How to investigate potential sockpuppets and manipulation on Wikipedia

Wikipedia remains one of the world's top websites, logging more than 3.5 billion visits in August. Even as it grapples with accusations of bias, challenges of representation, editor fatigue and an AI-powered rival set up by the world's richest man, it maintains a central role in our online information ecosystem.

This makes Wikipedia an appealing target for influence operations. Over the years politically motivated groups, PR firms, and editors sympathetic to authoritarian regimes have tried to circumvent Wikipedia's rules to impose their view of the world. The site’s commitment to anonymity creates an opening for sockpuppetry, while its extensive transparency makes it an ideal platform to study it. According to Wikipedia data, almost 28,000 users have been identified as “sockmasters,” that is operating a group of two or more accounts on the platform for deceptive purposes.

In January, journalist and researcher Claire Wilmot uncovered a decade-long effort by London-based PR firm Portland Communications to deceptively edit Wikipedia, via a contractor, on behalf of its clients. (Portland told The Guardian that it “has a policy of strict adherence to the guidelines on all social media platforms.”) 

Wikipedia’s public records provided a “huge body of evidence that could corroborate what my sources were saying,” Wilmot told me.

In this guide, I’ll explain how Wikipedia’s sockpuppet policy works and the information and tools that investigators, journalists, and researchers can use to investigate potential manipulation. I've also collected tips from five journalists, researchers, and Wikipedia editors.

“What is remarkable about sock puppet investigations is they can be really broad,” said Stephen Harrison, a journalist who wrote a rollicking novel about Wikipedia sockpuppetry. “Someone or some team can have so many sock puppets and they can last for years.”