): [2] Suspicious accounts editing on Kick (2014 film) include:

A 3rd Editor Interaction analysis to further link these accounts: [3]
Here we go again, I am adding the following user to the investigation:

Unfortunately, if I keep going through more contributions, I undoubtedly could find many more. Hopefully CU can dredge up some more sleepers from this, also check out the User Compare report, which is very telling and shows just how far-reaching this sock farm may be, 142 distinct pages have been edited by at least two of the above accounts. - War wizard90 ( talk) 02:54, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply

@ Vanjagenije: I respectfully have to disagree that the behavioral link between these accounts is enough for check user. I was not looking at similarity in actual edits, because the nature of the meat farm. You have to look at the behavior of their contributions. Am I the only one who finds it suspicious that there are so many editors with redlinks who come in and do 5-10 edits a month on nothing but Indian-film related articles? Such an extremely specific field. To me it seems highly likely that hundrends of accounts are being created, logged into, used for several edits, and then logged out and onto another sock to avoid detection (another behavior confirmed by the user contributions). Not to mention that we have already seen several confirmed socks in the past. There are also several similarities in many of the usernames, the use of "sunil or suneel" (i.e. CathUpSunil - confirmed, SocialSunil, Suneel gujrati), and the use of "J, Jai, or Jay" (i.e. VidhiJ - confirmed, JaiHoHeisenberg, Jay Hiwase). Also, the fact that some of the users I listed as socks were either already accused of socks of other in the past, accused of being a sock based on behavior, or listed as a sock on another SPI concurrent to this one, has to be more than a coincidence. I think we are just picking off a few socks at a time, rather than getting to the real root of the problem. I will continue to look for behavioral connections in order to get more support for checkuser in the future, but I think it would be a shame not to look into this and let them pass by because it appears to be a big problem. I know the decision is ultimately up to the clerks and CU's, so I won't push any further on this SPI, but if we don't I think we are letting one slip by, just my humble opinion. - War wizard90 ( talk) 05:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC) reply


Comments by other users

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  • I remember the accounts ScrewHue and Prackashrawat being tied into the case for the account TheDevNegi, and I similarly recall that the only way we got the &^%! sock to stop recreating the article was to protect it form recreation - I'm not proud of this per se, but I put a 24 month protection on it since the in between message from the previous protections seemed to be lost on the account holder(s). If these are in fact all tied to each other in gigantic sock/meat farm then I would strongly advise putting permanent pending changes protection on the articles they edit to ensure that both fronts on the war against the socks are sealed. TomStar81 ( Talk) 07:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply
  • I don’t know why I should be a sockpuppet just because I do edits on the same topic like the others. I mainly work on the German Wikipedia and I do edits here when I see that something is wrong. Do my edits hurt anyone? It's not fun anymore. And I'm definitely not a sockpuppet. And no one can proof that I am one of them. -- Shwayze  sing♪ 09:23, 31 March 2015 (UTC) reply
  • For what it's worth, Shwayze does have quite a few edits on the German Wikipedia, which isn't true of any of the other accounts, but has also edited on 50 of the 149 articles listed in the User Compare report, which could be a big coincidence. Also all of their edits on the German Wikipedia (and a few other languages) have all been the same SPA editing for these same types of articles, and the fact that another user is convinced that they are a sock of User:Shez 15, makes me think this one is still worth looking into. - War wizard90 ( talk) 03:20, 3 April 2015 (UTC) reply
  • I was notified of this sock farm by the opener of this SPI. This seems like an infestation and paid editing for promoting Roshan's appearance. The editing pattern of Richa101091 shockingly similar to 1Majid and the others. Definitely a farm that needs to be burnt down. — Indian:BIO [ ChitChat ] 06:44, 2 April 2015 (UTC) reply
Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
​— DoRD ( talk)​ 16:03, 15 April 2015 (UTC) reply
24 June 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

Recreated Emmay Entertainment & Motion Pictures LLP Special:Diff/668462037 - War wizard90 ( talk) 22:22, 24 June 2015 (UTC) reply

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
29 June 2015
Suspected sockpuppets


obvious sock of Richa101091 the Prime Focus fan, started editing Prime Focus Limited a few days after master was notified SPI was underway [3] Brianhe ( talk) 23:15, 29 June 2015 (UTC) reply

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Comment: It would be great if we could get a sleeper check against this account as well. - War wizard90 ( talk) 01:10, 30 June 2015 (UTC) reply

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
29 June 2015
Suspected sockpuppets

WP:DUCK attempting to get Prime Focus Technologies article reintroduced.

Two users edited now-deleted Prime Focus drafts with evasive caps and punct variations. User:Shrutikedia is obvious sock of blocked sock User:Pratkipedia.

Discussed at WP:COIN, opened SPI at request of FreeRangeFrog Brianhe ( talk) 23:04, 29 June 2015 (UTC) Brianhe ( talk) 23:04, 29 June 2015 (UTC) reply

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments
@ Bbb23: I must have missed your question when I returned from a short wikibreak. At this point I don't remember what led me to this investigation instead of the other, sorry. — Brianhe ( talk) 14:42, 21 July 2015 (UTC) reply

Group 4 – The following are  Confirmed to each other, and although technically confirmed to one or more puppets,  Behavioural evidence needs evaluation to determine if they’re related to Groups 1, 2 or 3:

information Administrator note This is a horrendously complex case, with numerous accounts listed at several SPI pages, and CheckUser connecting together several groups of accounts, but leaving open the question of whether the groups are connected to one another. The filer says "User:Shrutikedia is obvious sock of blocked sock User:Pratkipedia." Those two accounts were clearly either the same person or else two people working for the same company, but Shrutikedia had not edited for almost five years when Pratkipedia first edited, so it is scarcely sockpuppetry, and in any case Shrutikedia has not edited for over six years now, so there's no point pursuing that one. All the other accounts listed here have clearly been used by editors who have been abusing multiple accounts, so I have blocked those that were not already blocked. At present, I don't have time to put in the work needed to decide whether all the groups are one sockpuppeteer or several, so I am leaving the case open. I may come back to it when I have more time, or someone else may be kind enough to do the job. The editor who uses the pseudonym " JamesBWatson" ( talk) 10:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC) reply

  •  Clerk note: They are all technically and behaviorally connected. It is very hard to say whether it is one person or several of them working together. I propose to merge the Richa101091 case into this case and to rename it to Kabir Vaghela (the oldest account), i.e. to join them all together. Even if they are not the same person, I think it is better to have all of them at one place. Vanjagenije (talk) 11:28, 25 July 2015 (UTC) reply
  • Yes, that seems to me the best thing to do. The editor who uses the pseudonym " JamesBWatson" ( talk) 19:19, 25 July 2015 (UTC) reply
Could somebody clue me in, is this user banned or just blocked? I found a page marked as the former [8] but no evidence that it is so. — Brianhe ( talk) 23:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC) reply
Oh darn, my mistake -- I was looking at the source code, it was in an if block. Never mind. Feel free to strike today's comments. Brianhe ( talk) 23:24, 26 July 2015 (UTC) reply

25 August 2015

Suspected sockpuppets

My involvement started when I removed an obvious copyrighted image from Shraddha Kapoor page[ [9]], User:SpacemanSpiff filled me in that the originator is a known sock. On the now deleted commons it was claimed it was the persons own work on this (File:Shraddha Kapoor for Noblesse.jpg)[ [10]] it was given to us by the owner which would be suggestive that they are connected. The sceond photo is more telling about their good faith or lack there of "Because it is been given to us by Shraddha Kapoor her-self" Hell in a Bucket ( talk) 12:36, 25 August 2015 (UTC) reply

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

  • What a mess.  Confirmed the following:

14 October 2015

Suspected sockpuppets


These accounts exist for no other purpose than recreating the salted Prime Focus Technologies as Prime focus technologies and associated Patrick Macdonald-King.

Additional behavioral evidence at WP:COIN#Patrick Macdonald-King ( permlink). Brianhe ( talk) 13:15, 14 October 2015 (UTC) reply

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

All listed accounts are  Confirmed matches to each other. At best, speaking in technical terms, this batch appears to be  Possible. I'd probably just go with behavioral evidence to link the accounts with the accounts in the archive. No sleepers/other accounts found this time. Elockid( Boo!) 15:37, 14 October 2015 (UTC) reply

  • I've blocked the accounts referencing the SPI and have tagged them as confirmed to the main master. Behaviorally there's no difference as they are writing client articles in similar format, but there's the strong possibility that there are multiple editors involved (reason for the possible on the technical side) from the same PR company, so we should perhaps rename the SPI from Kabir Vaghela to Everymedia as that is what the accounts are all about. — Spaceman Spiff 16:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC) reply

05 July 2019

Suspected sockpuppets

WP:DUCK per editing history. All SPAs for an Indian film company and/or executive. One of them "disclosed" paid editing in a hard-to-find location [11]. Note habitual reference to subject by first name alone in edit summary [12] and in edits like [13]. ☆ Bri ( talk) 20:13, 5 July 2019 (UTC) reply

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

Filmfanatic500 is  Stale. HenryWilkinson94 and VeryRealEditor are  Likely to each other and Red X Unrelated to Kabir Vaghela. Blocked the two non-stale puppets without tags. Closing.-- Bbb23 ( talk) 15:33, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Kabir_Vaghela/Archive&oldid=1142567100"

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