Tertulius

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

21 January 2018

Suspected sockpuppets

Tertulius has already been blocked for having other sockpuppets, but I still wanted to at least have this looked into: the IP's first-ever Wikipedia contribution, a couple of days after the block, was to jump directly into Talk:Docufiction to defend Tertulius' disputed content as having been responsible for the article's encyclopedic value and popularity — basically parroting Tertulius' own evidentially-unsupported argument for it, in similarly florid prose festooned with tangential curlicues about extreme experiences and antinomy — and to attack me for having removed it. Bearcat (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

14 March 2019

Suspected sockpuppets 

-- Amanda (aka DQ) 00:14, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

23 April 2019

Suspected sockpuppets


New editor this month, who (a) admits on their user page that they "return to editing the Wikipedia after a long but intermittent collaboration using IP", and (b) gave the game away by attempting to add a new offsite link on the docufiction article to a self-published PDF which is titled as "appendage to the Wikipedia's article on docufiction", and which is a literal word-for-word copy-paste rehash of the exact same original research "hybridity in docufiction" thesis Tertulius was trying to push last year. One suspects he may also come to regret saving the document in a webspace from which his real name can easily be gleaned, to boot. Bearcat (talk) 07:18, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

15 September 2019

Suspected sockpuppets


Recreation, still in fundamentally advertorial rather than encyclopedic form and still with no stronger evidence of reliable source coverage, of Ricardo Costa (filmmaker) and all of his films. Technically they should be blocked immediately on WP:DUCK grounds, but CU is still needed as nearly all past sockchecks on this user have caught additional sleeper accounts that had not already been identified as suspicious by the original filer of the request. Bearcat (talk) 14:53, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

Blocked Lusouser per Duck (clerk please check tags and clean up). CU still required for sleepers but old accounts maybe out of reach. Please consider a CU block on any IPs used. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:04, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

17 December 2019

Suspected sockpuppets

Repeatedly adding external links to personal essays by Ricardo Costa. The range 2001:818:E8F1:2A00::/64 seems to be all theirs too. A few days ago, 2001:818:E8F1:2A00:F4F4:EC22:9412:D190 added a PDF link to Edgar Morin: [1], and to 14th Dalai Lama: [2], then when it was reverted, the Wikstroler account was created and reinstated it: [3]. Five minutes after Wikstroler added the same PDF to Interdisciplinarity: [4], 2001:818:E8F1:2A00:9842:B6B5:D88B:38B added a wikilink to it: [5]. The rest of Wikstroler's few edits are inserting the same PDF into other articles, plus linking to articles about Ricardo Costa on other Wikipedias when I questioned his notability: [6].

I looked at those, and saw that Wikstroler a few days ago added the same PDF to the same articles on Spanish Wikipedia. 2001:818:E8F1:2A00:9842:B6B5:D88B:38B has today added photos (uploaded by sock Lusouser, blocked on en and pt but not fr.wikipedia) to pt:Ricardo Costa, fr:Ricardo Costa, and es:Ricardo Costa, and edited fr:Edgar Morin. IamNotU (talk) 03:34, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PS, I happened to find another old sock. Ulissipus was active for several years during the time of the master, Tertulius. Same type of edits, external links to self-published PDFs on rcfilms.dotster.com about marine biology, docufiction, Ricardo Costa, etc. --IamNotU (talk) 07:05, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another sock, SeaandEarth, started editing yesterday, spamming the same PDF. --IamNotU (talk) 20:53, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Responding to Oshwah, sorry, I should have been more clear about the connection to the master and previously-confirmed socks. Sometimes I try not to be too specific so as not to tip them off about how to avoid detection in the future. The connections become very obvious if you spend some time looking at the master's talk page and history, and those of the socks, for example User talk:Lusouser. It centers around promotion of the work and self-published writings of filmmaker Ricardo Costa, (see also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ricardo Costa (filmmaker) (2nd nomination) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ricardo Costa (filmmaker)), in articles related to filmmaking, philosophy, and biology, especially fossils. Costa's essays are hosted on his personal website, http://rcfilms.dotster.com. They are in my opinion rather low-quality; the section on the Dalai Lama in the "HAVING TO BE" PDF that these users linked is just three paragraphs of, I'm sorry to say, mundane high-school level writing. I only mention this because it suggests that it would not be very likely that an independent editor would add these essays to Wikipedia, and particularly to do so repeatedly, to multiple articles, and to argue that it's "an important contribution to understanding Dalai Lama’s role and thought".[7]

I'll try to list a few obvious connections:

By the way, there are also a fair number of older IPs that show the same patterns of idiosyncratic interests and promoting Costa's essays, for example Special:Contributions/148.63.72.15, Special:Contributions/94.62.208.59, and compare [43] with [44]; all of which geolocate to Portugal, generally the Lisbon area.

On balance it seems to me, considering the long history of confirmed and even admitted socking, and the unique behavior patterns tirelessly promoting Ricardo Costa's original research, according to WP:DUCK to be extremely unlikely that there's any explanation for this other than that all these edits are made by the same person. --IamNotU (talk) 06:47, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

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Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

IamNotU - I appreciate the response and the additional information and details; thank you. :-) The Ulissipus account is many years stale, so there's no need to block it. All other users have been appropriately blocked; will tag the accounts and then close this SPI report. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 20:36, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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