Historik75 is a new WP:SPA who has been engaged in disruptive editing, POV pushing, and driveby tagging on the Amway article. [1] [2] [3] The user's initial arguments were discounted on the Talk page, and suddenly the next day, a new WP:SPA appeared (Platinum), [4] pushing the same non-neutral POV edits, [5] in an apparent attempt at vote stacking. The same day, a sleeper account (Icerat) that has been dormant since Nov 2014 [6] suddenly appeared as well [7] and jumped in on the vote stacking and driveby tagging. [8] These accounts are not seeking to establish consensus and have been essentially ignoring the rebuttals raised by several editors on the Talk page (like this for instance [9]). It appears to be a cadre of Amway distributors (or one masquerading as a cadre) waging a war of attrition and violating WP:COI. Rhode Island Red ( talk) 21:17, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.
I agree that this is worth a look. Both accounts share an extremely similar use of debate-team-style rhetorical tactics, specifically the use of loaded questions:
Icerat:
Don't you agree that coverage in the article should be in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources?
Are you disputing that Amway was cleared of being a pyramid in the US and UK?[10]
So just to be clear, you think the lede should point out Amway has been investigated as a pyramid scheme, but not that those investigations cleared it, and to do so would be a violation of WP:BALANCE Is that correct?[11]
Historik75:
Grayfell, do you find it reasonable to accuse somebody of something and not provide a room to present the whole facts?
I wonder why you keep deleting the simple information (backed up with source) that Amway was not found to be a pyramid scheme in the US. Can you tell me the reason?[12]
There are other examples, as well. Grayfell ( talk) 01:02, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Rhode Island Red is unfortunately displaying the very type of belligerent behaviour that caused me to "sleep" in the first place. In the last week, after constantly reverting edits of mine without discussion in talk, or, when he elects to participate in talk, failing to actually answer questions and address concerns, he and his "partner" Grayfell have multiple times accused me of being a WP:SLEEPER (so?), and WP:SPA (check my record) threatened me with edit-warring notices on my userpage, posted a warning COI (despite failing when the exact same accusation was made (and investigated) several years ago) and directly threatening to "have me banned" unless I obey his orders. All violations of WP:HARASS, of which this appears to be just a continuance. Historik75 has in contrast tried to follow WP guidelines (posting an NPOV dispute notice on the Amway article after talk failed, which RIR reverted, and then opening a dispute resolution process.) I note he appears to have been banned from WP earlier for similar types of belligerent behaviour and "ownership" of MLM related articles [13]. Anyway, I'm not a sock and neither Plantium nor Historik75 are socks of mine.-- Icerat ( talk) 20:13, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
I am constantly being called WP:SPA, WP:SOCK and WP:IDONTKNOWWHAT by a certain editor and this seems to be a way how to silence opponents when the arguments evaporated. As Icerat says, the editor was banned in the past and I can now understand why. I can find dozens of WP:RULES that this editor broke now (some of them being mentioned in Icerat's commentary), but I won't. I believe I don't need to because the discussion speaks for itself. But I would like you to please stop with the accusation that I seem to avoid the detection! If I remember well, I use only 2 computers and one smartphone to access Wikipedia. The 2 comps have static IP addresses and the smartphone has a dynamic IP that is assigned by mobile operator. Avoiding detection? There is no proxy between myself and Wikipedia, nothing! How can I be accused of avoiding detection? Somewhere in the discussion Plantium says that he is/was(?) in the other part of the world (don't know where but shouldn't you be able to recognize 2 places that are in the other parts of the world?). However, I still use the two static IP addresses (the first one should end with 68.114 and the second one should end with 40.4) to edit Wikipedia and perhaps only one or two times (don't know exactly) used smartphone (dynamic IP). I use smartphone mainly to access the Wikipedia when I am out, but usually do not edit as it is not comfortable. For God's sake why would I use another account to publish only 2 or 3 short comments in several pages long discussion??? Don't know how many posts he had exactly, but you can see that the number is totally insignificant. Would it be worth??? I can assure you that Plantium, myself and Icerat are three different persons. Or, more specifically, I do not use any other name here - neither Icerat, nor Plantium. On the side note: I have noticed that the one who accuses me of being an SPA started here on Wikipedia some 10 years ago as SPA editing one single article for one year and had conflicts with other users too about taking ownership of the article as Icerat states. I made my second edit here on Wikipedia and it happened to me too and I am constanly harassed by someone who is not even willing to answer my questions regarding the edit that occured based on a false argument. I am not the one who started the personal attacks and I have been trying to avoid them for the whole time. I regret to say it, but I am disgusted that such harassment to new users is tolerated here, but this certainly won't stop me from revealing my arguments in a proper discussion. But at least I now can understand why Icerat tells he became sleeper for 2 years (if I remember well). I will not comment on this anymore because I still believe that the accuracy, NPOV and BALANCE of the article/lead is what really matters here and I will certainly not allow anyone to drive me into this fight.-- Historik75 ( talk) 21:42, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
User:DeltaQuad/SPI/Clerk Training Notice
Clerk note: I have moved this case to the name of the oldest listed account, and adjusted the list of accounts.
Ivanvector 🍁 (
talk)
15:23, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Self-endorsed by clerk for checkuser attention - two long-idle accounts suddenly becoming active again wanting to discuss a POV in an article, plus a new third account created at the start of the dispute and which has only supported the same POV, is indeed suspicious.
Ivanvector 🍁 (
talk)
15:27, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Clerk note: @
Icerat and
Historik75: This section is for clerks and admins. I have moved your comments above to the "comments by other users" section. Also, this venue is for evaluating whether any of you are violating the
sockpuppetry policy by abusing multiple acccounts. Your content dispute is to be settled elsewhere, and we will not comment on it.
Ivanvector 🍁 (
talk)
15:51, 18 March 2016 (UTC)