The off-wiki part is trivial, and now probably redundant given Platonk's comments based on on-wiki data.
MarioGom (
talk) 19:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)reply
My digging into edit histories have led me to the conclusion that either users Jnyssen and Rastakwere are the same person, or they sit elbow-to-elbow in the same office (meatpuppet), and that both of the users have been engaged in refspam and COI on the same topic and in the same manner.
Checking Rastakwere's early edit history, his first edit was the creation of an article. Within the first 72 hours Rastakwere had created 5 articles and edited 6 other articles — in each of those 11 edits he added a citation to a publication with "J Nyssen" as one of the authors but which was disguised by using the generic phrase "and colleagues" after another author's name.
Rastakwere created the page
Jan Nyssen. The
first version of the CV-like article was extraordinarily detailed with 58 citations and 8 images — 4 of which had been uploaded by Jnyssen to Wikimedia. But Jnyssen has not edited that article.
Lest anyone think that some of the refspam/COI was done 'honestly' (naïve about the rules), I point to the disengenuous way in which editor Jnyssen created/constructed the article
Soil in Tanqwa Abergele. The entirety of the article was written two years ago by Jnyssen. There are 11 citations, the first 7 are co-authored by "Jan Nyssen" or "J Nyssen". However, the editor Jnyssen omitted the author names on the two articles in which "Jan Nyssen" is the lead author, and typed someone else "and colleagues" for the other 5. Citation Bot later filled in the two missing "Jan Nyssen" names. (The other 4 citations either cite Jan Nyssen or one of Jan Nyssen's works cited theirs.) If editor Jnyssen wasn't aware of Wikipedia policies about COI, then he wouldn't have tried to conceal those author names. This is just one of several similar concealments that I have found; but this was by far the most glaring, and deserved mention. I wasn't even looking for this stuff; it just fell in my lap when I was editing
Tanqua Millash, a recent Rastakwere creation, to fix a duplicate citation to a government document. In my opinion, it is egregious to knowingly continue to edit this way for two more years following what I'm certain was full awareness of our COI policies.
Platonk (
talk) 10:41, 25 November 2021 (UTC)reply
By Boud
Users Rastakwere and Jnyssen have similar writing styles. On its own, this is only circumstantial, since this is a qualitative judgement.
Jnyssen had to be warned several times, e.g. on 26 Jul 2019, 26 Jul 2019, 26 Jul 2019, 30 Aug 2019, 5 Sep 2019, and 1 Feb 2020, about copyright violation. Rastakwere also had to be warned several times, on 18 Dec 2020, 29 Jul 2021, and 21 Nov 2021 about copyright violations. On its own, this is only circumstantial evidence, since it only shows that both seem to have misunderstood or ignored how seriously Wikipedia takes copyright. The fraction of new editors in this situation is not that small.
Several of the points by MarioGom and most of the points by Platonk refer to editing events that seem quite unlikely to occur as coincidences. The "smoking gun" incident, on its own, could be a coincidence, like most of the events could be individually.
However, all of the coincidences taken together make it very likely that the two "are the same person, or they sit elbow-to-elbow in the same office", as Platonk said. If they are two people sitting elbow-to-elbow in the same office, then there's still a very strong COI.
Rastakwere has
made 1000 edits since 22 August 2021, making about a dozen edits almost every day except 1 November, but since 13:14, 23 November 2021, just before the filing of this SPI, has done no editing. The Defending yourself guideline states "If there is a good reason for the evidence provided, point it out in your own section." I cannot predict how others will react, but a statement made here by
Rastakwere (allusion to
rastaquouère [
fr?) could make life simpler for everyone rather than dragging this out.
Boud (
talk) 18:18, 24 November 2021 (UTC)reply
The largest humanitarian crisis in the world, since a decade
I think you people do not understand how bad the situation is in Tigray, and how poorly it is known to the outside world. This is not a matter of personal or departmental self promotion, this is (or has been) an attempt to make the situation known to the outside world. Facts reported in different databases on massacres are only the tip of the iceberg. This is the main message I wish to share with you; and sorry if working speedy and with self-constructed templates has led to shortcutting some of the Wikipedia rules.
Rastakwere (
talk) 10:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)reply
Thank you for your statement. However, the first Rastakwere edit was on 11 Sep 2019, 14 months before the start of the hot phase of the Tigray War (
3–4 Nov 2020) and the
associated genocide. The
sockpuppetry started before the armed conflict and genocide.
Boud (
talk) 21:58, 25 November 2021 (UTC)reply