Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AloofAnteater45

AloofAnteater45

AloofAnteater45 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

For archived investigations, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AloofAnteater45/Archive.

18 February 2024

– This SPI case is open.

Suspected sockpuppets

• Summerdays1 (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

I suspect that Summerdays1 and AloofAnteater45 are operated by the same person.

First, on the University of Michigan article, AloofAnteater45 made this edit on the 15th Feb. That edit was reverted by another editor a day later. Then, several days later, Summerdays1 comes and straight-up redoes that edit using the undo tool.

Next, on The Michigan Daily article, AloofAnteater makes this edit on 12th Nov 2023 which adds "The largest independent student newspaper in the United States" to the top of the article. It also adds the sentence "it has consistently been ranked among the top college newspapers in the country". Some time down the line, it is revised by another editor (GuardianH) where they remove those sentences along a few other things. Well, a day after GuardianH makes those edits, the Summerdays1 account comes in and re-adds both sentences. On 15th Feb, AloofAnteater re-adds the sentence "largest independent student newspaper in the United States" to the top of the article once again.

Some small additional similarities I've noticed between the two accounts are that they both frequently use the VisualEditor, and both often use short edit summaries consisting of one to four words. No links or P/G shortcuts in the summaries. And they both seem highly interested in universities, schools, politicians and lawyers too, especially in the U.S.

The interaction timeline tool is very interesting. There is seemingly no overlap in editing between the accounts at all. It's either one or the other being used, at a time.

One more piece of evidence, albeit a weak one, is both accounts every now and then, make copyedits to articles, rearranging words around and/or changing punctuation, e.g. diff 1, diff 2, diff 3 by AloofAnteater45, diff 1, diff 2, diff 3 by Summerdays1. — AP 499D25 (talk) 12:20, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if that last bit of evidence is so weak, at least in terms of adding support to the stronger evidence already provided; both accounts very noticeably make edits "rearranging words" and "changing punctuation" while simultaneously tinkering with the infoboxes and tables. That stood out to me when reviewing the diffs. Grandpallama (talk) 17:17, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments by other users

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

---