User:Veyklevar/ctnotes

Notes on the "Coca Tea" Affair and Joestieg sockpuppets

This concerns five accounts and ip addresses (in chronological order of involvement):

1. 24.61.27.114 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log)
2. Joestieg (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log)
3. Ukiemob (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log)
4. Jake Scorpio (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log)
5. Veyklaver (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log)

Note that all but Jake Scorpio have already been confirmed by as related by checkuser (see here and here). There is no need for a checkuser on Jake Scorpio, as his edits show that he can only be either a malicious sockpuppet of Joestieg, or someone pretending to be such a sockpuppet.

Modus operandi

• Creating positive articles about "Coca Tea" (mate de coca) which contain a link to perutea.com. Then creating links to those articles, or directly to perutea.com, from many other (often only tangentially related) articles.
• Repeatedly reverting anyone who removes his links, sometimes accusing them of vandalism.
• Sometimes deleting comments from article talk pages or other users talk pages critical of this behaviour.
• Evading content disputes by creating new articles with content nearly identical to the article that was disputed.
• Abandoning user accounts when they are on the verge of being banned.

History of events

• In late January, someone with address 24.61.27.114 created external links from several articles to perutea.com. He was warned by other editors for advertising and for deleting references in articles.
• Almost immediately thereafter a user appeared named Joestieg. He created an article called Coca tea (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) which was exceedingly positive about the product and linked to perutea.com. He then linked to this article from many other articles.
• My first contact with him was when I reported an image he had inserted into the Coca tea article as a copyright violation (he falsely claimed to be the author of the image, and falsely claimed that the author had released all rights to the image). I also objected to the content of his article, inserting an {{original-research}} template into it. He removed the template without comment. Regrettably, being a relative newbie, I let him get under my skin and we got into an edit war. He falsely accused me of vandalism for reverting his edits, and falsely accused me of violating the three revert rule.
• He deleted my comments on Talk:Coca tea (history) several times. I warned him for vandalism, and he removed my warning. He also created an article, Coca tea drink, which was nearly the same as the article under dispute.
• Around this time Choess (talk • contribs) intervened, voluntarily serving as an informal mediator between us. Choess urged us to debate civilly on the talk page, and also proposed that the Coca tea article be merged into the Coca article. At first, Joestieg appeared to cooperate, and we debated.
• Then a user named Ukiemob appeared with only one previous edit, and voted against the merger proposed by Choess, although later he (or at least 24.61.27.114) seemed to change his mind. Then Ukiemob created a new article, Coca herbal tea, with nearly identical content to the page that had been under dispute, and proceeded to link to it from several articles. I told Choess about it, and Ukiemob deleted my comments from Choess's talk page. Choess warned Ukiemob for trying to evade the content dispute.
• Choess requested a checkuser, which confirmed that Ukiemob, Joestieg, and 24.61.27.114 were the same person
• Then a user named Jake Scorpio appeared, and recreated the article at at Coca herbal tea. Choess asked for an investigation on WP:RFI, and linked to Talk:Coca tea as evidence. Since that time, Jake Scorpio attempted to alter or delete evidence on that page twice.
• Ukiemob then reappeared, and seemingly started going through my edit history and randomly reverting edits that I made on totally unrelated topics. See See Pahang, Airport Core Programme, and Zhang_Guotao.
• Ukiemob also became quite irritated with my linkspam removal efforts, reverting them and attacking me in the edit summary.
• Choess's complaint on WP:RFI was more or less ignored. It is archived here (scroll down to the one about Jake Scorpio). Someone eventually asked if this was still a live issue. I said it was not, as I had not seen any activity from any of Joestieg's known sockpuppets, and he seemed to have given up harassing me.
• After nearly three weeks of peace, a user named Veyklaver (note the slight difference from my name) appeared. He redirected his user page to mine, and began issuing random {{test}} warnings. He was quickly banned by admin Antandrus. A checkuser confirmed him to be another Joestieg sockpuppet.