LagondaDK
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This is the text that should go into a deletion discussion, alas: how to start it?
The German version of this article has been deleted because it was considered a fake biography. No information additional to those that were given in the article had been found, the given references were considered as highly questionable and obscure, since they were either general overviews on Prussian nobility without mentioning Martin von Zoransky, were auto-translations of other Wikipedia-articles, or information by private persons from other websites. The works of Martin von Zoransky were not to be found. As a matter of fact publications that were said to be published by Zoransky were published by other people as in the case of the following essay: Archiv der Mathematik und Physik. 1906, vol. 3 und vol. 9, p. 81 und p. 209., actually written by “Kasimir Zorawski”, with no mentioning of Zoransky even in the footnotes. Another publication, allegedly published in ["Johann Wilhelm: Herzog Martin V. Zoransky 1918, ISBN 1499310390" 1918] contains a text that was published on one of the given sites. Additional to that, ISBN-numbers did not exist prior to the late 1960es. The German discussion concluded, that one should have expected to find veritable information on nobility especially online, since there were so many newsgroups on genealogy of nobility, especially if he was downgraded as a Duke. Events like that should still make the news. One also wonders about the coat of arms of the Zoransky Family, that looks pretty much like the Coat of Arms of the family of Dołęga Dołęga. In consummation: there are no valid information on Martin von Zoransky, nor sound reference that stands the proof. Those references given are highly questionable and in case of allegedly German sources online, turned out to be bad translations or text of either unknown origin or turned out to be auto-translations of English Wikipedia articles.
It should now be discussed, whether or not the article on “Martin von Zoransky” should be kept. LagondaDK (talk) 21:11, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Threston-Clan ... another Hoax?
editI will start to list my findings on those articles related to the "Threston" family, that are highly suspicious and might turn out to be another hoax like the "Zoransky" family. The articles concerned are:
T.R. Threston(deleted after AfD debate)
- created 11.7.2014 by WJ Rockford (blocked as sock-puppet)
- contributors: BennyBenga (blocked as sock-puppet)
- AfD: deleted
- created 6.6.2014 by AustralianThreston (blocked as sock-puppet)
- contributors: BennyBengy (blocked as sock-puppet)
- AfD ongoing
- created 11.7.2014 by AustralianThreston](blocked as sock-puppet)
- contributors: BennyBengy, MissMannersMatter (both blocked as sock-puppet)
- AfD ongoing
- created 11.7.2014 by AustralianThreston](blocked as sock-puppet)
- contributors: BennyBengy, WJ Rockford (both blocked as sock-puppet)
- created 6.6.2014 by AustralianThreston](blocked as sock-puppet)
- contributors: BennyBengy (blocked as sock-puppet)
- created 11.7.2014 by AustralianThreston](blocked as sock-puppet)
- contributors: BennyBengy (blocked as sock-puppet)
Joseph T. Threston(Thanks to the hint of JohnCD(talk) this one appears to be genuine)
After checking the articles on the "Zoransky"-Clan that was considered a hoax by German wikipedia and had been deleted after AfD, the AfD was started on English Wikipedia and on checking the articles a number of allegedly sockpuppets had been uncovered. Apparently all those sockpuppets turned out to have started many more articles, including those of the "Threston" family. All articles on members of that family cumulate in the article on T.R. Threston, who is said to be an author. According to her facebook page she is currently writing a fictional novel, based on historical characters from her own family, that are basically the members of the "Zoransky"- and the "Threston"-family. So all those members of the Threston family that had received wikipedia articles are basically characters of her novel. Apparently she has asked two genealogists to uncover the history of her family in order to be able to write her novel. The findings are to be found on her web-page. Also the two allegedly authors have apparently published their findings under the title "The History of the surname Threston", which can be found online.
References
COHERENCE: If one compares the first page of the book with the aforementioned web-site one can clearly see, that its the same text. If you have ever published yourself: double publishing like that, on sale as hardcover, whilst for free online, is very, VERY uncommon. Also those Threston articles point to that book, so please compare [this page with this Wikipedia article. You can also find that book on Amazon.
Please check the foreword with the back-cover of the book. One does hardly put the same text as the foreword on the back-cover of the same book. Also the book has been published the same way as the made up references of the "Zoransky"-Hoax. "The History of the surname Threston" is listed on OpenLibrary, but is not available there. (That might happen.) But checking who listed the "Book" is a real eye-opener: its the "Wilkes Barre Library" that has also listed all the other fake books that were used as back-up references to support the Zoransky-Clan. Check here for the list. Fake books (set up with Babbel-auto-translations from either Wikipedia sites or collected from other websites) like "Herzog Martin V. Zoransky", "Die Zoransky Familie", "Frankenberg's Prussia: A Guide To Lost Prussian Nobility", "Needles Losses: Prussian Nobility" and "Introduction to Prussian History: A Textbook for High Schools, Seminaries, and Colleges" are listed there, all of them brought in by WilkesBarreLibrary, all listed on May 8th and 9th 2014 (with additions added May 18th), by WilkeBarreLibrary who has only joined the OpenLibrary on May 8th 2014. All books related to Zoransky and Prussian nobility have already been checked ond turned out to be set up fakes.
THE AUTHORS: Also one of the authors, Roger McHughes already had 35 years of work-experience in genealogy on his back in 1988, when his last known book was published. If he had started his career at the age of 20 (if he had studied he should have been older than that), he was 55 years old in 1988. He would have been at least 81 years of age when he did the research on the Threston-family and I somehow fail to believe that somebody of that age keeps raiding the archives in order to uncover other peoples ancestors. Its not impossible, but I somehow fail to believe it.
ISBN: As for "The History of the surname Threston": the book is said to have been published in 2014, but is listed with a ten digit ISBN (ISBN 10-1496164024), but since 2007 the ISBN ten digit system was changed to the 13 digit system, which should be proof enough that this book too is a fake.
Coherence of the Articles
Also the way the characters are described in their Wikipedia articles is not very convincing. Take Sir Richard Threston for example, who - being a priest - was described as follows: "Sir Richard Threston bared the distinction of sacerdos which not only deemed him as a priest but also made him a person of note because of his unique wardrobe of blue and white robe and hoods and red shoes." As a matter of fact: red shoes are only for the Pope to wear! No ordinary priest would be allowed to wear them! Apart from that, the color itself was incredibly expensive in medieval time ... it all appears as if it had come out of a cheap fictional novel, not the other way around, from reality to the novel.
The "book" "The history and origins of the surname Threston" (p. 12) claims to quote a mentioning of one "Richard de Threton" (see article "Richard Threston"), allegedly "Copied directly from The Project Gutenberg eBook Pages 244 and 245", - which can not be found anywhere on Project Gutenberg. Naturally it would have been most usefull if there was given any detail on which eBook that quote was said to originate from. Anyhow: if we were not already questioning the whole product itself, we would still call into question its reliablility as a sound reference if the only information given as sources are limited to "Sources: The Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia". (p. 13) ... If the "authors" were referring to the Wikipedia article on "Richard Threston", one would expect them to quote it completely, including the link, but one would still have to wonder since the "book" was allegedly published way before that Wikipedia article came out. Remember: the "Wilkes Barre Library" listed the "book" on OpenLibrary May 8th, whilst the Wikipedia article on "Sir Richard Threston" was initiated by "AustralianThreston" July 11th 2014.
On page 4 there is copied a snippet of the Canterbury Tales, which itself comes from a snippet from GoogleBooks. That in itself is not something you can blame the alleged authors for, but it makes one wonder how that "book" was researched for, especially without decent footnotes and references (see argument above). As sound reference for Wikipedia articles should only serve sources that themselves contain proper references.
The same goes for "Edward Threston" on p.14 that is simply a copy of a GoogleBooks snippets. The rest has just been jotted down and one wonders where that data originates from. If this was a sound and reliable publication based on research, one would expect the authors to rather leave reprints of snippets from GoogleBooks, that are available to everyone, but instead add copies of those archival findings and documents that the reader can hardly lay their hands on. (And yes, I do know a thing or two about publicizing and editing!)
Sir John Threston
I do not feel like going down all the references given in that article, but I will just give an example as to the methods used here: Sir John Threston is said to be a nobleman and among other pieces of literature this has been backed up by the following reference: "A calendar of Norwich deeds enrolled in the court rolls of that city: years 1307-1341- Page 56" ... which can fortunately be checked by GoogleBooks, where there is no mentioning of a nobleman called John Threston. There is a mentioning of a "John de Threston" and his familiary relation to a certain cook, but no hint as to his nobility.
T.R. Threston
T.R. Threston is said to have been the chairwoman of the New York Travel Writers Society. One could argue whether being a chairwoman of that organisation qualifies for an article. However, there is an article on that organisation that can be found on Wikipedia, created July 28 by "LexieThePixie", an account created that very day only to create that very article and one on the first chairwoman, Lexie being one of the allegedly sockpuppets that are currently checked. This article too is connected to two more articles, T.R. Threston and Sofia Rodrigues Braganza, (see also the article history) which again is connected to "John P. Fitzpatrick", initiated July 11th by "ProPhotographers", being his only article and like the others this account came to life with this article and never did anything before or after. Basically all of the articles were created around the mid of July by accounts that had been created in the mid of July to create one article each exclusively, all of them being checked under the suspicion of being sockpuppets.
However, I have done some research on T.R. Threston and the New York Travel Writers Society and have dug up their annual report from 2013, which does look pretty genuine I must admit. However, being published in 2014 it still is listed under a ten digit ISBN (ISBN1497345537) that should not have been in use ever since 2007. I also fail to call upon the given web-site of that organisation (www.nytws.org) ...
Update:
"T.R. Threston" is a HOAX! All right already, she does have an elaborate facebook-page, Twitter account, mentioning in annual report of whatever club of travel writers, all uploaded from somewhere, non-valid ISBN and very dodgy, but now finally there is proof that "T.R. Threston" is completely made up! Not even her photoes ar real! That photo from her facebook-"fan" page? Fake! The one from her wordpress page? Fake! Her Twitter? All are fake! You are asking for proof? Well ... lets take the pic from her facebook-fan page for a minute and compare it to this photo of Jessica Alba at Toronto Film Festival 2007. Please note the people in the background ... check also this photo of T.R. Threston on her WordPress page and compare it to this photo of a Girl with a Horse ... did you need any more proof of this spoof?
Conclusion
In consummation I believe all them articles are completely made up or at least distorted the facts if there ever were people belonging to that family. Even "T.R. Threston" might be a hoax. If she does exist the given facts or the lack of reference indicate that she is aiming for a Public Relation campaign to support her book. For God's sake: she even uses her Wikipedia-Article on her facebook-page! Btw: the book is supposed to be released in summer 2014, all sockpuppets on Zoransky and Threston articles had been brought to life in July 2014 and all articles on any Zoransky and Threston have been initiated in July 2014. What a coincidence!
Question remains: how to deal with this? This thing is BIG! I believe all Threston articles and all Zoransky articles should go to AfD and be deleted and all sockpuppets uncovered and banned. LagondaDK (talk) 23:35, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
- @LagondaDK: Thank you for collating this information. I agree that the Threston articles need to be reviewed very carefully, and need to be deleted if they are based on fake sources. I think there is nothing wrong with writing a ficticious history novel, but I am disgusted by the fake books that have been uploaded onto the internet. Wikipedia should not be the forum for this kind of activity, and therefore we should continue being very vigilant.--NearEMPTiness (talk) 05:38, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
- Agreed. Most if not all of these need to go to AfD. Let's see what the checkuser says at the SPI. We need to think a bit about how to bundle them: if the CU check shows very blatant socking, we could maybe bundle them all together, saying the whole walled garden should be cleaned out, as falsified sources mean that even if any of them are real and notable, WP:TNT applies; but bundled AfDs tends to attract "keep" !votes from people who say "Need to consider them one by one." Perhaps we could start with the three "Sir X Threston" articles. Good research! JohnCD (talk) 15:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Comment:: Joseph T. Threston seems to be genuine, and is not a product of this sock network. JohnCD (talk) 15:35, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
- Comment I have nominated these (and a few other Sir someone Threston) articles for deletion. If you have any special insight on whether the articles are hoaxes, your contributions would be appreciated.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:53, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you very much. I am currently checking the changes done by some of the sockpuppets done to the articles, like exchanging a ten digit ISBN into a 13 digit ISBN (those obvious mistakes I have mentioned!). I do not have any more insight than any other Wikipedia user, but I do follow the given references and do my cross-checking. As in the case of the Zoransky-family the Threston-family articles follow a certain struckture. They are all initiated by a fresh user who just joined Wikipedia the very day he/she started that article and only initiated one or two of those articles, whilst all those then again added bits and pieces to each others articles. This does appear to be carefully orchestrated! This is, however, no proof but cause of suspicion. What is proof would be questionable references, and as I have shown above, those references are highly questionable and often came into existence just recently, even if - like in some cases - they were said to have been published as early as 1918. Content and fawlty ISBN numbers proof them wrong. Since both, resources on Zoransky and Threston, had been uploaded by the same account, that itself was brought into existence on the very day it produced those incoherent "publications", this is just asking for suspicion. However, I am afraid I do not have the time to dig out that snakepit on my own, so your initiation of AfD is much appreciated, but I will cary on with my research and cross-checking of the references, hopefully starting tomorrow evening, but for sure over the weekend. If we start to strip all those articles of forged references, a lot of data has to go anyway. Either that or AfD will bring those articles to an end. I am sorry to hear that those sockpuppets are bothering you on your user-site. Do you know of any more Wikipedians who could jump in and assist us? LagondaDK (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
- I think, that behavior will not support their case. But even worse for them are edits like this one.--Susumu (talk) 23:41, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
- THX to PhilKnight, I was able to list one more photoshopped photo of T.R. Threston! (^_^)LagondaDK (talk) 22:49, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
- I think, that behavior will not support their case. But even worse for them are edits like this one.--Susumu (talk) 23:41, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
T.R. Threston
editI got hooked on cross-checking the strange biography of that lady and all that cross-referencing of social-network by identities that could hardly be confirmed to even exist were really strange. I still find it mind-boggling how much effort one has put into this and still fail to get my head around it why they did it. Where is the motivation? Its still a mistery to me. However, I won't hide my results from you as understanding the creation of fake-identities and their system of cross-references might turn out useful to enable us to uncover them in times to come.
The data on “T.R. Threston” are truly questionable. There is a blog apparently written by her, her name is mentioned all over the place, but its all either private sites, facebook or Twitter accounts or some name dropping here and there that is impressing at first, but not very convincing on second sight. There are words from her on sites that are basically available to anyone, like Wordpress, her accounts on Twitter, Wordpress and facebook are illustrated with photoshopped photos of her and if you follow the links to her personal web-site, you will find out: there is nothing! That web-site does not exist. Her vita has been backed up by questionable publications, that do look pretty much fake. First of all the “authors” claim “Their findings include a family member who was a Knight’s Templar, and, facts such as the family was once of nobility status, and, family members are related to people such as Sir Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, Prince Charles and, the Lewknor family who at one time owned Bodiam Castle which is still in existence today.” … The “book” itself is listed on Amazon, ebay and [GoogleBooks], often with a ten digit ISBN (ISBN 1496164024) that does not suit the year of alleged publication (March 2014), sometimes with a proper thirteen digit ISBN that would fit. The Seller on ebay claims to be based in the UK, the item, however, is claimed to be located in Momence, Illinois (USA).
Here and there you will find mentioning of T.R. Threston writing the novel “Tharston Manor”, a piece of historical fiction apparently based on her family history, basically based on the research of Lynn/McHugh (see above). On her facebook profile, Twitter- and Wordpress accounts T.R. Threston keeps announcing the publication of that book as early as 2012, then 2013, then it is said to be due in spring 2014, then in summer 2014. If you start to do some research on it, you will get a lot of Google-results on her and her book, but no place you can actually order it. You might also come across some links where T.R. Threston is said to have been interviewed on her book, like “InternationalLuxuryTravelWriter” and “I-NewsWire” and others. . Following those links, however, will lead to nowhere and even using the address of the main site (as old interviews and articles might well be deleted after a while) will do you no good. They simply do not exist. Neither does the site of InternationalLuxuryTravelWriter exist, nor many of the others. As for [www.i-newswire.com “I-NewsWire”] – that site does exist, but is only meant to support individuals and companies to “Increase Online Visibility”. Not the place you’d expect when it comes to neutral and objective journalism. But even if you follow the link listed as “I-NewsWire” on T.R. Threston and her book, you will end up on a whole different site, called “examiner.com”. Therein you will find an Interview with T.R. Threston … but “examiner.com” is not a regular news site or online-magazine. On its About Us page it clearly claims to be a “entertainment, news and lifestyle network“, „ powered by Examiners, thousands of writers who are self-motivated independent contributors.” That means: whatever has been published there has been contributed by somebody who had signed into that network. For the site it means there are thousands of contributors they don’t have to pay, for the audience it means: they do not actually know who contributed and why and if the name of an author is given: is it real? The “author of that interview”, “Christine Barone”, is said to have been a front desk agent of a New York hotel, and had gotten into the luxury travel business after the hotel had been shut down. T.R. Threston explains in one of her profiles, that she had been a travel agent and had become a Travel Writer after that. What a career! (PS: if you wanna find it, use "T.R. Threston", "Christine Barone" and "examiner" luxury travel new york on Google ..... the web site can not be displayed on Wikipedia because it is placlisted. More reason for suspicion!)
If we take the word for it, that T.R. Threston is a productive journalist/writer, we should expect to find traces of her works online, but that turns out to be rather difficult. What we do get is a lot of online profiles on facebook, LinkedIn, Wordpress, MuckRack, or WritingRoom, all places where you actually upload your own profile, profile pic, CV that nobody cross-checks. All interviews with her are published on sites that are accessible for any author who comes along with no proper editor who checks the story, all publications on her family that you will find online, on Amazon, GoogleBooks and anywhere else turn out to be uploaded by a private person, often do not show more than the cover and are all in all not very convincing, especially when the ISBN does not match the alleged year of publication and when allegedly old books that had been said to have been published in 1918 come with ISBN (that was introduced in 1970) and in a style that fits modern ebooks, especially those that turned out to be fake to begin with. Also the photos of T.R. Threston on her profiles turned out to have been photoshopped and we do not actually know how she looks like if she does exist at all.
Social Media: facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, LinkedIn, Yatedo, Google+, [1], MuckRack
- All those sites with personal profile give us no reliable information, only claims by whoever calls him/herself "T.R." ... On her Twitter-account you will find a large number of entries, that are themself copied and re-posted on her other accounts. You will also find shoutouts from other accounts and allegedly "friends", that again are re-posted on her other accounts, whilst her shoutouts and tweets are to be found on theirs. If you then check those contact's accounts and you try to check who those people are you will find a number of links to other profiles of them online and sometimes links to their work-places, that usually lead to nowhere because those sites do not exist. You will also find the same pattern on those profile-sites you have seen on those of "T.R.": multiple shoutouts from "friends" and re-posted shouts from contacts. They are all connected through the "T.R." profiles and all of them serve the purpose to multiply "T.R."'s shouts
Work
Travel Writers Association
- LinkedIn
- website unavailable
- Aim: “Our secondary mission is to raise money for various charities that relate to travel and/or the environment and/or food and water and/or humanitarian aid” (taken from LinkedIn profile)
Nominations
Gracie Award 2014
BriefingWire
- Another Free Press Release Distribution that could have been uploaded by anyone; whilst the “Alliance for Women in Media” as well as the „Gracies“ do Awards exist, there is no category of “Outstanding Interactive Media” T.R. Threston was claimed to have won according to that press release. Checking the List of “Grace Award Winners 2014” proofs: there is no T.R. Threston listed!
Her Wikipedia-article was cross-referenced with articles on:
- Sir Edward Threston
- Joseph T. Threston
- John J. Threston
- Sir Richard Threston
- Sir John Threston
- Threston (family name)
- Joseph C. Zoransky
- Zoransky (surname)
All these articles had been produced by what has turned out to be sock-puppets, all are undergoing AfD procedure, the Zoransky-articles have already been deleted on German Wikipedia for unreliable and made-up references and the strong conviction that we were dealing with a hoax here.
There are also a number of cross-references to be found in the article on T.R. Threston: (gonna add that later)
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