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Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Researcher1000/Archive

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Researcher1000

31 March 2017

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Suspected sockpuppets

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The account Tom O'Carroll was created on 22 March, 2017. The account's only edit was at Talk:Tom O'Carroll, where it claimed to be the subject of the article, and complained that the article was inaccurate and contained false allegations. Tom O'Carroll was blocked by NeilN for, among other things, having a user name that is the same as that of a well-known person. The TruthSerum1 account was created on March 23, 2017, following the block of Tom O'Carroll, and has supported O'Carroll's claims in edits here and here. Under the circumstances, this is enough reason to suspect TruthSerum1 of being the same user as Tom O'Carroll, despite the fact that the user identifies himself as a different person. The user's style of writing also reminds me of O'Carroll. At first I considered not bothering to file a report, but the continued activity of the account makes this seem necessary. If TruthSerum1 is not a sock of Tom O'Carroll, it could well be a sock of the similarly-named user TruthSerum, which has been previously active at the Tom O'Carroll article. In any case, there is a need to find out what is going on here and which of these accounts are connected and how. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:33, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

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

There is a simple explanation for this. I am the same user as TruthSerum. The reason I created TruthSerum1 was that I forgot my password for TruthSerum. I have no intention of using the user name TruthSerum again. I am most emphatically not Tom O'Carroll.TruthSerum1 (talk) 08:39, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Researcher1000, permanently blocked last May, should also be considered as potentially being linked to the accounts already listed. The edit history, and the comments on the talk page with a similar preoccupation with court records relating to Tom O'Carroll, suggest an affinity. Philip Cross (talk) 08:42, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

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  • The technical data is messy.
  • TruthSerum and TruthSerum1 are technically   Possilikely (a mix between possible and likely) to each other and   Unlikely to Tom O'Carroll, who has only one edit. Of the three accounts, Tom O'Carroll is not the oldest.
  • Researcher1000, who was blocked by ArbCom, is of course   Stale.
  • Based on the admission, I blocked TruthSerum prophylactically, not as a sanction.
  • This case needs to be decided based on behavior.--Bbb23 (talk) 11:38, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  •   On hold - it appears to me that TruthSerum1's statement about losing their password is genuine, and that they are not Tom O'Carroll (neither the user nor the person). However, without being able to find why Researcher1000 was ArbCom blocked, I can't say whether there is reason to suspect a connection to TruthSerum1. I'm going to ask ArbCom to review this case. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:06, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • ArbCom has responded for the official record. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:24, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Clerk note: @DeltaQuad: Would you like me to take any action here? Thanks, GABgab 23:08, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Indeffing TruthSerum1 as a sock of Researcher1000 and tagging both of those TruthSerum accounts. No action with respect to the account that shares the same name as the article subject. The commonalities in wanting to remove the Daily Mail link and the fact that this account was created to do so is telltale. It is compelling that this is a sock. This case was moved to reflect the master as Researcher1000.
     — Berean Hunter (talk) 11:27, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

28 September 2018

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Suspected sockpuppets

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I believe the sockmaster who has been recurrently active on the article for Tom O'Carroll (a sex offender convicted repeatedly in the UK for distributing child pornography and for encouraging child-adult sexual relationships) has once again resumed their efforts to turn the article into a platform to promote O'Carroll's disturbing views on the "harmless" nature of paedophilia. Indeed, as was noted in investigations of the previous socks, it is very likely that the sockmaster is O'Carroll himself; a year and a half ago User:Tom O'Carroll was registered and immediately posted what is undoubtebly one of the most disturbing WP:CHILDPROTECT violations the project has ever seen (I warn you, you will need a strong stomach to get through that post): [1]. For those who don't wish to read the post, the gist of O'Carroll's argument was that it was inappropriate for us to describe the images he was convicted of distributing as depicting child rape, because there was no evidence that the children involved did not consent and were not enjoying themselves. (Yes, you read that correctly, and if you now feel the need to bleach your eyeballs, please trust me that you are not alone...).

User:Tom O'Carroll was immediately and appropriately blocked after that one and only edit, but in the 19 months since, other accounts (User:TruthSerum, User:TruthSerum1, and User:Researcher1000) have repeatedly surfaced to push essentially the same argument, until they were subsequently blocked as socks of one-another (note that the Researcher1000 account is older than the O'Carroll account, which is why it is used as the nominal sockmaster here). Each of these accounts followed a similar pattern of behaviour, which holds true for the current apparent sock:

  • In all but one case, the account's first contribution was to Tom O'Carroll and almost all of their subsequent edits were directed towards that article [2], [3] (User:Researcher1000 posted to other articles regarding pro-paedohilia figures at first, but then became exclusively fixated on the O'Carroll article [4]).
  • Each sock has advanced almost identical arguments to those found in User:Tom O'Carroll's original screed; they either directly push the same notion that there is a "acceptable and correct" way to initiate a sexual encounter with a child, or they attempt to get O'Carroll's blog posts and other writings admitted as sources to the article to "balance" the description of his crimes, or they oppose any source which describes the images he distributed or the practices he advocates for as involving "true" rape. They are uniformly concerned with presenting "O'Carroll's side of the story"[5] and decry his convictions as "false allegations" [6], and seem to regard O'Carroll as an unfairly maligned intellectual. Some of the edits have been rev-deled contemporaneous with the blocks and presumably were WP:CHILDPROTECT violations, but a reviewing admin will have to assess that matter themselves.

Five weeks ago, User:Anotherultimatename showed up on the article. Like the previous accounts, this user chose to register and make their very first edit on Wikipedia an effort to give voice to the self-rationalizations of this same convicted sex offender (which would be suspicious even in the absence of any further evidence). They push the same fringe message that there is accepted legitimacy to O'Carroll's beliefs, repeatedly describing him as a "credible figure in the field" [7], who experts regard as an "intellectual equal"[8]. For the record, O'Carroll has no academic qualifications, possessing absolutely no academic degree or professional experience in any relevant psychological, medical, social work, or child welfare field; his "credentials" regarding the impact of child sexual abuse are limited to his repeated convictions and his mostly self-published and autobiographical writings, which the various socks have consistently attempted to foreground in the article until they were blocked. User:Anotherultimatename edit warred to introduce the latest of these works, an article in which O'Carroll presents his arguments for the "ethics" of initiating a sexual encounter with a child, until an admin warned them to stop.[9]. They have since pushed hard on the talk page to gain support for including the article, even as they have faced stiff resistance and have been warned repeatedly by numerous other editors that their arguments contain elements which are almost certainly WP:CHILDPROTECT violations, as they imply the notion that O'Carroll's views on "healthy" paedophilic relationships are legitimate and respected within the relevant research and child welfare fields (which of course, is absolutely the opposite of reality and exactly the argument which CHILDPROTECT expressly forbids from ever being made on a talk page).

I believe there is more than sufficient behavioural evidence here to arrive at the conclusion that User:Anotherultimatename is the latest of the O'Carroll socks and that a block is appropriate, though arguably a checkuser would not be out of order. Honestly, this user could probably be blocked on other grounds regardless and I contemplated taking this to ANI, but addressing the situation here makes the most sense given the previous history of abuse of multiple accounts on the talk page and the need to establish a chronology for when the next inevitable sock manifests. Thanks for your attention to a lengthy description. Snow let's rap 07:53, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

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


In an attempt to comply with an objection that resulted in a RevDel on my previous post here, I now post a considerably shorter version that sticks to the sock issue.

I am Tom O’Carroll, an accused party. “Snow Rise” alleges that it “is very likely that the sockmaster is O'Carroll himself”. I am not. None of the alleged socks are my accounts or “sockmastered” in any way by me.

My account is blocked, hence the IP address. I vigorously contested the blocking last year, going to English Wikipedia Oversight, then ArbCom, who referred the matter to Trust and Safety Manager, James Alexander [Ticket#2017050210011149]. He wrote briefly on 19 Oct. last year, promising the matter would be considered promptly. I have heard not a word since, despite several reminders, and despite going back to ArbCom and English Wikipedia Oversight to see if they could get Mr Alexander, or someone, to respond.

This silence is contrary to natural justice and is not in the spirit of charity called for in WP:BLP.

Thus I have received no answer at all to my complaint that I was blocked on the basis of my ID being brought into question when I used an account under my own name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.225.1.114 (talk) 10:08, 1 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

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This case is   Stale. CU declined.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:26, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have blocked the named account here as a sock based on behavior but have not used the checkuser tool. I do not believe that the Tom O'Carroll account is the same as the sockmaster and I do not see where that has been indicated in the previous findings that he was. In fact, it is suggested to be otherwise. As far as I can tell, the User:Tom O'Carroll was soft-blocked (log) meaning that he was free to create another account. He may have encountered different issues at OTRS or ACC but that is not relevant to the master in this case. BEANS applies here.
     — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:35, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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