Wikipedia talk:Long-term abuse/Morning277

This page has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Simon Owens (2013-10-08). "The battle to destroy Wikipedia's biggest sockpuppet army". The Daily Dot.
Geoffrey A. Fowler (2013-10-21). "Wikipedia Probes Suspicious Promotional Articles". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2013-10-22. Retrieved 2013-10-23. Senior Wikipedia administrators closed the sockpuppet investigation after concluding that we were paid editors paying other editors. Volumes of Wikipedia pages we didn't work on were wrongly swept into that investigation. We do pay hundreds of other editors for their work— they're real people and not sockpuppets.
"Wikipedia probe into paid-for 'sockpuppet' entries". BBC News. 2013-10-21. Archived from the original on 2013-10-21.
Chris Hall (2013-10-22). "Wikipedia suspends hundreds of accounts over claims of 'sockpuppet' editing". Yahoo! News. Archived from the original on 2013-11-11.
"Wikipedia Sends Paid Editors Cease-And-Desist: Sockpuppet Account Morning277, Not Wiki-PR". International Business Times. 2013-11-22. Archived from the original on 2013-11-28. 'Morning277 is my account, but I am not Wiki-PR nor do I have a relation with them,' Wood said via email. [...] Wood said that Morning277 was involved in a 2012 sockpuppet investigation because he 'was using multiple accounts to create articles.' The sockpuppet accounts that Wood was using were traced back to his main account, and he was blocked as a result. [...] 'I do not provide any information about edits that were done under that account and do not disclose any work that I have done since that account,' Wood wrote.

Wiki-PR[edit]

How convinced are we that Wiki-PR and Morning277 are the same? None of the people listed as being in Wiki-PR match Morning277, and Morning277 has always maintained his own business online. I would guess that either Morning277 has subcontracted for Wiki-PR, making the connection, or two separate Wikipedia-editing PR groups have been conflated. - Bilby (talk) 02:06, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After investigating with checkuser, WilliamH wrote

It's a combination of behavioural and technical factors, but once again, this is the MooshiePorkFace (talk · contribs)/Morning277 (talk · contribs) sock farm, who both work in tandem as part of a Wikipedia editing business.

Dennis Brown wrote "Based on Omar Todd start and other technical evidence, this is the proper master" when moving the page.

In the history of ViSalus, which was contributed by Morning277, you can see changes from 54.251.222.116, in an AWS address range that was blocked by WilliamH. —rybec 06:03, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That helps, thanks. I see the connection with MooshiePorkFace - both used Elance, and I think Freelancer (I can't recall with MooshiePorkFace, I'd need to check), but I've never been comfortable with drawing a connection between Morning277 and Wiki-PR. They may be connected, but there hasn't been anything public I've seen that makes that connection. My suspicion was that they each operate two different firms: Wiki-PR being a relatively big group aiming for corporate clients, and Morning277 being smaller and independent, but relying more on freelance contracts (at least to start with). It doesn't affect whether or not Morning277 is welcome here, but I have a worry that we've conflated two separate groups, as they might be better handled as separate entities. - Bilby (talk) 06:49, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Morning277 wrote an article about David Schwedel [1]; an article on the same topic was found in User:Sublimeharmony/sandbox11. —rybec 23:45, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Have we determined if Sublimeharmony is Wiki-PR or Morning277? If we know one way or the other, it might help. - Bilby (talk) 00:29, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The ViSalus article was originally contributed by Morning277, but there's a Sublimeharmony draft on the subject—so that makes at least two topics they both wrote about. I can't see the deleted contributions of the Morning277 account; there may be additional overlap between the articles he created and those created via the Sublimeharmony account. —rybec 06:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That helps. So the other question is if Sublimeharmony is Wiki-PR. - Bilby (talk) 06:12, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I posted a list of 17 distinct Sublimeharmony drafts using investmentunderground.com as a source. An editor who was named and blocked in the SPI wrote in her unblock request, "I work for oDesk.com and was hired by a person called Darius Fisher who is the co-founder of Investment Underground." One of the principals of Wiki-PR is named Darius Fisher. The VICE article has an account from a Wiki-PR client who was referred to a company called Scarsdale Media "to raise his media profile". Scarsdale Media are the owners of the Investment Underground trademark in the United States. —rybec 07:02, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. So we can work on the assumption that we have strong evidence that Sublimeharmony is Wiki-PR. The connection with Morning277 isn't as strong, but could be that Morning277 was hired by Wiki-PR, (which is something I've considered likely in the past) or that at some point Morning277 and Wiki-PR shared a client or two. It is also possible that Morning277 is a closer part of Wiki-PR, although not a principal as far as we know - however, it that was the case, it isn't clear why Morning277 was competing against Wiki-PR. So I would be more inclined to lean towards one of the first two options. Given that Morning277 was very active on the freelancer sites, and that Wiki-PR was hiring through them, that seems like a reasonable source for the overlap. - Bilby (talk) 07:08, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Techstars[edit]

I'm pretty new to this...I heard about the investigation via the signpost article. I was just wondering, does Morning277 ever edit articles related to Techstars (i.e. the companies, CEOs, etc.)? ~Adjwilley (talk) 20:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Bizible is mentioned in the Techstars article and is listed on the LTA page in the "other topics" list (that list has some false positives, but I don't think Bizible is one). —rybec 00:59, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just remember some hinkiness going on with the Micah Baldwin article...being created and re-created after deletion by "new" users with promotional language and bloated sources that often weren't actually about the guy or his company Graphic.ly. I can give more specifics if you'd like. ~Adjwilley (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Specific users I have concerns about are [2] [3] [4] ~Adjwilley (talk) 17:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I took a closer look. Deal Angel is a Techstars company [5]. So is Orbotix, the publisher of Sphero [6]. The Linode article mentions Techstars. —rybec 18:19, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What are we doing with the articles[edit]

While working in NPP, I found CHMB Solutions, which, when investigating whether or not it was an orphan, found it was linked from this page ... what should I do, let it languish, mark it for deletion? Thanks. Go Phightins! 04:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Back from the dead[edit]

If anyone is still paying attention,

the first-edit-perfectly-formatted-recreation-of-a-morning277-sock-article is quacking but I am not sure what the appropriate steps would be. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:28, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 07:07, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Morning277 → Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Wiki-PR – This company's efforts to put spam on Wikipedia are well-known, but this particular sockpuppet is not, and there is no particular reason to believe this is the main one. Few editors will look for Morning277 to learn about the WikiPR abuse if they suspect it's happening. Similar to German reference desk troll, our abuse reports don't need to have a username as a title when that isn't appropriate. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:16, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They appear to be two separate entities - Morning277 isn't the same organisation as Wiki-PR, but instead ran a separate paid editing business with a large sockfarm. - Bilby (talk) 07:06, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An even better reason to rename then. Everything on this talk page and the long-term abuse page is about Wiki-PR, so naming the page with a username that maybe wasn't part of WikiPR is especially bad. Basically, a long-term abuse report would be named for a username that doesn't even belong on the long-term abuse report. Mind you, I don't trust the person claiming they were acting on their own, but if you name this WikiPR that issues doesn't even matter Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:52, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some of this is about Wiki-PR, and some concerns Morning277. Moving it would change the problem, but wouldn't fix it. - Bilby (talk) 01:17, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Screen shot shows legalmorning workflow[edit]

This screen shot was apparently posted by the operator of legalmorning.com to reply to one of his critics. It might be useful to deduce how he is working: [7] From it, you can see inbox folders for "Article submissions", "Contractors", "Drafts", and so forth. The drafts folder is especially interesting because it may explain how he develops articles off-wiki then posts them complete. — Brianhe (talk) 04:57, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Expewikiwriter[edit]

Just noting that the Nathan Ballard article listed here was also one of the articles created by the User:Expewikiwriter army of socks from a couple of years ago. Valfontis (talk) 02:54, 5 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]