Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Iaaasi

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

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• Out slide (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Cealicuca (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

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Iaaasi, a chauvinist Romanian editor, is a long-time abuser in Wikipedia, who was banned from the project a decade ago, because of his persistent extremist and disruptive edits. Since then, this user is appealing to the method of persistent sockpuppetry and canvassing from time to time. For further details, see Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Iaaasi. By manipulating talkpage discussions and formed editorial conflicts, Iaaasi usually uses own sockpuppets to report fake complaints against Hungarian editors, even if they have been inactive for some time. These sockpuppets were relatively inactive users, whose operation is reserved for this purpose only. The first sockpuppet, User:Cealicuca "registered" in 2018 in order to comment a previous sockpuppet investigation related to sockmaster Iaaasi, details Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Iaaasi/Archive#02_August_2018 here. Without editing namespace, this user was highly involved in a harsh dispute on Talk:Origin of the Romanians, as previous Iaaasi's sockpuppets did (for instance, User:Eurocentral. This "inexperienced user" first reported a false complaint targeting Hungarian editors, including me, and moderate Romanian editors, in February 2019 ([1] Norden1990 (talk) 20:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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

AFAIK, one could recognize Cealicuca by their use of WP:PROXY, especially public proxies of the European Community. tgeorgescu (talk) 21:02, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My above argument for the suspected sockpuppetry was much more longer, but a portion of text somewhat lost (unfortunately, I never really delved into the technical details of Wikipedia). The point: Cealicuca made their first report in February 2019 against Hungarian editors -including me - and moderate Romanian editors, even two accused editors User:Koertefa and User:Fakirbakir were roughly retired by that time. Cealicuca cited and manipulated age-old conversations and discussions as evidence, assuming a nonense conspiracy against "Romanian inerests" in Wikipedia, in order to mislead administrators. After failure, Cealicuca became inactive. They were "re-activated" in April 2021, after the block of User:KIENGIR. The sockpuppet repeated the same false report unofficially, but they did not reach a result and failed again. Since then, Cealicuca was again retired. Without any predecent and former involvement, a relatively passive user Out slide launched a similar report with same language tone and manipulating methods against the same users in July 2021, citing 7-year-old edits and discussions, despite that User:Borsoka has not edited on the subject of Romanian history for many years, while Fakirbakir and Koertefa remained inactive users. This second user made false accusations and misleading assumptions in order to reach a topic ban against Borsoka and now retired user Fakirbakir. If the sock puppet accusation isn't even there, I suspest Canvassing and Meatpuppetry -through e-mail conversations, for instance - between long-time banned user Iaaasi and two "inexperienced" users Cealicuca and Out slide, who who have reactivated after a long time as sleeper agents in recent months. --Norden1990 (talk) 21:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, I mean European Commission, European Parliament, and so on (.europa.eu). tgeorgescu (talk) 23:17, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Out_slide is obviously a puppet. He wrote a detailed report of articles that he had never edited and raised accusations against editors with whom he had never interacted. Iaaasi and his socks, including Cealicuca, have always been engaged in the same articles and have raised the same accusations against the same circle of editors. Borsoka (talk) 00:00, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Again with this? No, I am not a sock puppet. I would like one of the admins to contact me and I can provide, I believe, enough information about this - just as I did the last time Tgeorgescu (and Norden, Borsoka, the late Kiengir, Fakirbakir etc.) accused me of this. Seems like deflecting. You may also contact DeltaQuad for more information on this.

I find it funny - whenever Borsoka, Norden, late-Kiengir and others get in trouble (see Kiengir's ban - he "invoked" my name too), Tgeorgescu magically appears to save the day and the common theme is the boogey man (cealicuca is a sock puppet!). Well, tough luck, I am not. I don't know who is Out_slide although I suspect that the whole show was conveniently created by Tgeorgescu, who tried to frame a similar thing in the past, for my "benefit". What an honour... I mean it's not like Tgeorgescu or Borsoka or Norden did not have access to the info - the "detailed report" Borsoka is mentioning, since they reacted to it. Norden even called me an idiot :). This "detailed" report was actually a complaint on the Admin boards that was quickly deleted because it did not respect the format (even though at least the two previous complaints did not respect the format either...). In any case, that is info here on Wikipedia and a lot of people were pinged and were aware of it. I never made it a secret, and even some admins were aware of at least parts of it.

Oh, about my "reactivation". Nope, I simply got a notification the Kiengir's talk page was changed - and saw the perma ban. That was very interesting to me and afterwards I posted this on Swarm's page. If it were the other way around (say I would be Borsoka), Tgerogescu would appear as if by magic, as he always does, to explain how all the things that I am accused of are some sock puppet's fault. Oh wait, that's exactly what Tgeorgescu did recently (and in the past) :))

Oh, and by the way, how does Tgeorgescu have access to such information - "especially public proxies of the European Community."? This is quite interesting to me. How does mr. Tgerogescu have access to whatever IP I'm posting on on Wikipedia - be it especially public proxies of the European Community or not?

Anyway, I'd like to ask the admin/admins that pick this one up to contact me and I can provide the info needed to clear this quickly. One last thing - is there a way for a user to physically confirm his/her existence/profile? I'm very much up to this :) Cealicuca (talk) 07:43, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I also see that the other discussion was closed. I guess it served it's purpose (initiating this one) so luckily I saw that i's closed before posting. In any case, here it is:

Disclaimer: Yes, I'm a paranoid SoB. But by the nature of my work I tend to see patterns on an otherwise large amount of data. And certainly I see a pattern (patterns) here.

Well, I didn't want to react the first time Norden pinged me. Really didn't want to go through this exquisite experience again but Norden, Borsoka and Tgerogescu (of course) seem hell bent on hits. Ok then...

Yes, I fully agree with the OP. Myself I have posted a similar report years ago, to no avail of course. Personally I find it curious for an admin to dismiss it out of hand because heck, it's "too long". We're talking about several users here who have been engaging in "un-Wikipedian" conduct for the better part of a decade, with complex interactions between them and so on. Of course it's going to be long.

In any case, I don't know the OP, I don't think I have ever interacted with him/her, however I fully support his/her report. Oh, and I don't really care how the OP got the info presented here (as I said I posted a similar report years ago - and didn't quite make a secret of it...). But I can alway add to it since I can always go back to the Wiki page containing my own report...

Anyway, to sum things up a little bit:

(1) The whole groups masks this by having a rather large number of legit edits, most of the times unrelated, beside their common goal. This IS the strategy that allows them to operate - do you want to manipulate some Wikipedia subjects? Well, have several people (or maybe several accounts) doing legit stuff for a while to build up some reputation (or even in parallel with the main objective), and otherwise focus on what you want to manipulate. Wikipedia, as well as other open-source consensus-centric spaces, are particularly vulnerable to a dedicated, well coordinated group. Like this group, and I must admit there's a certain admiration on my part for their dedication to pull this off.

User Norden1990, Borsoka, Fakirbakir, (late) KIENGIR, Koertefa and others have been pushing a (Hungarian) nationalist "version" of the "truth" here on Wikipedia for years. Tgeorgescu has often played the role of enabler, meaning that whenever those users would get into serious trouble (being reported for example - even KIENGIR mentions "poor" Tgeorgescu in his plea) he pops in to offer his "neutral" and "expert" opinion (I'll get back to that in a bit as both are just for show). All those users share a common interest - that is history that is "controversial" on the Hungarian side, be it Romanian, Slovak, Serb. Their stated mission is to spread the Hungarian Truth and make sure that those articles (which were biased, in their opinion, before their intervention of course) are modified to reflect this Hungarian Truth. Anything controversial (from their perspective) related to Hungarian history shared with Slovaks, Romanian and Serbs is up for grabs.

Whenever an admin takes action and sanctions one of them, they all jump on that person (in support of the "offended" party), probably in the hope of intimidating the admin. I have no idea if they also intervene in terms of sending private messages, maybe they do, but I am pretty sure there's plenty of admins here who have had this experience with this lot. Of course, the admins do not understand their plight...

A lengthy conversation on how they must fight against Slovakian and Romanian editors, on how KIENGIR is admiring Borsoka, Koertefa, Norden and Fakirbakir for doing the "right" thing, about how the administrators cannot understand their fight, about how the Balkan and Eastern European mentality needs to grow up and lots of other exciting stuff. About the mission, in general. Very nice read until Borsoka reminds KIENGIR that maybe this is not the right place for.such a conversation (obviously).

Here Fakirbakir flat out juxtaposes their (presumably Hungarian's) "dear neighbor" historiography as being used as a political tool. I mean seriously, that's their central belief for crying out loud? I don't even understand why we have this conversation, just go to their talk pages and take a look at the things they're sharing with each other. And then consider they are editing sensitive subjects in tandem. How can anyone be surprised that they are in fact pushing a specific PoV?!?!

And yes, I have a whole collection of them mentioning this kind of "cleansing" and this whole "us" vs "them" mentality. Shared between them all... Here's a little sample of it.

• the whole world is against the team
• how consensus is built
• lengthy talk about "the project", about editing wiki since 2006 under different names, about cleansing articles of ethnic interference... anyway, about The Project

Go through their posts on those subjects - they are basically interchangeable. Of course they are, since they really represent the same PoV. They are less interested in representing what a source says, more so in gathering "evidence" for their common PoV. A good example is what Borsoka/Fakirbakir did with Posner by adding in the article related to Re-latinisation of the Romanian language (and other articles) what Diez, a 19th century linguist, thought of the Romanian language: that is' a "semi-Romance" language. What is interesting is that Posner, one page below where Diez's statement is presented, clearly states that no modern linguist shares this and other of Diez's opinions anymore. Yet despite this, the article references Diez 7 times. 7 times he is brought up :) I thought this example is funny in the context of Tgeorgescu presenting here, on this very topic, his opinion about the Romanian language. As it happens - no modern linguist is sharing his opinion, but of course this doesn't stop mr. Tgeorgescu to post all kinds of weird stuff, under the guise of a neutral and expert editor, to somehow "show" that whomever says otherwise is a nationalist (even if what the other person basically presents a PoV that is suported by an overwhelming number of sources).

See this for example. It starts with Fakirbakir's "We should try to demonstrate somehow the state of the Romanian language before re-latinization.". Pretty much exemplifies their objective - they have a specific idea in mind and then find sources, of parts of sources - whatever sources, to support that specific PoV. Does the source say anything inconvenient to the desired outcome? Flat out omit it. Now, finding sources to support a specific point is not in itself necessarily bad, but couple it with their love for the "Hungarian Truth" and how the sources are manipulated and you get the picture.

On another note - I would also like to challenge mr. Tgeorgescu on another interesting statement - that being the Romanian language is thought in "many" Universities as a Slavic language. As it so happens I have plenty of friends who have studied/do study in plenty of those Western universities and nope, Romanian is usually not part of the curriculum (for obvious reasons) or, in the best case and for specialized studies, it is bundled with other Romance languages. But I'll let mr. Tgeorgescu illuminate us.

Going back a bit to the FNB2K group (Fakirbakir, Borsoka, Norden, Kiengir, Koertefa) they themselves, or part of them at least, have been accused and investigated as being sockspuppets of Stubes99. Funny how Tgeorgescu is not concerned about this, but I guess in hi neutrals stance it's normal not to take this into consideration :). They have been accused and investigating, repeatedly, for all sorts of behaviors (integrated into the Borg mind, right mr. Tgeorgescu? That's how it's supposed to work?) stemming from the above mentioned behavior. I mean it's not that difficult, one only has to try and they jump on you. Someone else supports your PoV? No problem, another one jumps in. And so on until the whole thing, whatever is that they do not agree with, becomes impossible to settle. Most of the times they present this as a "consensus".

Those users support each other, and it's not uncommon for one or multiple of them to pop up in a debate where they have previously not been involved. Of course, whenever this happens, they basically agree with each other always and they flood the whole discussion with those agreements, sometimes to the point where most of the conversation is made up of their own posts. Like this one...

Other ways of getting "undesired" people out of their way is to trigger an edit war. They don't like what other editors contribute to a subject? No problem. Start reverting. Does the target-editor revert the reverts? No problem, another steps in and reverts and at some point report the target editor. And so on. Easy mode.

(2) Now, onto Tgeorgescu. As I said above, he pops in whenever there's something crucial. Usually at the behest of Borsoka, but not always. Borsoka alluded in some conversation with Fakirbakir if I remember correctly (the link is somewhere in the long list of "wrong" stuff they like to talk about... in Hungarian of course) to having an "admin" alt. I do suspect that this is actually Tgeorgescu, also I suspect him/her of "buiding" a fake profile (or at least partly fake) in order to convey authority to his opinion as well as allow him to pose as a "neutral" person.

What raised my suspicion on him is that Tgeorgescu "sports" a Mensa on his profile. As it so happens I was engaged in a conversation with him where he unequivocally stated that "all it takes to show that all swans are black is one black swan" or something along the lines. This was extremely surprising for me, especially coming from someone with parading a Mensa on his profile, and I did point out to him the basic logical error. Yet he persisted on it. So I did point out this to a friend who actually has a Mensa, and he flat out laughed at the idea that anyone having this would say such nonsense.

I also believe that Tgeorgescu tried to frame/discredit me by having some random IP posting a highly inflammatory message on a talk page basically praising me for "my work", a "true Romanian", while at the same time bashing him. As it happened, I basically just posted something on my own talk page, immediately, as an "insurance" to what I instantly recognized as being a directed attempt to harm me. Keep in mind that at the time I was involved in various disputes with Tgeorgescu as well as him having already reported me as a sockpuppet (cleared afterwards). In any case, obviously Tgerogescu immediately took notice of that and as expected started accusing me. The funny thing is that if I were indeed a sockpuppet of whomever, why in the world would I post such a message referencing myself? And if I weren't a sockpuppet but some whomever really loved my work (presumably this Iaaasi/whatever-alts-he-had guy, with his long interaction with Wikipedia and Tgeorgescu) why in the world would that person draw attention on me knowing that such a message would most likely garm me. I mean seriously, the message itself was saying something along "you should probably delete this" - which I didn't. You can find the whole thing here. Interesting, at the time Tgeorgescu was inviting me to reflect on why I "draw" such posts, with the obvious implications. Now, with KIENGIR taking one step to far, and being an integral part of this group (just check his interaction with others), I cannot help but return the favor to Tgeorgescu. Theese guys repeatedly demonstrate bad intent, bad behavior, manipulation of the Wikipedia rules and building consensus, cherry-picking sources, constructing a specific PoV based on "evidence" etc. One of them really going overboard and gettign banned in the process. Maybe you'd like to reflect on that? Maybe the reason me and others are pointing this out repeatedly is that they there is truth to it? It's rhetorical, don't worry, I wager you won't respond to this (except maybe to deflect yet again).

Moreover, in the same link as the one above I actually point Tgeorgescu to some interesting posts he might have missed. That he "missed" them is entirely OK, but I found it disturbing the way he characterized them (as a legitimate PoV).

Another technique Tgeorgescu is implying is to portray "neutrality" by adopting a king of "all PoVs are equal". Well, I have no problem with him holding that belief, but when forcing that belief against what sources say (in this very thread he peddles the half Slavic/half Latin idea for the Romanian language - which is thoroughly contradicted by... well, by basically any Western modern linguist), and by that I mean sanctioning drafting articles that instead of reflecting what sources say they reflect this kind of "neutrality" by giving all PoVs, no matter their support among academics, the same weight.

But this ties in nicely with other stuff Tgeorgescu did - once called me a nationalist based on me editing the Romanian language article. I changed one of the chapters, from "Slavic language" to "Slavic influence". In the whole context it made perfect sense. Just as it woulld make perfect sense, for example, for someone to correct "Germanic language" to "Germanic influence" for the French language article. Nothing nationalist about it - except for Tgeorgescu making it so. Tgeorgescu turned a perfectly fine edit (which corrected a very obvious error) into "Explanation why that diff is nationalism, broadly construed: it basically says "We're not Russkies."". That's Tgeorgescu in a nutshell.

(3) Of course, all of the above won't probably matter, since admins want TLDR version. Handwaved as a "wall of text" :)) Well, what can I say, there is no TLDR version for this. In any case, as stated above, condoning this situation is an open invitation to a any well organized group to push any PoV they desire on Wikipedia. And obviously FNB2K is not the only group doing so. Yeah, of course, focus on the individual cases for sure, but that's not where most of the damage is done. The lasting, true damage comes from those groups.

Cheers.Cealicuca (talk) 11:33, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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