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.
All accounts involved are WP:SPAs which were created within one hour of each other today, and have been acting with the sole purpose of adding External Link entries which point to encyclopediaofalabama.org.
Note: I am not disputing the potential value of the link - especially if used within appropriate ref tags - this report is only about the way in which a group of accounts all were created for the purpose of adding the link to Wikipedia.
After the first set of additions I added the link to the revertlist of XLinkBot. The link may be of interest, and the users was pointed to that by Anetode and later by me, but I also blocked the first set of accounts for sockpuppetry (I could have used block evasion, which may have been more correct at that point). I also think that the link can be of interest to the wikipedia, but this way of editing is highly inappropriate. I added more possible socks (well, one) to the list above. I would also suggest that the editor chooses one main account, and use that to follow the suggestions given on some of the other accounts (i.e. discuss!). --Dirk BeetstraTC11:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
I believe (hope) that this is just a new user who is either confused or otherwise acting in good faith. They did post a question to the help desk, which is where I noticed that two similar usernames were involved. Ideally, I would recommend a soft-handed approach here; but they should be directed to use a single user account.
The alleged puppetmaster account was blocked due to an issue with WP:USERNAME, and the user encouraged to create a new account - so that account in itself should not be counted against the user. The issue here is specifically with the five user accounts that were created today (22ndstar, 22star, 22stara, 22staral, and 22starala).
Hello, you are correct on several accounts, I am a new user, I was only adding external links, and I was doing it from several different accounts. I have been advised by others on Wikipedia about common practices, and will be better behaved in the future. I plan on spending today contributing additions to all the Alabama county articles currently hosted, and see if I can fill textual gaps in other places. Also, I do not plan on adding any more external links, I will only be adding a new section to the talk page alerting others to relevant external links not already posted, and let the Wiki community decide whether to add them or not. That said, please let me know if there is anything else I should be doing differently. - Thanks 22star (talk) 15:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]