Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jagged 85

Jagged 85

Jagged 85 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

Populated account categories: suspected

For archived investigations, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jagged 85/Archive.

19 May 2022

– This SPI case is open.

Suspected sockpuppets

• Maestro2016 (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

This concern was previously brought up in 2020 with no action taken, but after discussing it with fellow WP:VG members, I feel it needs to be looked into again. I believe there's a compelling amount of evidence to suggest that Maestro2016 is in fact Jagged 85.

Here are my specific concerns:

1. Editing similarities: Maestro2016, who created their account in 2016 but appears to already have been familiar with editing Wikipedia, edits the exact same topics as Jagged 85, particularly Islamic history, video games, films, math, and music. The Editor Interaction Analyzer shows over a thousand shared articles, including hundreds of edits to articles like List of best-selling video games, List of best-selling video game franchises, Racing game, and Salim–Javed. Jagged 85 and Maestro2016 are both active at similar times of day (aside from a two-hour shift, they're both active at night, based on XTools analysis).
2. Misuse/abuse of sources: Like Jagged 85, Maestro2016 has a history of misusing/abusing sources. Their talk page contains many warnings (this, this, this, this, and this, just for starters) regarding their sourcing practices, which include adding sources that do not back up the claims they add, taking sources out of context, twisting sources' words to make something sound grander than it actually is, and using unreliable sources. These are all practices Jagged 85 was known for.

   Adding to this, I'm mainly familiar with Maestro2016 because they frequently edit the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 article, which is an article I've been nurturing for a while in preparation for bringing it to FAC. I’ve caught them on two occasions misrepresenting and abusing sources as Jagged did, which is what made me suspicious. Firstly, Maestro added a claim to Sonic 2 ([1]) and The Swinging Star ([2]) and provided a source that, while related to the topic, did not back up the claim anywhere. This abuse lines up with behavior noted at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Cleanup: "inventing claims using a source related to the topic but which does not verify the claim." This does not appear to be an isolated incident, either; another example from Mughal Empire ([3]) was noted in the previous SPI. Secondly, I recently caught Maestro2016 using a preorder report in an attempt to inflate Sonic 2's sales to 7.55 million. Not only are preorders not an indicator of final sales, Sega's official number (provided in this GameTap retrospective) is only six million. A similar example regarding Donkey Kong Famicom sales is noted at a Jagged 85 cleanup page, in which Jagged combined sales of two versions of Donkey Kong to make it seem like it sold more on a single platform than it actually did.

3. Behavioral similarities: There are further behavior overlaps beyond topics and misuse of sources. Both Jagged and Maestro spend copious amounts of time making massive edits that add thousands of characters of text. Compare Maestro2016's recent contribs to Jagged 85's old contribs—the behavior's incredibly similar. Both also have a history of uploading 30-second .ogg files ([4][5]), a rare activity among most editors. I also find Maestro2016's talk page behavior very similar to Jagged's, namely in how they bludgeon by writing verbose responses to every single point an editor makes. Compare Jagged 85's September 2012 unblock requests to Maestro2016's responses to the 2020 SPI.

It appears as if the 2020 SPI was treated as a "misplaced content dispute" rather than a genuine sockpuppetry case, so I think that this absolutely warrants to be properly looked into since it wasn't when first brought up. I'm hoping to be persuaded otherwise, but I think it's very plausible we have a sock on our hands. JOEBRO64 18:58, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

• It's interesting to see this here, as I have been privately wondering about a connection for awhile myself. As one of the editors involved in compiling the copious evidence against Jagged that resulted in his ban, I noticed a lot of similarities in Maestro's rapid-fire editing and periodic misuse of sources. I do believe this should be taken seriously, as Jagged did inestimable damage during his time on the project and never seemed interested in owning up to or fixing any of his numerous mistakes. Indrian (talk) 20:25, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• I just came across this now. I thought it was already concluded years ago that I'm not a sockpuppet of this Jagged 85 user back in 2020? Furthermore, there were three other earlier sockpuppet allegations accusing me of being sockpuppets of three other users (here, here and here). The conclusion of all four sockpuppet investigations (including CheckUser analysis) was that I'm innocent of all sockpuppet allegations, and that these were misplaced content disputes. I believe this is yet another misplaced content dispute, as with the previous four allegations (including one involving the same user). In this case, it appears the point of contention is over my edits to the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 article and video game sales figures in general. I'm not aware of Jagged 85 writing extensively about either Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or video game sales figures. As far as I'm aware, Jagged 85 was mainly driven by some kind of anti-Western agenda with a bunch of fake claims about "Islamic inventors first inventing X" or "Japanese video games first inventing Y"... things which I'm not at all known for. Back in 2020, Worldbruce made some strong arguments for why the allegation was not true (mainly in regards to my edits in Indian-related articles). Maestro2016 (talk) 18:45, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

  Actually, there was no CU done on the prior SPI for Jagged 85. This is not a content dispute, multiple editors hold these suspicions and significant behavioral evidence exists. -- ferret (talk) 18:51, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

• Just wanna chip in. I've been involved in cleaning up after Maestro2016 edits and I can attest his edits are very similar to Jagged-85. You can see talk pages of Information age,Mughal empire,Discrete_cosine_transform,Integrated Circuit and Great Divergence where I documented some examples of it. Or just check my edits. For instance in his edits to Economy of the Kingdom of Mysore he invents out of thin air the claim that Mysore had $2,000 per capita income. Or in his edits to p–n junction isolation he addited bunch of spam about Atalla with no clear connection to the article. Oh take a look at his edits to LED lamp,LED display and LED circuit where he claims that Attala was co-inventor of these technologies when all the source says is that "Developmental work was done in John Atalla's solid-state laboratory". And thats just a tip of the Iceberg. DMKR2005 (talk) 20:21, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

• What do the CU results mean? Does it mean that one or two of the banned user's socks was active in the same city and/or vicinity? I remember it being mentioned in the 2020 SPI that the banned user was from the same country. Maestro2016 (talk) 00:30, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  It means exactly what is says. You edit from the same ISP/country as Jagged. Again, there was no checkuser done in the 2020 Jagged 85 SPI, and no CU statements were made at all on it. You were never analyzed by a checkuser against Jagged until now. -- ferret (talk) 00:43, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: Should User:Randomnest be checked as a potential sock as well? That account has very few edits before swooping into this SPI page, and their first edits were a very strange (staged?) dispute with Maestro (diff). That's highly unusual. (I will make a side note that there's an argument that Maestro2016 is some sort of CLEANSTART attempt, but even if Maestro really is unrelated, it should be concerning to Maestro that people see your strange interpretation of sources as comparable to Jagged's. I'm not an expert on Jagged85's contributions so won't say much further there, but poor use of sources is the kind of thing that can get someone in trouble regardless of sockpuppet status or not.) SnowFire (talk) 02:05, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
• No I shouldn't because I have done nothing wrong. My editing history is made in response to Maestro2016 and not vice versa. Maestro2016 just like banned user Jagged85 has an agenda going on we all know what it is. And apparently I am not the only one who realized that. --Randomnest

• In response to TheJoeBro64's allegations above:
  • 1. Looking at the editor analyzer link posted above, there does appear to be quite a bit of overlap when it comes to video games, films, and music, but I don't see any such overlap when it comes to mathematics or Islamic history. When doing a Crtl+F search, the words "math" and "Islam" don't pop up anywhere and the word "Muslim" only pops up once. It appears TheJoeBro64 may be conflating Indian history articles (which I have written quite a bit about) with Islamic history articles (which I don't remember writing about). Nevertheless, there is some overlap, which in the 2020 SPI was explained by the banned user appearing to come from a similar background (in terms of nationality, ethnicity and gender).
  • 2. Regarding those complaints about sourcing issues on my talk page, I've already addressed them back in the 2020 SPI and don't feel like repeating myself here. But I will reiterate that one of those talk page comments was from Worldbruce, who actually defended me in the 2020 SPI and clarified his position: "I've warned hundreds of editors about not citing sources, not citing reliable sources, or citing sources that fail verification. They aren't all sockpuppets of Jagged 85. The whole business of "strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sources" and "editors' personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong on Wikipedia" is poorly grasped by novice editors.
    • In response to new evidence related to Sonic the Hedgehog 2, this just seems like another misplaced content dispute. The first source does confirm what I added. The Billboard source states: "including the songs DREAMS COME TRUE provided for the game series, such as “SWEET SWEET SWEET,” featured as the ending theme of Sonic the Hedgehog 2." Clearly, it's saying "Sweet" was adapted for the Sonic 2 ending, not the other way around as the Wikipedia article incorrectly suggested. With regards to sales, I noticed that you misrepresented two sources. One source states the game sold "an astounding million copies in one day!" Yet for some reason, you changed it to 600,000 copies. And you also misrepresented the GameTap video, where Sega representatives never said it sold 6M anywhere in that video, but it's the GameTap narrator who said it. That's two instances I've noticed of you misrepresenting the sources, the very thing you're accusing me of.
  • 3. Since I've already addressed the volume of edits in the 2020 SPI, I'll just quote what I said back then: "There are a ton of editors out there with far more edits. Are you suggesting anyone with a large volume of edits must necessarily be a Jagged_85 sock?" As for the other stuff, 30 seconds is just the upload size limit for music samples. And I don't see any similarity between Jagged's unban request (which reads like a bunch of verbal diarrhoea to me) and my 2020 SPI response (where I specifically addressed each and every complaint). (EDIT: I just realized you're talking about the bullet point list below his unban request... I still don't see the similarity, besides the use of a bullet point list which is pretty common.)
• Maestro2016 (talk)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

•  Administrator note I believe there's sufficient justification to take a serious look at behavioral evidence here. If I was more directly familiar with Jagged 85 myself, I'd almost say it's a clear DUCK case. But Jagged was a little before my active years. This is a complicated case, comparing two editors with multiple years of activity and 70,000+ edits each and significant article and interest overlap. The last SPI should also be reviewed, ignoring what was an apparent content dispute at the time and focusing on the original evidence presented. -- ferret (talk) 19:38, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Checkuser statement: Due to stallness of accounts, a direct comparison is not possible. However, CU log indicates that Maestro2016 has edited from the same IP ranges as Jagged 85 (During two separate checks against other socksmasters), and current CU data indicates that Maestro continues to edit from the same ISP and country as Jagged. -- ferret (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

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