Please list evidence below this line. Remember to sign at the end of your section with 4 tilde characters "~~~~"
Roger Pearse makes the edit [1].Tedjaniszewski, a single edit account, makes the edit [2]. IP 66.66.101.107 makes the edit [3]. This IP has a total of three edits. All three diffs are to edits in the same article, reverting the same material, in close succession, two are giving the exact same reason. As such, there is reason to think that they may be socks of Roger Pearse. This is why I have requested this investigation. Thanks. Civilizededucationtalk 15:36, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Please list evidence below this line. Remember to sign at the end of your section with 4 tilde characters "~~~~"
Roger is a long-standing contributor to the page Mithraic Mysteries and has expressed strong disagreement with recent substantial edits which added further information, but he has not been able to convince others he is right.
On May 6, an IP account editor 85.228.97.208 appeared on the talk page expressing total agreement with points made by Roger, and writing in a style identical to Roger's own style, and alleging that information is getting removed for no good reason.
One day later (7 May 2011), "another" IP account editor 95.147.141.10 made a series of major edits whose net effect was to delete about one third of the content of the article (from 122,820 bytes to 77,205 bytes). [4] This IP account editor had put obvious effort into making plausible-at-first-sight explanations for each of these edits. (I am attempting to revert these edits, but having technical problems.)
My suspicion is that both these IP accounts are being used as IP socks by Roger himself -- that he is using two IP socks
Diffs...
Several individual edits were automatically tagged on the history page for e.g. "references removed", and "section blanking". Note however the carefully worded justifications given on the history page for each individual edit. They led me to think this is not the work of some naughty kid, but of an intellectual with a serious bee in his or her bonnet. Kalidasa 777 (talk) 04:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Further Diff...
Kalidasa 777 (talk) 01:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Comment. Roger Pearse has edited WP for several years under his own name, or at least the same name under which he also operates an immensely valuable online resource that I've used for a decade. I was hoping that he had edited as 95.147.141.10 inadvertently by not logging in, since all the edits are to a single page and within a limited period of time. This should be an easy thing to admit. I am disappointed to learn that he can be confirmed as Bookman 2011. It would be understandable if he wished to create a WP identity other than his own name; there are of course good reasons and legitimate means for doing so. He has, however, chosen not to explain or defend his actions here, but to insult the WP community as a whole by declaring on his user page that "educated people cannot edit Wikipedia" (a comment that Roger has now more prudently removed). I have no grudge against Roger: quite the contrary, as these diffs [5] [6] [7] show. But he was certifiably aware of the policy on sockpuppetry, having brought a case himself, and thus his behavior is hard to understand. The rules pertaining to socks encourage honesty and accountability, and they apply to everybody, "educated" or not. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:19, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Roger Pearse has another sock account -User:Roger pearse. This should also be blocked. Moreover, it is desirable that he should have been permblocked. He has been making false accusations and claimed me to be indulging in sockpuppetry AFTER an investigation (requested by Roger Pearse) found that his accusation was completely false. He had been owning the Mithraic Mysteries article for years and is fuming because he is not allowed to own it anymore. He is extremely uncivil and is not a scholar of anything, but seems to think that all others are uneducated. He is a decietful guy and has a fraudulant nature. He should not be allowed to continue on WP. He keeps saying numerous things which have no relation with reality and has a compulsive obsession with misrepresenting others, etc., etc., etc., On the whole, he is an elephantine nuisance.-Civilizededucationtalk 04:43, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
209.68.2.181 is a server based in the USA, while 77.86.27.161 is in UK.
But the following 2 diffs tell me that Roger Pearse, 77.86.27.161, and 209.68.2.181 are the same person.
1. Shows that Roger Pearse once edited his own user page as 77.86.27.161
2. Comment by 209.68.2.181 in which he not only continues an argument by 77.86.27.161, but also uses the word "my" in reference to the other number's comment.
The following 2 diffs show how 77.86.27.161, and 209.68.2.181 are editing…
Material about Iranian Mithraism added to article by 77.86.27.161
Same material about Iranian Mithraism added to article by 209.68.2.181
In a lengthy statement on the talk page, Talk:Mithraic_mysteries#To_the_reader_--_article_violates_WP:RS_and_WP:POV Roger (using his own name) has complained: "The article has been contaminated with irrelevant material relating to Persian Mithra."
However, wearing the hats of 77.86.27.161 and 209.68.2.181, Roger has actually added a big new section about Persian Mithra to the article.
Is this good faith editing, or is it a case of WP:GHBH – Roger Pearse attempting to add material which he himself considers irrelevant, just so that he himself can come back and fix it at a later stage? Kalidasa 777 (talk) 03:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Cynwolfe has drawn attention to the unhelpful, baiting tone of statements here by 209.68.2.181. I would add that this tone in itself is a piece of evidence – it is exactly the tone in which Roger Pearse has often written, for instance on his User Page.Kalidasa 777 (talk) 05:05, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Something else I've just noticed... Past vandalism of Mithraic Mysteries page by 77.86.27.161 Massive deletion of information in May this year, which reduced the Mithraic Mysteries page from 122,820 bytes to 77,205 bytes. I suspected at the time that this was Roger's work... Kalidasa 777 (talk) 20:18, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Yeah, right!! FWIW, the following edits are by me:
The rest are not. Kalidasa777 is doing WP:OWN here, and the accusation is just harassment. Not very WP:CIVIL, is it? 209.68.2.181 (talk) 07:21, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
1. Recent behavior...
Doc9871, Newbyguesses, and the Czech IP 90.179.235.249 have recently made numerous edits to talk pages associated with WP:Verification. The Swedish IP 85.228.97.208 and the account Roger Pearse are not currently active. But their past edits resemble what is going on now, and can help us understand what it's all about.
Newby got a 24-hour block on February 22 for persistent disruptive editing. The Czech IP got a 48-hour block on Feb 26. The Doc has been more restrained, but negative and unhelpful all the same. He consistently opposes measures taken against disruption by the others. He also complains that the overall discussion going nowhere, while making no constructive suggestions to move things forward. If (as I suspect) they are the same person, then the Doc is a sort of "good hand" while the others are more "bad hands". (See WP:GHBH)
2. Why I suspect they are RP...
The last Roger Pearse SPI showed that Roger is quite capable of using IP addresses from different parts of the world. In that instance, one IP was from the UK, one from the USA, but both IPs were recognized as Roger ducks. There was an element of WP:GHBH in how they were being used.
His puppets all have a similar styles: an educated voice that moves between pleasant and abusive, make plausible-sounding diatribes with very little substance, and tries to sound friendly but is unable to take seriously the concerns of others. E.g.
Recent statement from 90.179.235.249
He does tries to vary the voice, for instance as Doc in the following statement he tries to sound mature and judicious, but still makes generalized attacks on WP, as well as insinuations about the GF of a particular administrator.
As Newby, he becomes rather young and cute. But in the end he gets carried away by his own eloquence, as when Newby denounces another editor as "a gang of one... bent on disruption".
Recent statement by Newbyguesses
An unfortunately apt description of RP's own current role in WP!
The clincher for me came when I read the comment from Doc, dismissing the idea that the Czech IP address might be someone's puppet:
"I mean, freaking Prague?! "
Doc's "freaking Prague" comment
Just as the Swedish IP 85.228.97.208 said in an earlier Roger Pearse SPI (please see that SPI for reasons to think 85.228.97.208 was an RP sock.)
"I'm just here to confirm what you've already figured out: I'm from freaking Sweden."
85.228.97.208 "freaking Sweden" comment
3. What difference does it make if they are RP?
I think it can help adminstrators and GF editors get a handle on what is happening and the motives. Roger's sense of grievance against WP is no secret -- he has spelled it out on his user page. As he sees it, WP is a hotbed of gaming, trolling, agenda-pushing, brinking and general nastiness. He himself has been a victim of all these horrible tactics. So why shouldn't he do the same? Kalidasa 777 (talk) 03:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
TNXMan , you have written that Roger Pearse is stale, so there is no connection to be made, and that no evidence has been presented that Doc and Newby are doing more than taking the same side in a dispute.
Does "stale" mean that Roger Pearse edits are too long ago for CU to work, or does it mean that the whole issue of Roger is now irrelevant? If it means the first, I defer to your expertise. If you mean the second, well, the reason I see Roger as relevant is that even though his account is now inactive, his pattern of behavior continues.
My suspicions were not raised by the fact that Doc and Newby have argued the same side in a dispute. On all sides in the disputes around Verifiability, there have been legitimate arguments from GF participants. For instance S.Marshall and Be Confident have taking diametrically different views whether the policy page needs to change, and also about whether it should be tagged, but I don't for one moment doubt their GF. No, what raised my suspicions is the way Newby and Doc argue – an educated yet abusive style strongly reminiscent of Roger and his puppets in previous disputes. As I see it, Roger Pearse is the connection between Doc and Newby.
Specific evidence...
In the case of Doc, the similarity of wording between "freaking Prague" and the "freaking Sweden" in the diffs above look to me like a quacking duck, if not a smoking gun.
In the case of Newby, you're right, more evidence is needed than I put in before... Well, one thing that has fed my suspicions is the way he makes detrimental changes to talk pages for his own ends. Not many editors do this sort of thing, but Roger and his socks have often done it.
An example, here Newby disrupts Verifiability talk page by adding two meaningless headings: "Given the edits above" and "So French, so chic":
And here is Roger deleting someone else's words off the Mithraic Mysteries talk page last year – words that draw editors attention to policies like WP:V...
Roger "amends" talk page Mithraic Mysteries
More diffs can be found if necessary, but it will take time...Kalidasa 777 (talk) 22:30, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Another connection: As S.Marshall has mentioned, one reason the Czech IP 90... was blocked was remarks considered antisemitic. Well, Roger P. has also been criticized for writing antisemitic stuff, in an offwiki blog, which he himself linked to from a WP mainspace article.
Comment re perceived antisemitism of the blog...
This blog of Roger's, which some perceive as antisemitic is linked to from Reference Note 22 in the following former mainspace article...
Old revision of Mithraic Mysteries by Roger
I will say, though, that I'm not personally convinced that Roger opposes Jews any more than he opposes the world in general... and Wikipedia in particular! Kalidasa 777 (talk) 23:03, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
On February 21, I made a post to the WP:V talk page. I mentioned an example of something that might be dealt with differently if the truth/verifiability policy changed. The example I mentioned had to do with the Mithraic Mysteries page.... Very quick response came from Newby, that obviously that Mithraism page needs an expert... He even "helpfully" stuck a heading to say so right on top of my posting.
It was a rather strange response really, when other editors understood that my posting about the WP:V policy, and the Mithraism page was simply an example. Was Newby just missing the point thru childishness? Maybe... but Roger has long presented himself as the great expert on Mithraism, scandalously rejected by WP editors.
This is another reason I think Newby is either Roger Pearse himself, or a very close associate of Roger's – some fan of Roger's blog, perhaps? Who knows which, and does it really matter? Kalidasa 777 (talk) 08:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
Absolutely absurd, half-baked nonsense. This user should never be allowed to use WP:DUCK as an argument... ever... after this one, because they obviously do not understand it. CU's: tie us together. This is pitiful. Doc talk 04:18, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't think they're socks, exactly, but it is pretty annoying how Doc jumps in to complain when people try to deal with NewbyG's disruptions. As for the ohters, I don't know about them. Dicklyon (talk) 04:48, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I do think it's highly likely that IP 90.x.x.x is a logged out editor. I can't imagine a random IP address from Prague without previous connection to the debate has popped in to make the edits to WP:V that he did, and he's used the anonymity to make other disruptive remarks, including antisemitic ones for which he was rightly blocked. I do not believe this is the same editor as Doc9871 or Newbyguesses.—S Marshall T/C 12:09, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Doc9871's and Newbyguesses's editing style are so dissimilar that considering them to be socks is absurd. Nobody Ent 18:23, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Before we start.....I checked the 90. IP (the Czech one), but only to establish if it was a user editing logged out to avoid being recognised - which it was not. I think before we start checking longstanding editors, someone with more technical skill than I should investigate whether there is anything hinky about this IP or the Swedish one (does not necessarily require the CU tool). If there is nothing, then either this complaint is not one that a checkuser can bring much to (anyone wizardy enough to make it look like they are editing from the Czech Republic when they are actually in Oz is clever enough to spoof other evidence) or it's baseless. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 11:20, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't see enough concrete evidence here to run a checkuser on anyone. Roger Pearse is Stale, so there are no connections to be made there. As far as Doc and Newbyguesses, I see two accounts that have taken the same side in a dispute. No evidence has been presented beyond that to demonstrate they are the same person. Unless there is better evidence forthcoming, I'll mark this for close shortly. TNXMan 15:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)