This is a workspace to organize cleanup related to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/EChewning. It's also being used as an experiment on UPE review organization. If you want to participate, please, follow these instructions:
Read the #Behaviour section to understand the kind of spam we are looking for.
Go to the #Batches section and pick a batch (you can sign it to signal that you're working on it).
Go through every linked diff (one diff may comprise multiple edits) and check whether they are ok or not. If they are ok, mark the line as {{ok}} not spam. If they are spam, clean up the latest version and mark the line with {{removed}}. If the text is not present in the latest version, note it. If you are not sure about it, or it requires a second opinion, mark it with {{notsure}}.
We are looking at a sockfarm closely associated with Michael Patrick Mulroy and his think tank, Lobo Institute. The problematic edits usually do one or more of the following:
Spamming links (in external links or references) pointing to articles written by Mulroy or other Lobo Institute members like Eric Oehlerich. The links are rarely hosted at loboinstitute.org, but at other sites that publish them, including, but not limited to the Middle East Institute (mei.edu), abcnewsradioonline.com or defenseone.com. You can find the usual outlets and coauthors here: https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/editorials-and-policy-papers/
Also watch for external links spam for their podcasts.
Whether refspam is used or not, the introduced text usually includes declarations made by Michael Patrick Mulroy or undue references to him.
Some edits promote people related to CIA paramilitary activities. Some of these edits may be due, but watch out for unsourced claims.
Add linkspam to dieliving.com.
There are also many edits related to Children in the military. Usually promoting My Star in the Sky documentary, the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, or other groups and publications.
Be careful with small edits: this sockfarm often edited articles only adding typos (apparently on purpose).
It should not be ruled out that some edits are meant to skew the point of view of an article towards a position defended by Lobo Institute, but most edits that were already reviewed are primarily about direct promotion of Mulroy, his associates or people and organizations connected to him.
Opened a thread in the talk page. This article has many editors, so it'll be easier to take care of it there. MarioGom (talk) 13:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
This article looks closely connected and may require a review (diff). MarioGom (talk) 17:13, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
comment I won't be editing this myself other than a typo or word choice I've already fixed, but it's apparent that a lot of the material is primary sources, e.g. a mention of a column in Military Review with a citation consisting of the very same column – with little commentary on why this individual is notable from anyone else. At the very least the POV wording about how someone "played a critical role" by holding an appointed office should be toned down or removed entirely. At the outside, I think someone could challenge the notability of this person. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:48, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Please, add your feedback about the review process itself here. Thank you!
@Xeno: I have read your edit summary: KB changed would be quite useful for at a glance checks. (diff). Thank you for the feedback. In this case, I have automatically excluded from this list some diffs that are irrelevant based on tags (some redirects, some already reverted). I considered to filter based on edit size, but I noticed a few bad edits with a very small diff size, so I left them in-place just in case. Also, the distribution of articles in batches is stratified, so every batch is supposed to contain some relevant and some irrelevant articles, avoiding extremely hard batches. I'm thinking a different strategy could be having different batch types. We would have some larger batches at the end made only of edits that are likely minor grammar or formatting changes, and these batches could be reviewed faster. What do you think? MarioGom (talk) 09:39, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
It looks pretty good, and the batch I looked at did have one substantive edit (that needs review still). My thought was having the KB change would allow casual helpers to check big edits without having to go one-by-one. (Another exclusion factor might be edits that only added square brackets.) –xenotalk 11:22, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Not sure.
Done Reviewed by others at Talk:2021 storming of the United States Capitol#Undisclosed paid edits. MarioGom (talk) 23:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
already reverted, 2 
, 4 